efficient and durable decision rules with incomplete information we compare six concepts of efficiency for economies with incomplete information depending on the stage at which individuals welfare is evaluated and on whether incentive constraints are recognized an example is shown in which an incentive efficient decision rule may be unanimously rejected by the individuals in the economy we define durable decision rules which can resist such unanimous rejection and show that efficient durable decision rules exist

efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading we consider bargaining problems between one buyer and one seller for a single object the seller s valuation and the buyer s valuation for the object are assumed to be independent random variables and each individual s valuation is unknown to the other we characterize the set of allocation mechanisms that are bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational and show the general impossibility of ex post efficient mechanisms without outside subsidies for a wide class of problems we show how to compute mechanisms that maximize expected total gains from trade and mechanisms that can maximize a broker s expected profit journal of economic literature classification number 026

decomposition analysis of co2 emission intensity between oil producing and non oil producing sub saharan african countries abstract the need to decompose co2 emission intensity is predicated upon the need for effective climate change mitigation and adaptation policies such analysis enables key variables that instigate co2 emission intensity to be identified while at the same time providing opportunities to verify the mitigation and adaptation capacities of countries however most co2 decomposition analysis has been conducted for the developed economies and little attention has been paid to sub saharan africa the need for such an analysis for ssa is overwhelming for several reasons firstly the region is amongst the most vulnerable to climate change secondly there are disparities in the amount and composition of energy consumption and the levels of economic growth and development in the region thus a decomposition analysis of co2 emission intensity for ssa affords the opportunity to identify key influencing variables and to see how they compare among countries in the region also attempts have been made to distinguish between oil and non oil producing ssa countries to this effect a comparative static analysis of co2 emission intensity for oil producing and non oil producing ssa countries for the periods 1971 1998 has been undertaken using the refined laspeyres decomposition model our analysis confirms the findings for other regions that co2 emission intensity is attributable to energy consumption intensity co2 emission coefficient of energy types and economic structure particularly co2 emission coefficient of energy use was found to exercise the most influence on co2 emission intensity for both oil and non oil producing sub saharan african countries in the first sub interval period of our investigation from 1971 1981 in the second subinterval of 1981 1991 energy intensity and structural effect were the two major influencing factors on emission intensity for the two groups of countries however energy intensity effect had the most pronounced impact on co2 emission intensity in non oil producing sub saharan african countries while the structural effect explained most of the increase in co2 emission intensity among the oil producing countries finally for the period 1991 1998 structural effect accounted for much of the decrease in intensity among non oil producers while co2 emission coefficient of energy use was the major force driving the decrease among oil producing countries the dynamic changes in the co2 emission intensity and energy intensity effects for the two groups of countries suggest that fuel switching had been predominantly towards more carbon intensive production in oil producing countries and less carbon intensive production in non oil producing ssa countries in addition to the decomposition analysis the article discusses policy implications of the results we hope that the information and analyses provided here would help inform national energy and climate policy makers in ssa of the relative weaknesses and possible areas of strategic emphasis in their planning processes for mitigating the effects of climate change

contracting in the shadow of the law economic models of contract typically assume that courts enforce obligations based on verifiable events corresponding to the legal rule of specific performance as a matter of law this is not the case this leaves open the question of optimal contract design given the available remedies used by the courts this article shows that american standard form construction contracts can be viewed as an efficient mechanism for implementing building projects given existing legal rules it is shown that a central feature of these contracts is the inclusion of governance covenants that shape the scope of authority and regulate the ex post bargaining power of parties our model also implies that the legal remedies of mistake impossibility and the doctrine limiting damages for unforeseen events developed in the case of hadley v baxendale are efficient solutions to the problem of implementing complex exchange

china s energy consumption and sustainable development comparative evidence from gdp and genuine savings this paper employs the structural vector autoregressions framework and the generalized impulse response function to study the long term dynamic relation between china s energy consumption and sustainable economic growth in addition to the conventional economic indicators gdp growth rates genuine savings rates are particularly examined to indicate sustainable economic development results show that the high elasticity of energy consumption dramatically undermines the capacity of china s sustainability in terms of reducing genuine savings rates we also use variance decomposition to calculate relative variance contribution rates in order to identify the most important factor affecting gdp growth as well as genuine savings rates the analysis finds that clean and renewable energy increase the country s genuine savings significantly that is renewable energy consumption promotes sustainable development for both natural and economic societies however increase in traditional solid energy consumption is more likely to benefit only the growth of gdp

designing order book transparency in electronic communication networks a significant fraction of trade in stock exchanges e g euronext and nasdaq involves iceberg orders which are orders to sell or buy a certain number of shares with the caveat that only a part of that number be made public this paper provides a normative justification for the lack of transparency in this kind of order imperfect disclosure is shown to be a necessary feature of any optimal mechanism when the asset s potential buyers must incur a cost in order to become active and learn their valuations for the asset this finding raises a caveat for regulation that seeks to mandate the open order book or otherwise increase the pre trade transparency of stock exchanges

pollution claim settlements under private information abstract the classical problem of resolving a nuisance dispute between a pollution generating firm and nearby residents is modelled here as a mechanism design problem we assume that the designer of the mechanism is the firm that it is uncertain about the actual losses suffered by residents and that the initial assignment of property rights is one where each resident is entitled to prevail we derive a profitmaximizing scheme under the individual rationality and incentive compatibility constraints and examine its properties it is shown that the outcomes it yields are sometimes inefficient moreover when many residents are affected by pollution and the degree of uncertainty with respect to the losses they suffer is large these inefficiencies become rampant

empirical evidence in the analysis of the environmental and energy policies of a series of industrialised nations during the period 1960 1997 using widely employed macroeconomic indicators this article underlines the main implications of the interrelations between the energy problem and that of environmental pollution using the most widely used macroeconomic indicators in the field of policy analysis in fact carbon dioxide co2 emission intensity and energy intensity trends may be used to highlight the most important features of economic development over a given time scale in a variety of different countries the empirical analysis proposed here covering a time span of some 40 years in a number of the most highly industrialised nations seems to be useful if we are to understand the main similarities and differences in the interaction between the energy choices made by different countries and their respective environmental effects moreover by using ppps it has been possible to propose a more detailed cross country analysis for the different international situations

pollution claim settlements reconsidered hidden information and bounded payments abstract a principal s production decision imposes a negative externality on an agent the principal may be a pollution generating firm the agent may be a nearby town the principal offers a contract to the agent who has the right to be free of pollution then the agent privately learns the disutility of pollution finally a production level and a transfer payment are implemented suppose there is an upper bound possibly zero on payments that the agent can make to the principal in the second best solution there is underproduction for low cost types while there is overproduction for high cost types in contrast to standard adverse selection models of pollution claim settlements there may thus be too much pollution compared to the first best solution

endogenous vertical restraints in international trade abstract this paper examines interbrand competition between a domestic and a foreign manufacturer who market their products through intermediaries the contracts manufacturers offer these intermediaries are endogenous in equilibrium contracts may specify exclusive territories et depending on the degree of substitutability between products and the level and degree of transparency of trade barriers trade liberalization through lower or more transparent barriers may lead manufacturers to use et thereby substituting private anti competitive arrangements for government imposed barriers this substitution may decrease competition and welfare and thus create a role for competition policy in a freer trade environment

manufacturers and retailers in the global economy we develop a general equilibrium model to capture key features of the retailing and of the manufacturing industry in order to understand how these two industries interact and how labor is allocated between them we show that the observed shift in employment from manufacturing to retailing the rise in retailer product assortment and the emergence of slotting allowances in many retail markets are consistent with the global integration of product markets while higher retail market concentration is best explained by technological change in retailing we also identify a novel benefit from market integration consisting of efficiency gains in the vertical distribution chain

signaling through obstruction obstruction is a time honored tradition in legislative politics in many cases obstruction can be foreseen to be ultimately unsuccessful and in some of these cases purely costly even to the obstructor in this article i construct a model of obstruction in which the individual obstruction of a fait accompli policy proposal is potentially informative precisely and ironically because it is inefficient the theory based on the legislators reelection motivations offers comparative static predictions about the frequency and length of obstruction as a function of the individual characteristics of the legislator and his or her electoral setting including the legislator s value for reelection the appeal of the legislator s challenger the legislator s individual specific seniority competence and or valence and the visibility of the legislator s obstruction efforts to the voter finally the theory illustrates the potential for transparency of legislators individual actions to be strictly welfare reducing even in the absence of pandering

information gathering transaction costs and the property rights approach the property rights approach to the theory of the firm suggests that ownership structures are chosen in order to provide ex ante investment incentives while bargaining is ex post efficient in contrast transaction cost economics emphasizes ex post inefficiencies in the present paper a party may invest and acquire private information about the default payoff that it can realize on its own inefficient rent seeking can overturn prominent implications of the property rights theory in particular ownership by party b may be optimal even though only the indispensable party a makes an investment decision

returns to scale and damages to scale on u s fossil fuel power plants radial and non radial approaches for dea environmental assessment abstract this study proposes a new use of data envelopment analysis dea for environmental assessment paying attention to a methodological bias i e different methods produce different results dea is analytically classified into radial and non radial approaches the radial approach determines the level of unified operational and environmental efficiency by measuring an inefficiency score the score indicates the distance of a projection from an observed performance to an efficiency frontier in contrast the non radial approach determines the level of unified efficiency by measuring a total amount of slacks because each slack indicates inefficiency to avoid the methodological bias this study considers the use of radial and non radial approaches in this study we consider a production process where all organizations produce not only desirable good but also undesirable bad outputs as a result of their business operations to unify the two types of outputs this study discusses the concept of disposability which is separated into natural and managerial disposability the natural disposability indicates negative adaptation to a regulation change on undesirable outputs in contrast the managerial disposability indicates corporate strategy by which a firm considers the regulation change as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its unified efficiency by utilizing new environmental technology and or new management this type of strategy indicates positive adaptation to the regulation change under the two disposability concepts this study discusses how to measure rts returns to scale under natural disposability and dts damages to scale corresponding to rts on undesirable outputs under managerial disposability the two scale measures are analytically discussed by the proposed radial and non radial approaches with scscs or without scscs where scscs indicate strong complementary slackness conditions an illustrative example on u s fossil fuel power plants indicates a policy implication that they need to introduce new technology for environmental protection this study also discusses a necessity of examining a methodological bias in energy studies empirical findings identified in this study document the practicality of the proposed approaches to measure rts dts

embodied carbon dioxide emission at supra national scale a coalition analysis for g7 bric and the rest of the world abstract presented in this study is an empirical analysis of embodied carbon dioxide emissions induced by fossil fuel combustion for the world divided into three supra national coalitions i e g7 bric and the rest of the world row via the application of a multi region input output modeling for 2004 embodied emission intensities for the three coalitions are calculated and compared with market exchange rate and purchase power parity separately used to investigate the difference between nominal and real production efficiencies emissions embodied in different economic activities such as production consumption import and export are calculated and analyzed accordingly and remarkable carbon trade imbalances associated with g7 surplus of 1 53 billion tons or 36 its traded emissions and bric deficit of 1 37 billion tons or 51 its traded emissions and approximate balance with row deficit of 0 16 billion tons or 3 its traded emissions are concretely revealed carbon leakages associated with industry transfer and international trades are illustrated in terms of impacts on global climate policies the last but not least per capita consumption based emissions for g7 bric and row are determined as 12 95 1 53 and 2 22 tons respectively and flexible abatement policies as well as equity on per capita entitlement are discussed

how economic growth affects emissions an investigation of the environmental kuznets curve in portuguese and spanish economic activity sectors abstract it is a disquieting reality that increased economic growth for many years now in the western world is at odds with environmental degradation in this paper the relationship between economic growth and environmental variables is analyzed under two non linear specifications a quadratic and a cubic specification the study is conducted for portugal and spain in the period 1975 2012 using data for 13 sectors gva is used as proxy for income while energy use and carbon dioxide account for environmental degradation there is evidence for an inverted u shaped ekc however there are also other inverted n shaped functions that explain the relationship between economic growth and emissions altogether empirical results do indicate particular differences between portuguese and spanish sectors the results are of interest not only for researchers but also for policy makers political mitigation measures are also analyzed

economic growth and emissions reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental kuznets curves abstract recent empirical research indicates that certain types of emissions follow an inverted u or environmental kuznets curve ekc as income grows this regularity has been interpreted as a possible de linking of economic growth and patterns of certain pollutants for developed economies in this paper the empirical basis of this result is investigated by considering some statistical particularities of the various ekc studies performed it is argued that the inverted u relationship between income and emissions estimated from panel data need not hold for specific individual countries over time based on insights from intensity of use analysis in resource economics an alternative growth model is specified and estimated for three types of emissions co2 nox and so2 in four countries netherlands uk usa and western germany it is found that the time patterns of these emissions correlate positively with economic growth and that emission reductions may have been achieved as a result of structural and technological changes in the economy sustainable growth is defined as the rate of economic growth that does not lead to growth in emissions its rate is calculated for each type of emission and country based on estimated parameter values the resulting indicators reflect a balance between the positive influence of growth and negative influence of structural change and technological progress on emission levels

property rights and the efficiency of bargaining we show that efficient bargaining is impossible for a wide class of economic settings and property rights these settings are characterized by i the existence of adverse efficient opt out types whose participation does not change the efficient allocation and who when they opt out are the worst type other agents can face and ii non existence of the marginal core and its multivaluedness with a positive probability we also examine the optimal allocation of property rights within a given class that satisfies i such as simple property rights liability rules and dual chooser rules we characterize property rights that minimize the expected subsidy required to implement efficiency with two agents simple property rights that are optimal in this way maximize the expected surplus at the status quo allocation but this no longer holds with more agents we also study second best budget balanced bargaining under a liability rule the optimal second best liability rule may differ from but is often close to the expectation of the victim s harm which would be optimal if there were no bargaining however liability rules that are close to a simple property right result in a lower expected surplus than the simple property right they are near

foreign ownership and technology adoption evidence from indian firms abstract firms in developing countries rely on foreign technology purchases to improve their technology we use a theoretical framework developed by katz and shapiro to examine the ongoing technology adoption behavior of foreign owned and domestic firms using firm level data on indian firms from 1989 to 1993 we test this theoretical model we find that foreign ownership firm size and market structure are among the variables that impact a firm s probability of adopting new technology we also find that the 1991 liberalization of technology transfer policies in india appears to have had a larger impact on foreign owned firms than domestic firms

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

exclusive dealing and common agency in international markets abstract this paper investigates the contractual choice between exclusive dealing and common agency in a simple international oligopoly model where products are sold through intermediaries we find that when trade barriers are high domestic firms tend to adopt exclusive dealing contracts whereas trade liberalization may lead firms to choose common agency social welfare can be raised be prohibiting exclusive dealing common agency when trade barriers are high low and products are close substitutes

economic growth energy conservation and emissions reduction a comparative analysis based on panel data for 8 asian pacific countries this study was conducted to evaluate the causality between energy consumption gdp growth and carbon emissions for eight asia pacific countries from 1971 to 2005 using the panel data the results indicate that there are long run equilibrium relationships between these variables additionally causality from energy consumption to co2 emissions was observed generally but there were some opposite relationships also parameter estimations of the panel data model indicate that there are great differences in the carbon emissions the efficiencies of energy use carbon emissions of unit gdp and unit energy consumption between developed and developing countries the base carbon emissions per capita energy consumption and efficiency of energy use in developing countries are far lower than in developed countries however the co2 emissions per unit of energy use is higher although developing countries may reduce their co2 emission per unit energy use total energy consumption will rise rapidly with economic development thus developing countries must determine how to undergo economic growth while conserving energy and reducing emissions to respond to global climate change it is necessary to develop innovative technology for energy use transform the energy structure and conduct the clean development mechanism

equity and carbon emissions trading a model analysis carbon emissions trading is a key instrument of climate policy it helps to bring about emission reductions in that place where they are least costly however fair burden sharing is about more than just cost efficiency while focussing on the instrument of emissions trading this paper touches upon equity issues that frame decisions on emission rights allocation the analysis is based on the iclips model the model study gives new insights on how the equal per capita allocation principle influences the intertemporal emission paths and about the distribution of mitigation costs in the long run apart from the intuitive economic evaluation of model results this paper also attempts to provide an evaluation from an equity point of view for a variety of assumptions model results show that several developing countries could benefit considerably from joining an international emissions trading system thereby becoming potential collaborators in post kyoto climate agreements

special issue of games and economic behavior in honor of richard d mckelvey richard d mckelvey died on april 22 2002 at the age of 57 and the social sciences lost a great scholar he will be especially missed by fellow game theorists and academics who use game theory in their scholarly studies of economic and political institutions and behavior his students colleagues and friends will also miss a very humble and thoughtful human being who unselfishly contributed his time and intellectual energies throughout his career he influenced the careers of many of us and worked hard for many organizations and journals this journal in particular

what will happen to the producer prices for fossil fuels if kyoto is implemented implementation of the kyoto commitments will result in lesser global fossil fuel consumption in 2010 than would occur in the absence of climate policy the paper explores how the consumption change resulting from climate policy implementation could affect the producer prices of fossil fuels the conclusion is that the price impact will be insignificant if the climate policy goals are established credibly and in the near future for that will give rationally behaving fossil fuel producers ample time to adjust production capacity to the changed outlook for future demand it is argued that as long as capacity develops in line with demand prices should remain the same irrespective of the speed and direction of demand change

privatization of electricity distribution in the northeast of brazil the good the bad the ugly or the naive this paper analyzes the evolution of five electricity distribution companies in the northeast of brazil using technical and financial indicators three privatized and two public firms were analyzed between 1997 and 2008 the financial indicators are used as proxies for the capacity of the business to generate value for shareholders while the technical indicators are used as proxies for service quality provided to consumers we observed that the privatized firms had their financial indicators improved after privatization increasing the value of the firm for the shareholders however there is no evidence that privatization affected the quality of service provided to consumers

policy reforms and productivity growth in india s energy intensive industries abstract india had a highly restrictive industrial and trade policy regime until the end of the1960s this regime while succeeding to some extent in creating a diversified industrial base introduced gross inefficiencies in many sectors of the economy beginning in the early 1970s indian economic policies have been marked by deregulation decontrol and progressive liberalization in this paper we assess the impact of policy reforms on total productivity growth in india s energy intensive sectors aluminum cement fertilizer iron and steel and paper assuming a translog specification of a four input klem production function we use growth accounting to decompose the growth of output into growth of inputs and a residual representing total productivity growth we relate changes in productivity indices to changes in technologies processes and production conditions which policy reforms helped bring about a major finding of this paper is that overall productivity growth in these industries was quite low during 1973 1994 however there were significant differences in productivity growth across industries during this time period these differences can to a large extent be explained by the nature and timing of policy changes in individual sectors

energy intensity co2 emissions and the environmental kuznets curve the spanish case this article analyses the role of energy intensity and the relationship between co2 emissions and primary energy in order to explain the evolution of co2 emissions by unit of real gdp it also distinguishes two different meanings of co2 emissions kuznets curve hypothesis the weak and the strong sense it considers the case of spain in the period 1972 1997 as an example in which there is not any evidence supporting this hypothesis in either sense

modeling energy and development an evaluation of models and concepts most global energy models are developed by institutes from developed countries focusing primarily on issues that are important in industrialized countries evaluation of the results for asia of the ipcc sres models shows that broad concepts of energy and development the energy ladder and the environmental kuznets curve can be observed in the results of the models however improvements can be made in modeling the issues that underlie these concepts like traditional fuels electrification economic structural change income distribution and informal economies given the rapidly growing importance of energy trajectories of developing countries for global sustainability the challenge for the future is to develop energy models that include all these aspects of energy and development

facts and figures on intermediated trade over the past several years trade economists have begun exploring the role that intermediar ies play in facilitating trade papers by james e rauch and joel watson 2004 dimitra petropoulou 2007 and pol antras and arnaud costinot 2009 model intermediaries as agents that facilitate matching between sellers exporters and foreign buyers these papers examine how improved intermediation matching technolo gies affect trade volumes and the gains from trade bernardo s blum sebastian claro and ignatius horstmann 2009 embed a reduced form match ing model inspired by robert townsend 1983 into a heterogeneous firm trade model and exam ine how changes in the trading environment affect trade costs export import volumes and the extent of trade flowing through trade intermediaries a key modeling challenge for this literature is how to structure matching and intermediation technologies in trading environments blum claro and horstmann 2009 provide certain facts for chile colombia trade and use these facts to structure trading technologies in this paper we provide a broader set of facts on trade intermediaries using new datasets for chile and for chile argentina trade 1 we think that these facts will prove particularly useful for future modeling of trade intermediaries

imports я us retail chains as platforms for developing country imports wal mart toys r us and other large retail chains are often identified with cheap imports we use data from the census of retail trade and the international trade commission over the period 1997 2002 to test whether big chains serve as platforms for imports from ldcs using difference in difference specifications we show that chinese and other ldc imports have increased disproportionately in retail sectors with the sharpest consolidation into chains to quantify the importance of chain growth to import growth we apply a numerical algorithm that generates marginal propensities to import by firm size the largest retail firms propensity to import from china is 17 percentage points higher than that of smaller retailers the corresponding difference in import propensities from ldcs as a whole is 27 points the disproportionate growth of large retailers between 1997 and 2002 explains 5 of the overall growth in consumer goods imports 20 of the growth in consumer goods imports from china and 22 of the growth in consumer goods imports from ldcs

ex ante efficient ex post individually rational trade abstract consider a bilateral trade model with two sided incomplete information for a general set of independent beliefs an ex post individually rational mechanism generating the same level of ex ante expected gains from trade as an ex ante efficient interim individually rational mechanism is constructed thus imposing the stronger notion of ex post individual rationality on this mechanism design problem generates no loss of efficiency

buyer power in international markets this paper investigates the implications for international markets of the existence of retailers wholesalers with market power two main results are shown first in the presence of buyer power trade liberalization may lead to retail market concentration due to this concentration retail prices may be higher and welfare may be lower in free trade than in autarky thus reversing the standard effects of trade liberalization second the pro competitive effects of trade liberalization are weaker under buyer power than under seller power

room for improvement in low carbon economies of g7 and brics countries based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves abstract carbon emissions which are nowadays targeted for significant reduction cause global warming with climate change producing a series of side effects including economic losses and ecological extinction the data envelopment analysis approach has recently been employed for environmental estimations the target of this study is to introduce a new data envelopment analysis method in order to provide environmental improvement suggestions this study measures the room for improvements in low carbon economies of g7 group and brics group based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves the main findings are as follows i the g7 group has greater room for improvement in its carbonization value than the brics group before 2005 however the latter has greater room for improvement in carbonization value than the former after 2005 ii countries with the backfire effect of a high carbon economy include germany italy and south africa iii during the data period three environmental kuznets curves including energy intensity emission intensity and carbonization value do not satisfy the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis that the curves are inverted u shaped on the contrary the three environmental kuznets curves in this study are u shaped

carbon dioxide emissions and global gdp abstract a positive relationship between carbon dioxide emissions the most important greenhouse gas ghg implicated in global warming and gdp is shown in this paper examining per capita income and co2 emissions of 137 countries across 21 years it also appears that as per capita incomes accelerate across countries emissions increases for the most part tend to decelerate it could be that higher income levels lead to increased demand for environmental protection only emissions reduction proposals that assure incomes will not be adversely affected particularly those of less developed countries ldcs will have any possibility of successful implementation

technological progress and sustainable development what about the rebound effect abstract sustainability concepts that rest on the idea of resource or energy efficiency improvements due to technological progress tend to overestimate the potential saving effects because they frequently ignore the behavioral responses evoked by technological improvements efficiency improvements also affect the demand for resources and energy and often an increase in efficiency by 1 will cause a reduction in resource use that is far below 1 or sometimes it can even cause an increase in resource use this phenomenon is commonly labeled the rebound effect which is well known among energy economists but never attracted much attention in ecological economics the paper starts with the traditional neoclassical analysis of the rebound effect in a partial equilibrium framework that concentrates on the demand of one particular energy service such as mobility or room temperature it also provides an overview of some of the main empirical studies based on this model that mostly confirm the existence of the rebound effect but are controversial about its actual importance however we have to go beyond the neoclassical single service model in order to take care of the variety of possible feedback affecting energy use the paper presents two important expansions of the single service model in order to show the potential relevance of the rebound effect to ecological economics first it is shown that in a multi services model it proves to be difficult to make general statements about the relevance of the rebound effect in this case the overall effect of an increase in energy efficiency on total energy use depends on the on the assumptions about the substitutability between the services considered and the direction of the income effect second the paper also tries to take care of the fact that changes in resource use or energy use are frequently just side effects of other forms of technological progress especially technological change of a time saving nature can have a large influence on energy use as many time saving devices for example faster modes of transport require an increase in energy consumption that is frequently reinforced by a rebound effect with respect to time this effect will be especially strong when wages are high and at the same time energy prices are low as is currently the case in most industrialized countries consequently the paper also provides a strong argument for the introduction of energy taxes

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

environmental assessment by dea radial measurement u s coal fired power plants in iso independent system operator and rto regional transmission organization abstract the economic concept of weak and strong disposability on undesirable outputs dominated the previous discussions on dea data envelopment analysis radial measurement for environmental assessment this study reexamines the economic concept from the perspective of corporate strategies on how to adapt a regulation change on undesirable outputs the economic concept of disposability conventionally accepted by production economists is replaced by natural and managerial disposability in this study the natural disposability implies an environmental strategy that a firm attempts to decrease an input vector to reduce a vector of undesirable outputs given the decreased input vector the firm attempts to increase a vector of desirable outputs as much as possible this type of strategy indicates negative adaptation meanwhile the managerial disposability indicates an opposite strategy by increasing the input vector this disposability expresses an environmental strategy by which a firm considers a regulation change on undesirable outputs as a new business opportunity a firm attempts to improve its unified operational and environmental performance by utilizing new technology and or new management the strategy indicates positive adaptation considering the two types of disposability this study discusses how to measure unified efficiency under natural and managerial disposability by dea radial models to document the practicality of the proposed dea environmental assessment this study applies it to compare the performance of u s coal fired power plants under isos rtos independent system operators regional transmission organizations with that of the other power plants not belonging to any organization this study identifies two empirical findings one of the two findings is that the latter coal fired power plants outperform the former power plants belonging to isos rtos in terms of three efficiency measures this result indicates that isos and rtos do not provide an effective coordination for coal fired power plants at the level that can be found in the other power plants the other finding is that there is technological improvement in the operation of coal fired power plants

why parallel trade may raise producers profits abstract this paper shows that a manufacturer may benefit from parallel trade in addition to an intuitive condition about the effect of demand shocks this occurs when competitive retailers must order inventories before they know the realization of demand and for products whose sale value drops at the end of the demand period for these types of products letting retailers trade unsold inventories generally results in larger orders placed with the manufacturer and higher manufacturer profit the model provides a simple explanation as to why the volume of parallel trade is now very large and accepted by manufacturers for some products such as automobiles clothes toys consumer electronics musical recordings cosmetics and perfumes

emissions trading in transition economies the link between international and domestic policy international emissions trading has the potential to significantly lower carbon mitigation costs and to promote environmentally friendly investment in transition economies the design of domestic systems to complement international emissions trading will likely play a major role in emissions trading s effectiveness this paper examines the benefits and challenges of proposed domestic systems and the related flows of emissions trading revenue in seller nations the overwhelming majority of emissions available for sale will come from transition economies which is why this article considers these countries as a group governments in countries such as russia and poland are interested in the potentially significant revenue they would reap from emissions trading and some in those governments feel the money would best be used as general revenue for the government others argue that emissions trading should involve the private sector and other emitters in order to provide maximum incentives to reduce emissions and generate additional emissions trading revenue the rules for international emissions trading explicitly allow this still others feel that special carbon mitigation funds would allow the government to maintain control yet stimulate additional emission reductions each policy contains its own set of challenges stimulating further emission reductions credibly monitoring emissions and emission reductions or applying adequate fiscal accounting to the money flows

the nature of co2 emission kuznets curve this paper reveals that co2 emission kuznets curve merely reflects the peak theory of energy intensity the situation of real energy use should be used as a fundamental stone for both energy and environmental policy making

entitling the pollutee liability versus standard under private information this paper considers and compares two different legal means full liability and standard to reduce and to regulate pollution at a local level accounting for private information about benefits and costs the familiar polluter pays principle makes the polluter liable for any damage since the courts lack information about the true damage the pollutee can and presumably will overstate this damage nevertheless voluntary arrangements bypassing the courts exist e g for coasean reasons however such out of court arrangements fail to improve in many cases the inefficient allocation of pollution due to agency costs given these unsatisfactory consequences of the polluter pays principle even after allowing for contracts around the law we propose a modification of standards the pollutee is entitled that a certain standard is satisfied yet can trade this right for financial compensations contracts induced by this legal rule are countervailing the optimal mechanism switches between subsidies and payments and first best efficiency holds at both ends and this characteristic allows such a privatized standard to track the first best quite well and often better than the polluter pays principle this relative ranking under private information is the opposite of the one that holds under uncertainty here liability dominates the standard

countervailing power and consumer prices this paper considers the importance of countervailing power manifested as the effects of increased retail concentration on consumer prices and welfare within a market setting where imperfectly competitive retailers negotiate intermediate prices with a monopoly supplier only when retailer services are regarded as very close substitutes do final prices fall following a reduction in the number of retailers even in these circumstances the social benefits of countervailing power may not be realised as the supplier may seek to protect its profits by using a refusal to supply restraint to engage in exclusive trading

asymmetric information and the property rights approach to the theory of the firm abstract in the grossman hart mooreproperty rights approach to the theory of the firm it is usually assumed that information is symmetric ownership matters for investment incentives provided that investments are partly relationship specific we study the case of completely relationship specific investments i e the disagreement payoffs do not depend on the investments it turns out that if there is asymmetric information then ownership matters for investment incentives and for the expected total surplus specifically giving ownership to party b can be optimal even when only party a has to make an investment decision and even when the owner s expected disagreement payoff is larger under a ownership

status quo bias in bargaining an extension of the myerson satterthwaite theorem with an application to the coase theorem we use a generalized version of the myerson satterthwaite theorem to study inefficiencies in bilateral bargaining over trade of an indivisible good where there is two sided private information on the valuations we show that when preferences are convex and quasi linear and when the private information represents the magnitude of the utility gain or loss and follows a uniform distribution that the most efficient mechanism always exhibits a bias towards the status quo in the case that utility functions are quadratic in the amount traded we prove that for any incentive compatible direct mechanism there is an expected bias towards the disagreement point in other words for the class of preferences we study there is a strategic advantage to property rights in the coase bargaining setup in the presence of incomplete information

empirical analysis of the environmental and energy policies in some developing countries using widely employed macroeconomic indicators the cases of brazil china and india abstract this paper proposes an empirical analysis concerning the environmental and energy policies of some important developing countries brazil china and india today present in the international scenario with very different features than in the past the research is carried out using two of the most important macroeconomic indicators several times proposed in the field of policy analysis emission intensity ratio and energy intensity ratio moreover the emission intensity ratio is used in order to verify the empirical existence of the so called environmental kuznets curve for the three countries for what concerns this last point final results do not correspond closely to the theoretical strict formulations hypothesised in the classical environmental kuznets curve model this paper follows completing and concluding the previous one carried out by the same author for some industrialised countries after a brief but ineluctable premise considering the theoretical basic assumptions to define the question and regarding general statements the specific cases are analysed main findings show that resulting trends in these developing countries are different and furthermore they differ from those already observed in industrialised ones

the principal agent model with multilateral externalities an application to climate agreements we consider contracting of a principal with an agent if multilateral externalities are present the motivating example is that of an international climate agreement given private information about the willingness to pay wtp for emissions abatement due to multilateral externalities the principal uses her own emissions besides subsidies to incentivize the agent and to assure his participation optimal contracts equalize marginal abatement costs and thus can be implemented by a system of competitive permit trading moreover optimal contracts can include a boundary part i e the endogenous type dependent participation constraint is binding which is not a copy of the outside option of no contract compared to this outside option a contract can increase emissions of the principal for types with a low wtp and reduce her payoff for high types subsidies can be constant or even decreasing in emission reductions and turn negative so that the agent reduces emissions and pays the principal

methodological proposal for territorial distribution of the percentage reduction in gross inland energy consumption according to the eu energy policy strategic goal abstract a 20 reduction in the consumption of energy is one of the main goals of the european union s eu 20 20 20 energy strategy but the uniform application of this overall goal to all of the countries is neither fair nor equitable as it does not take into consideration the characteristics of the energy system in each member state this article therefore proposes a nonlinear distribution methodology with objective dynamic goals for reducing gross inland energy consumption according to the context and characteristics of each member state we hope it will open discussion on how these overall goals can be weighted then we analyse the situation of the energy indicators related to energy efficiency in the reference year 2005 used by the eu for reaching its goal of reducing the gross inland consumption by 20 by 2020 and its progress from 1996 to 2007 finally the methodology proposed is applied to the year 2020 on the nuts0 territorial level that is to members of the eu according to the eurostat nomenclature of territorial units for statistics nuts weighting is done based on energy intensity per capita gross inland consumption and per capita energy intensity in two scenarios the eu 15 and eu 27

does higher economic and financial development lead to environmental degradation evidence from bric countries abstract a vast number of studies addressed the environmental degradation and economic development but not financial development moreover as argued by stern 2004 the rise and fall of the environmental kuznets curve world development 32 1419 1439 they present important econometric weaknesses using standard reduced form modeling approach and controlling for country specific unobserved heterogeneity we investigate the linkage between not only economic development and environmental quality but also the financial development panel data over period 1992 2004 is used we find that both economic and financial development are determinants of the environmental quality in bric economies we show that higher degree of economic and financial development decreases the environmental degradation our analysis suggests that financial liberalization and openness are essential factors for the co 2 reduction the adoption of policies directed to financial openness and liberalization to attract higher levels of r d related foreign direct investment might reduce the environmental degradation in countries under consideration in addition the robustness check trough the inclusion of us and japan does not alter our main findings

electricity consumption and economic growth in india abstract this paper tries to examine the granger causality between electricity consumption per capita and gross domestic product gdp per capita for india using annual data covering the period 1950 51 to 1996 97 phillips perron tests reveal that both the series after logarithmic transformation are non stationary and individually integrated of order one this study finds the absence of long run equilibrium relationship among the variables but there exists unidirectional granger causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption without any feedback effect so electricity conservation policies can be initiated without deteriorating economic side effects

information and the coase theorem abstract some economists think the coase theorem implies a lot about the proper scope of government intervention in the economy and about the welfare consequences of laissez faire others see it as a mere tautology that if people negotiate efficiently then every outcome will be efficient the coase theorem is important only if we believe that efficient negotiation is likely of course we can attribute inefficiencies to bargaining imperfection but it may not be useful to do so such attitudes sometimes seem to depend more on ideology than on reason this article gives one economist s reasoned view it discusses the coase theorem as a decentralization result and why decentralization results are interesting it considers mechanism design for revealing private information and describes the problems of centralization should the coase theorem should be viewed as a second best result property rights are more efficient than some reasonable alternative does the coase theorem recommend an institution or make

the causes and consequences of wal mart s growth wal mart is the largest company in the world yet little is known about its economic impact this essay discusses what is known about wal mart s competitive advantage and its economic impact on local communities as well as the national and global economy and highlights the open questions to be addressed by future research

the rebound effect some empirical evidence from india abstract the present paper looks at the effect of technical efficiency gains on energy use in three sectors in india at varying levels of aggregation high positive rebound implies that efficient technology unless supplemented by appropriate pricing policy will not be successful in containing demand however the main purpose of the paper is to focus on the unique mechanism of rebound that may occur in developing countries with unmet demand

asymmetric information bargaining problems with many agents a yes or no decision must be made about some issue all agents must agree the coase theorem asserts that the efficient outcome will always result suppose the value positive or negative that an individual attaches to an affirmative decision is privately known to that individual it is proved under very mild conditions that with independent types as the number of agents increases the probability of an affirmative efficient decision goes to zero an example in which it is common knowledge that an affirmative decision is efficient and yet the probability of such a decision goes to zero is given

upfront payments and exclusion in downstream markets although upfront payments are often observed in contracts between manufacturers and retailers little is known about their competitive effects or the role retailers play in securing them in this article we consider a model in which two competing retailers make take it or leave it offers to a common manufacturer we find that upfront payments are a feature of equilibrium contracts and in all equilibria only one retailer buys from the manufacturer these findings support the claims of small manufacturers who argue that they are often unable to obtain widespread distribution for their products because of upfront payments copyright 2007 rand

income and co2 emissions evidence from panel unit root and cointegration tests abstract this paper re investigates the stationarity properties of per capita carbon dioxide co 2 emissions and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 109 countries within seven regional panel sets covering 1971 2003 we apply the recent unit root test of the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller suradf test developed by breuer et al 2001 misleading inferences from panel unit root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity review of international economics 9 482 493 2002 series specific unit root tests with panel data oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 64 527 546 the panel suradf test accounts for the presence of cross country correlations in the data and the parameters in the panel specification vary across countries more importantly this test allows us to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root overall our empirical results illustrate that real gdp and co 2 emissions in these countries are a mixture of i 0 and i 1 processes and that the traditional panel unit root tests could lead to misleading inferences as well as the conduct of cointegration analysis being perhaps inappropriate the results of our analysis carry critical implications for the modeling of co 2 emissions and gdp because of the different orders of integration for the two variables

industrial energy efficiency with co2 emissions in china a nonparametric analysis abstract global awareness on energy security and climate change has created much interest in assessing economy wide energy efficiency performance a number of previous studies have contributed to evaluate energy efficiency performance using different analytical techniques among which data envelopment analysis dea has recently received increasing attention most of dea related energy efficiency studies do not consider undesirable outputs such as co 2 emissions in their modeling framework which may lead to biased energy efficiency values within a joint production framework of desirable and undesirable outputs in this paper we construct both static and dynamic energy efficiency performance indexes for measuring industrial energy efficiency performance by using several environmental dea models with co 2 emissions the dynamic energy efficiency performance indexes have further been decomposed into two contributing components we finally apply the indexes proposed to assess the industrial energy efficiency performance of different provinces in china over time our empirical study shows that the energy efficiency improvement in china s industrial sector was mainly driven by technological improvement

co2 emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade a south african perspective abstract the effect of trade liberalisation on environmental conditions has yielded significant debate in the energy economics literature although research on the relationship between energy consumption emissions and economic growth is not new in south africa no study specifically addresses the role that south africa s foreign trade plays in this context a surprising fact given trade is one of the most important factors that can explain the environmental kuznets curve this study employs recent south african trade and energy data and modern econometric techniques to investigate this the main finding of interest in this paper is the existence of a long run relationship between environmental quality levels of per capita energy use and foreign trade in south africa as anticipated per capita energy use has a significant long run effect in raising the country s co 2 emission levels yet surprisingly higher levels of trade for the country act to reduce these emissions granger causality tests confirm the existence of a positive bidirectional relationship between per capita energy use and co 2 emissions whilst the study also finds positive bidirectional causality between trade and income per capita and between trade and per capita energy use it appears however that trade liberalisation in south africa has not contributed to a long run growth in pollution intensive activities nor higher emission levels

is environmental degradation an inevitable consequence of economic growth tunneling through the environmental kuznets curve abstract economywide reforms often contribute simultaneously to economic social and environmental gains however unintended adverse side effects occur in many cases when such growth inducing reforms are undertaken while neglecting other policy market or institutional imperfections the remedy does not generally require reversal of the original economywide reforms but rather the ex ante implementation of additional complementary measures that remove such imperfections the ekc approach seeks to relate the state of the environment to the stage of development developing countries could learn from the experiences of industrialized nations and restructure growth and development to tunnel through any potential ekc thereby avoiding going through the same stages of growth that involve relatively high and even irreversible levels of environmental harm an environmentally adjusted measure of national income could significantly change the shape of the development environment relationship recommendations for decision making include actively seeking win win policies that simultaneously yield both economic and environmental gains pre empting environmental harm through ex ante remedial measures and fine tuning reform policies to avoid severe environmental damage the adoption of more sustainable policies will facilitate the attainment of higher levels of development at a lower environmental cost

slacks based efficiency measures for modeling environmental performance we develop two slacks based efficiency measures for modeling environmental performance on the basis of environmental dea technology of the two measures one is a composite index with a higher discriminating power for modeling economic environmental performance and the other can be used to estimate the impacts of environmental regulations we apply the proposed measures to model the co2 emissions of 30 oecd countries from 1998 to 2002 and present the results obtained

three types of decline in energy intensity an explanation for the decline of energy intensity in some developing countries this study proposes a hypothesis that there are three types of decline in energy intensity and one of the declines in energy intensity may be due to the restricted utilization of combustible renewables and wastes this study uses this hypothesis to explain the decline of energy intensity in some developing countries finally a model for sustainable energy consumption is suggested