neighborhood information exchange and voter participation an experimental study we study the effect of social embeddedness on voter turnout by investigating the role of information about other voters decisions we do so in a participation game in which we distinguish between early and late voters each late voter is told about one early voter s turnout decision cases are distinguished where the voters are allies support the same group or adversaries with opposing preferences and where they are uncertain about each other s preferences our experimental results show that the social embeddedness matters this information increases aggregate turnout by approximately 50 the largest effect is observed for allies early voters strategically try to use their first mover position and late voters respond to this

maritime oil freight flows to 2050 delphi perceptions of maritime specialists abstract this paper aims to synthesise maritime specialists perceptions of changing patterns of maritime oil freight flows to 2050 debate spans published maritime oil flows globally diverse drivers of future flows including economic growth shipping market changes and haul lengths a classic delphi study to explore the perceptions of likely trends and flows to 2050 recruited a panel of early career and established maritime specialists many with long term career commitments to this industry underpinned by market volatility and legislative uncertainty the perceptions of both groups coincided and were conservative local sourcing new arctic seaways and fossil fuel intolerance will tend to reduce oil freight work but perceptions of ship re routing to avoid for example emission control areas and piracy would tend to lengthen hauls in advanced industrial nations reducing energy intensities and diminishing social tolerance of fossil fuels imply gradually reducing maritime oil shipments however to achieve radical national commitments to carbon emissions reductions will necessitate specialist education for naturally conservative maritime professionals and vigorous oil import reduction policies to curtail domestic demand for oil shipments

a dynamic approach to the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis states that pollution levels increase as a country develops but begin to decrease as rising incomes pass beyond a turning point in ekc analyses the relationship between environmental degradation and income is usually expressed as a quadratic function with the turning point occurring at a maximum pollution level other explanatory variables have been included in these models but income regularly has had the most significant effect on indicators of environmental quality one variable consistently omitted in these relationships is the price of energy this paper analyzes previous models to illustrate the importance of prices in these models and then includes prices in an econometric ekc framework testing energy income and co2 income relationships these long run price income models find that income is no longer the most relevant indicator of environmental quality or energy demand indeed we find no significant evidence for the existence of an ekc within the range of current incomes for energy in the presence of price and trade variables

the inverted pyramid a neo ricardian view on the economy environment relationship abstract in ecological economics natural resources which may contribute only a small amount to gdp are viewed as fundamental to the functioning of the economy they are sometimes pictured as sitting at the base of an inverted pyramid with the rest of the economy balanced on top of them in this paper we show that when prices are set by markup a standard heterodox assumption then the inverted pyramid picture of the economy emerges naturally in a neo ricardian model we demonstrate the use of the model with brief applications to biophysical economics the paper is one of a growing number that use heterodox macroeconomics to address questions in ecological economics

natural resources curse or blessing are natural resources a curse or a blessing the empirical evidence suggests that either outcome is possible this paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natural resources these include that a resource bonanza induces appreciation of the real exchange rate deindustrialization and bad growth prospects and that these adverse effects are more severe in volatile countries with bad institutions and lack of rule of law corruption presidential democracies and underdeveloped financial systems another hypothesis is that a resource boom reinforces rent grabbing and civil conflict especially if institutions are bad induces corruption especially in nondemocratic countries and keeps in place bad policies finally resource rich developing economies seem unable to successfully convert their depleting exhaustible resources into other productive assets the survey also offers some welfare based fiscal rules for harnessing resource windfalls in developed and developing economies

underestimating the real growth of gdp personal income and productivity economists have long recognized that changes in the quality of existing goods and services along with the introduction of new goods and services can raise grave difficulties in measuring changes in the real output of the economy but despite the attention to this subject in the professional literature there remains insufficient understanding of just how imperfect the existing official estimates actually are after studying the methods used by the us government statistical agencies as well as the extensive previous academic literature on this subject i have concluded that despite the various improvements to statistical methods that have been made through the years the official data understate the changes of real output and productivity the official measures provide at best a lower bound on the true real growth rate with no indication of the size of the underestimation in this essay i briefly review why national income should not be considered a measure of well being describe what government statisticians actually do in their attempt to measure improvements in the quality of goods and services consider the problem of new products and the various attempts by economists to take new products into account in measuring overall price and output changes and discuss how the mismeasurement of real output and of prices might be taken into account in considering various questions of economic policy

international trade and energy intensity during european industrialization 1870 1935 the study was conducted in the research project who did the dirty work energy embodied in european and global trade 1800 1970 funded by the swedish research council 421 2013 1110 vetenskapsradet

what drives health care expenditure baumol s model of unbalanced growth revisited the share of health care expenditure in gdp rises rapidly in virtually all oecd countries causing increasing concern among politicians and the general public yet economists have to date failed to reach an agreement on what the main determinants of this development are this paper revisits baumol s baumol w j 1967 macroeconomics of unbalanced growth the anatomy of urban crisis american economic review 57 3 415 426 model of unbalanced growth showing that the latter offers a ready explanation for the observed inexorable rise in health care expenditure the main implication of baumol s model in this context is that health care expenditure is driven by wage increases in excess of productivity growth this hypothesis is tested empirically using data from a panel of 19 oecd countries our tests yield robust evidence in favor of baumol s theory

women don t run election aversion and candidate entry to study gender differences in candidate emergence we conduct a laboratory experiment in which we control the incentives potential candidates face manipulate features of the electoral environment and measure beliefs and preferences we find that men and women are equally likely to volunteer when the representative is chosen randomly but that women are less likely to become candidates when the representative is chosen by an election this difference does not arise from disparities in abilities risk aversion or beliefs but rather from the specific competitive and strategic context of campaigns and elections thus we find evidence that women are election averse whereas men are not election aversion persists with variations in the electoral environment disappearing only when campaigns are both costless and completely truthful

uncertainty in the availability of natural resources fossil fuels critical metals and biomass energy policies are strongly influenced by resource availability and recoverability estimates yet these estimates are often highly uncertain frequently incommensurable and regularly contested this paper explores how the uncertainties surrounding estimates of the availability of fossil fuels biomass and critical metals are conceptualised and communicated the contention is that a better understanding of the uncertainties surrounding resource estimates for both conventional and renewable energy resources can contribute to more effective policy decision making in the long term two complementary approaches for framing uncertainty are considered in detail a descriptive typology of uncertainties and a framework that conceptualises uncertainty as alternative states of incomplete knowledge both have the potential to be useful analytical and communication tools for the three resource types considered here we find that data limitations inconsistent definitions and the use of incommensurable methodologies present a pervasive problem that impedes comparison many aspects of resource uncertainty are also not commonly captured in the conventional resource classification schemes this highlights the need for considerable care when developing and comparing aggregate resource estimates and when using these to inform strategic energy policy decisions

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

baumol s disease and dematerialization of the economy this paper argues that there is reason to be skeptical about the idea that the transition to a service economy will bring about dematerialization of production and consequent environmental improvement this is because the shift to a service economy is an illusion in terms of real production but is instead generated by the fall in the price of manufacturing goods relative to services which is in turn caused by more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing than in services this argument relies on the insights baumol provided on the nature of the service economy and uses swedish long term data on relative sectoral development as an empirical illustration on the other hand the paper argues that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that structural change may bring about a greening of growth namely the changes in growth patterns sometimes labeled the third industrial revolution which is connected to the emergence of microelectronics swedish co2 emissions show a decline after 1970 which is mainly explained by a politically driven change in the mix of energy carriers but is also related to the stabilization of energy consumption this energy stabilization was caused by slow growth of the economy in conjunction with substantial declines in energy intensity within industrial sectors and an absence of relative growth of the heavy sectors a growth that had marked the economy between 1870 and 1970 microelectronics have contributed to permanently transforming the swedish industrial sector in a lighter direction reducing energy losses in heavy industries and stabilizing household energy consumption so it appears as if there may be some environmental gains from this development that was initiated in the 1970s but not from relatively more production in the service sector

using maimonides rule to estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement the twelfth century rabbinic scholar maimonides proposed a maximum class size of 40 this same maximum induces a nonlinear and nonmonotonic relationship between grade enrollment and class size in israeli public schools today maimonides rule of 40 is used here to construct instrumental variables estimates of effects of class size on test scores the resulting identiecation strategy can be viewed as an application of donald campbell s regression discontinuity design to the class size question the estimates show that reducing class size induces a signiecant and substantial increase in test scores for fourth and efth graders although not for third graders when asked about their views on class size in surveys parents and teachers generally report that they prefer smaller classes this may be because those involved with teaching believe that smaller classes promote student learning or simply because smaller classes offer a more pleasant environment for the pupils and teachers who are in them mueller chase and walden 1988 social scientists and school administrators also have a longstanding interest in the class size question class size is often thought to be easier to manipulate than other school inputs and it is a variable at the heart of policy debates on school quality and the allocation of school resources in many countries see e g robinson 1990 for the united states ofsted 1995 for the united kingdom and moshel ravid 1995 for israel this broad interest in the consequences of changing class size

a comparison of oil supply risks in eu us japan china and india under different climate scenarios for many countries the inflow of energy is essential to keep economies running oil is typically considered to be the most critical fuel as an input for the petro chemical and transportation sector and due to limited and less spread reserves in this study external oil supply risks are assessed for the period up to 2035 for the european union united states china japan and india being the five largest importers of oil in the world based on their current supplier portfolio scenarios are constructed for several climate policy and oil supply projections it is found that risks increase strongly when stringent climate policies are prevented from being implemented especially when a peak in oil supply is taken into account resulting in major oil supply disruptions china faces the lowest oil supply risks in most scenarios but the trends of india china and us converge over time due to increasing import dependency of china and india japan faces high risks since the country has the highest oil import dependency combined with a low oil import diversification for the eu all figures are strongly influenced by russia accounting for 32 of total imports and to a lesser extent norway 11 with high overall risks

energy consumption synchronization between europe united states and japan a spectral analysis assessment abstract this paper aims to advance a model able to explain the synchronization tendency in energy consumption under the impact of international technology transfers the key argument is related to the differences in energy consumption efficiency of local and foreign technologies one direct testable consequence of the model is that there might be a certain correlation between the energy consumption between countries and or economic areas where a free movement of capital goods and technologies takes place hence it is further tested in the framework of a multivariate spectrum analysis the case of energy consumption synchronization between europe and respectively united states and japan for a time span between 1981 and 2011 based on the data provided by u s energy information administration there are evidences of a leading behavior of energy consumption in united states and japan in respect to europe as well as of short run phase delays of 2 up to 5 months

home versus school learning a new approach to estimating the effect of class size on achievement i estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement using that schools are only in session during the school year and out of session during the summer this seasonal feature of the schooling system makes it possible to control for unobservable pupil characteristics affecting both the level and change in achievement using swedish data i find that smaller classes generate higher achievement a comparison with the results from applying the same data to the widely used value added model is also made

long term effects of class size this article evaluates the long term effects of class size in primary school we use rich data from sweden and exploit variation in class size created by a maximum class size rule smaller classes in the last three years of primary school age 10 to 13 are beneficial for cognitive and noncognitive ability at age 13 and improve achievement at age 16 most important we find that smaller classes have positive effects on completed education wages and earnings at age 27 to 42 the estimated wage effect is large enough to pass a cost benefit test

structural changes and sustainability a selected review of the empirical evidence abstract the paper offers a review of selected topics in the empirical literature on structural change and sustainability we focus on aspects of structural change that directly affect emissions and energy intensity changes of the sectoral composition of economies trade and international fragmentation of production technological change and innovation and demand we identify several empirical facts first only a few countries have experienced a decoupling between growth and emissions due to proportionately faster growth rather than greater energy efficiency second the long term shift from manufacturing to services has not led in all cases to the de materialisation of economies and a lower environmental burden exploitation of energy efficiency increases depends on the ability of the service sectors to incorporate technical changes to reduce energy intensity third global trade and energy and emissions intensity trends support the pollution haven hypothesis which predicts displacement of the environmental burden from developed to emerging countries the pursuit by developing countries of a long term strategy of trading jobs for emissions is likely to exacerbate the asymmetry related to emissions intensities between developed and less developed economies the review should inform debate on environmental policy within the broader context of innovation and development policies

representative evidence on lying costs abstract a central assumption in economics is that people misreport their private information if this is to their material benefit several recent models depart from this assumption and posit that some people do not lie or at least do not lie maximally these models invoke many different underlying motives including intrinsic lying costs altruism efficiency concerns or conditional cooperation to provide an empirically validated microfoundation for these models it is crucial to understand the relevance of the different potential motives we measure the extent of lying costs among a representative sample of the german population by calling them at home in our setup participants have a clear monetary incentive to misreport misreporting cannot be detected reputational concerns are negligible and altruism efficiency concerns or conditional cooperation cannot play a role yet we find that aggregate reporting behavior is close to the expected truthful distribution suggesting that lying costs are large and widespread further lab experiments show that this result is not driven by the mode of communication

corruption in public service delivery an experimental analysis abstract to improve our understanding of corruption in service delivery we use a newly designed game that allows us to investigate the effects of the institutional environment on the behavior of service providers and their monitors we focus on the effect of four different factors whether monitors are accountable to the service recipients the degree of observability of service providers effort the providers wages and the providers professional norms in accordance with theory we find that service providers perform better when monitors are elected by service recipients and when their effort is more easily observed however there is only weak evidence that service providers perform better when paid more monitors are more vigilant when elected and when service providers are paid more playing the game with ethiopian nursing students we also find that those with greater exposure to the ethiopian public health sector perform less well either as provider or as monitor when the experiment is framed as a public health provision scenario suggesting that experience and norms affect behavior

account for sector heterogeneity in china s energy consumption sector price indices vs gdp deflator abstract a common practice in decomposition analyses is to deflate output indicators to purge the impact of inflation by using a general deflator this practice fails to account for sector heterogeneity and can be hazardous although the general identified patterns are largely correct the calculated magnitudes can be misleading or even wrongly signed instead it is strongly recommended that sector heterogeneity is accounted for by using individual sector price indices for all relevant sectors instead of one general gdp deflator this paper analyzes this advanced decomposition using chinese data and compares to the usual method of using only one deflator it is found that while most differences are only of quantitative quality some show even a qualitative difference furthermore the rising energy intensity in the early 2000s which has been discussed by previous studies vanishes completely

useful work and information as drivers of economic growth abstract a semi empirical endogenous growth theory was proposed by the authors in 2005 it is based on a model of the economy as a two stage materials energy processing system growth is simulated by a two parameter production function with two traditional factors labor and capital and a non traditional factor namely useful work the non traditional factor is calculated from primary energy inputs multiplied by an empirically estimated average energy conversion efficiency which is a function of changing technology over time this model explains past us growth from 1900 through 1973 74 with satisfactory accuracy but it slightly underestimates subsequent growth i e it leaves a small unexplained but increasing residual for the period after 1975 however by subdividing capital stock into traditional and ict components we are able to extend the theory to explain us economic growth accurately in this paper we also extend the results to japan the revised production function has only three independent parameters the new model also has implications for future economic growth energy and environmental policy that differ significantly from the traditional growth theory these implications are discussed briefly

the impacts of china s household consumption expenditure patterns on energy demand and carbon emissions towards 2050 abstract this paper explores how china s household consumption patterns over the period 2005 2050 influence the total energy demand and carbon dioxide co2 emissions in two baseline scenarios and how it influences carbon prices as well as the economic cost in the corresponding carbon mitigation scenarios to this end we first put forward two possible household consumption expenditure patterns up to 2050 using the working leser model taking into account total expenditure increase and urbanization for comparison both expenditure patterns are then incorporated in a hybrid recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model the results reveal that as income level increases in the coming decades the direct and indirect household energy requirements and co2 emissions would rise drastically when household expenditure shifts from material products and transport to service oriented goods around 21 000 mtce 1 of primary energy and 45 billion tons of co2 emissions would be saved over the 45 year period from 2005 to 2050 moreover carbon prices in the dematerialized mitigation scenario would fall by 13 in 2050 thus reducing the economic cost

economic development and the demand for energy a historical perspective on the next 20 years abstract this paper draws on evidence from the last two centuries of industrialisation analysing the evolution of energy intensity over the long and short run we argue that the increased specialisation of the fuel mix coupled with accelerating convergence of both the sectoral and technological composition of economies will continue to improve energy intensity of economic output and to reduce the reliance on any single energy resource this analysis suggests that even high growth in per capita income over the next 20 years need not be constrained by resource availability

energy security analysis the case of constrained oil supply for ireland abstract ireland imports 88 of its energy requirements oil makes up 59 of total final energy consumption tfc import dependency low fuel diversity and volatile prices leave ireland vulnerable in terms of energy security this work models energy security scenarios for ireland using long term macroeconomic forecasts to 2050 with oil production and price scenarios from the international monetary fund within the irish times energy systems model the analysis focuses on developing a least cost optimum energy system for ireland under scenarios of constrained oil supply 0 8 annual import growth and 2 annual import decline and subsequent sustained long term price shocks to oil and gas imports the results point to gas becoming the dominant fuel source for ireland at 54 total final energy consumption in 2020 supplanting oil from reference projections of 57 to 10 8 tfc in 2012 the cost of net oil imports stood at 3 6 billion 2 26 gdp the modelled high oil and gas price scenarios show an additional annual cost in comparison to a reference of between 2 9bn and 7 5bn by 2020 1 9 4 9 of gdp to choose to develop a least cost energy system investment and ramifications for energy security are discussed

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

energy return on energy invested eroi oil prices and energy transitions very little work has been done so far to model test and understand the relationship between oil prices and eroi over time this paper investigates whether a declining eroi is associated with an increasing oil price and speculates on the implications of these results on oil policy a model of the relationship between eroi and oil market prices was developed using basic economic and physical assumptions and non linear least squares regression models to correlate oil production price with eroi using available data from 1954 1996 the model accurately reflects historical oil prices 1954 1996 and it correlates well with historical oil prices 1997 2010 if a linear extrapolation of eroi decline is assumed as eroi declines below 10 highly non linear oil price movements are observed increasing physical oil scarcity is already providing market signals that would stimulate a transition away from oil toward alternative energy sources but price signals of physical oil scarcity are not sufficient to guarantee smooth transitions to alternative fuel sources especially when there is insufficient oil extraction technology development a declining mark up ratio a non linear eroi cost of production relationship and a non linear eroi price relationship

embodied pollution in trade estimating the environmental load displacement of industrialised countries abstract the present paper sets out to aid in the development of environmental load displacement indicators developing the notion of the environmental memory of physical flows we estimated embodied pollution in trade of 18 industrialized countries with a the rest of the world and b developing countries from 1976 to 1994 we found that in the last years of analysis total imports of japan usa and western europe have entailed in general larger air pollutant emissions than local exports the balance of embodied emissions in trade beet seems to follow an inverted u shape across time in japan and western europe and an n shape in the us in the period of analysis japanese and european environmental terms of trade with developing countries improved from the japanese and european point of view whereas american environmental terms of trade with developing countries deteriorated over time although there is no statistical trend between income and embodied emissions in imports in a cross section analysis there does seem to be a positive relationship between both variables at a national level the results suggest that despite many shortcomings this type of assessment may shed useful insights on the international aspects of sustainable development

the carbon curse are fuel rich countries doomed to high co2 intensities the carbon curse is a new theory related to but distinct from the resource curse it states that fossil fuel rich countries tend to follow more carbon intensive developmental pathways than if they were fossil fuel poor countries due to a hitherto unappreciated syndrome of causal mechanisms first fuel rich countries emit significant amounts of co2 in the extraction of fuel and through associated wasteful practices such as gas flaring second easy access to domestic fuel in such countries leads to crowding out effects for their energy mix and economic structure for example abundant oil may displace other fuels from the energy mix and lead to the dutch disease third fuel abundance weakens the economic incentive to invest in energy efficiency fourth governments in fuel rich countries are under considerable pressure to grant uneconomic fuel consumption subsidies which further augments the carbon intensity of their economic output due to the combined effect of these causal mechanisms it is genuinely difficult for fuel rich countries to evade carbon intensive developmental pathways and yet there are remarkable exceptions like norway such positive outliers indicate that the carbon curse is not destiny when appropriate policies are adopted

the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory part a concept causes and the co2 emissions case abstract the main purpose of this study is to capture the main features of the environmental kuznets curve ekc concept according to the ekc theory the process of economic growth is expected eventually to limit the environmental degradation created in the early stages of development the ekc concept leads many researchers from the early 1990s to assume that each economy should focus on its growth and any environmental problems will be eventually eliminated by the process of economic growth several studies attempt to test empirically the ekc hypothesis using data on many countries and examining various types of environmental degradation while other studies examine the underlying factors that may drive such a relationship this article reviews the evolution of the ekc concept and the possible causes of an ekc pattern like the distribution of income the international trade pollution haven hypothesis structural changes technical progress and improvements in energy efficiency institutions and governance and consumer preferences as co2 emissions are a pollutant with global effects several studies deal with the possible ekc pattern for co2 emissions and these studies are discussed separately the various critiques on the ekc concept are reviewed in the second article of this work

assessing the date of the global oil peak the need to use 2p reserves combining geological knowledge with proved plus probable 2p oil discovery data indicates that over 60 countries are now past their resource limited peak of conventional oil production the data show that the global peak of conventional oil production is close many analysts who rely only on proved 1p oil reserves data draw a very different conclusion but proved oil reserves contain no information about the true size of discoveries being variously under reported over reported and not reported reliance on 1p data has led to a number of misconceptions including the notion that past oil forecasts were incorrect that oil reserves grow very significantly due to technology gain and that the global supply of oil is ensured provided sufficient investment is forthcoming to turn resources into reserves these misconceptions have been widely held including within academia governments some oil companies and organisations such as the iea in addition to conventional oil the world contains large quantities of non conventional oil most current detailed models show that past the conventional oil peak the non conventional oils are unlikely to come on stream fast enough to offset conventional s decline to determine the extent of future oil supply constraints calculations are required to determine fundamental rate limits for the production of non conventional oils as well as oil from gas coal and biomass and of oil substitution such assessments will need to examine technological readiness and lead times as well as rate constraints on investment pollution and net energy return

the end of cheap oil bottom up economic and geologic modeling of aggregate oil production curves there is a lively debate between concerned and unconcerned analysts regarding the future availability and affordability of oil we critically examine two interrelated and seemingly plausible ar

long term impacts of class size in compulsory school how does class size in compulsory school affect people s long run education and earnings we use maximum class size rules and norwegian administrative registries allowing us to observe outcomes up to age 48 we do not find any indication of beneficial effects of class size reduction in compulsory school for a one person reduction in class size we reject effects on income as small as 0 12 percent in primary school and 0 15 percent in middle school population differences in parental background school size or competitive pressure do not appear to reconcile our findings with previous studies

energy innovations ghg emissions nexus fresh empirical evidence from oecd countries abstract this study explores the impact of improvements in energy research development erd on greenhouse gas ghg emissions using environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for 28 oecd countries over the period of 1990 2014 in doing so we have employed a panel data where public budget in energy research development and demonstration erd d has transformed into a finite inverted v lag distribution model developed by de leeuw 1962 this model considers that energy innovation accumulates in time and presents empirical evidence how energy innovation contributes in reducing energy intensity and environmental pollution as well our results indicate that energy innovation measures require lapses of time to reach their full effect i e innovation applied to measures for environmental correction does not reach its whole effect immediately requiring instead a certain amount of time to pass innovation policies have recommended for improving environmental quality

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

exposing corrupt politicians the effects of brazil s publicly released audits on electoral outcomes author s finan frederico ferraz claudio abstract this paper examines the extent to which access to information enhances political accountability based upon the results of brazil s recent anti corruption program that randomly audits municipal expenditures of federally transferred funds it estimates the effect of the disclosure of local government corruption practices upon the re election success of incumbent mayors in municipal elections comparing municipalities which were randomly audited before the elections with those audited after the analysis shows that the disclosure of audit results had a significant impact on the re election rates of mayors found to be corrupt for a one standard deviation increase in reported corruption the audit policy reduced the incumbent s likelihood of re election by 25 percent this effect is more pronounced in municipalities where radio stations are present and higher levels of corruption are identified these findings highlight the value of information and the role of the media in reducing informational asymmetries in the political process thus enabling voters to not only hold corrupt politicians accountable but also to reward non corrupt politicians

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

the failure of input based schooling policies in an effort to improve the quality of schools governments around the world have dramatically increased the resources devoted to them by concentrating on inputs and ignoring the incentives within schools the resources have yielded little in the way of general improvement in student achievement this paper provides a review of the us and international evidence on the effectiveness of such input policies it then contrasts the impact of resources with that of variations in teacher quality that are not systematically related to school resources finally alternative performance incentive policies are described

a blessing in disguise the implications of high global oil prices for the north american market abstract we examine the implications of increased unconventional crude oil production in north america this production increase has been made possible by the existence of alternative oil recovery technologies and persistently elevated oil prices that make these technologies commercially viable we first discuss the factors that have enabled the united states to expand production so rapidly and the glut of oil inventory that has accumulated in the midwest as a result of logistical challenges and export restrictions next we assess the extent to which the increase in u s domestic production will affect global supply conditions and whether the u s experience can be repeated in other countries with unconventional oil sources the evidence suggests that even in the best case scenario the increase in u s oil production is unlikely to have a large effect on the global oil market s demand supply balance so its effect on the price of oil is expected to be limited furthermore the united states enjoys unique infrastructural and technological advantages that make it unlikely that rapid increases in unconventional production can be achieved elsewhere

experimental estimates of education production functions this paper analyzes data on 11 600 students and their teachers who were randomly assigned to different size classes from kindergarten through third grade statistical methods are used to adjust for nonrandom attrition and transitions between classes the main conclusions are 1 on average performance on standardized tests increases by four percentile points the first year students attend small classes 2 the test score advantage of students in small classes expands by about one percentile point per year in subsequent years 3 teacher aides and measured teacher characteristics have little effect 4 class size has a larger effect for minority students and those on free lunch 5 hawthorne effects were unlikely

the role of china in mitigating climate change abstract we explore short and long term implications of several energy scenarios of china s role in efforts to mitigate global climate risk the focus is on the impacts on china s energy system and gdp growth and on global climate indicators such as greenhouse gas concentrations radiative forcing and global temperature change we employ the mit integrated global system model igsm framework and its economic component the mit emissions prediction and policy analysis eppa model we demonstrate that china s commitments for 2020 made during the un climate meetings in copenhagen and cancun are reachable at very modest cost alternative actions by china in the next 10 years do not yield any substantial changes in ghg concentrations or temperature due to inertia in the climate system consideration of the longer term climate implications of the copenhagen type of commitments requires an assumption about policies after 2020 and the effects differ drastically depending on the case meeting a 2 c target is problematic unless radical ghg emission reductions are assumed in the short term participation or non participation of china in global climate architecture can lead by 2100 to a 200 280 ppm difference in atmospheric ghg concentration which can result in a 1 1 c to 1 3 c change by the end of the century we conclude that it is essential to engage china in ghg emissions mitigation policies and alternative actions lead to substantial differences in climate energy and economic outcomes potential channels for engaging china can be air pollution control and involvement in sectoral trading with established emissions trading systems in developed countries

the modest environmental relief resulting from the transition to the service economy a service transition is supposed to lead to the decline of energy intensity energy gdp we argue that this interpretation is overly optimistic because the shift to a service economy is somewhat of an illusion in terms of real production several recent studies of structural effects on energy intensity have made the error of using sector shares in current prices combined with gdp in constant prices which is inconsistent and ignores the different behaviour of prices across sectors we use the more correct method of sector shares in constant prices and make an attempt to single out the effect from the real service transition by using two complementary methods shift share analyses in current and constant prices and logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi for 10 developed and 3 emerging economies a service transition is rather modest in real terms the major driver of the decline in energy intensity rests within the manufacturing sector meanwhile the transition to a service sector had a small downward impact on energy intensity in 7 of the developed countries and no impact in the others for emerging economies like brazil mexico and india it is the residential sector that drives energy intensity down because of the declining share of this sector as the formal economy grows and as a consequence of switching to more efficient fuels less

global oil depletion a review of the evidence within the polarised and contentious debate over future oil supply a growing number of commentators are forecasting a near term peak and subsequent decline in production but although liquid fuels form the foundation of modern industrial economies the growing debate on peak oil has relatively little influence on energy and climate policy with this in mind the uk energy research centre ukerc has conducted an independent thorough and systematic review of the evidence with the aim of establishing the current state of knowledge identifying key uncertainties and improving consensus the study focuses upon the physical depletion of conventional oil in the period to 2030 and includes an in depth literature review analysis of industry databases and a detailed comparison of global supply forecasts this communication summarises the main findings of the ukerc study a key conclusion is that a peak of conventional oil production before 2030 appears likely and there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020

technical progress structural change and the environmental kuznets curve abstract the paper shows that under reasonable assumptions about technical progress a positive sustainable growth rate fails to exist the argument is that a growing part of income has to be spent for continuing technical progress in order to compensate the pollution effects of growth hence in the long run either the sustainability condition will be violated or the growth rate must decline to zero furthermore in finite time the level of wealth will decrease despite growing income and a constant pollution level thus further growth is no longer reasonable similar arguments also hold for the environmental effects of structural change favoring less pollution intensive economic activities an evolutionary change of goods and production technology may shift the limits of growth and is hence a prerequisite for a long run ekc

class size teacher hours and educational attainment we employ a regression discontinuity design to identify effects on educational attainment after compulsory school of class size and the number of pupils per weekly teacher hour using administrative rules as instruments we use danish administrative panel data average class size is 20 about the same as in the us and most european countries restricting the sample to observations close to the enrolment discontinuity points where the administrative rules have greatest predictive power instrumental variables estimates are consistently negative estimates from the preferred specification are marginally significant and indicate modest effects in line with earlier studies estimates for subgroups are less precise but they indicate larger effects for pupils from less advantaged backgrounds

economic growth trade and energy implications for the environmental kuznets curve abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis asserts that pollution follows an inverted u path with respect to economic growth the ekc has been explained in terms of structural changes in the composition of economic output and increased environmental regulation at higher income levels while some authors have incorporated the impact of trade policy orientation on the ekc the impact of the actual movement between countries of goods that embody pollution has not been considered this paper attempts to econometrically quantify the effect using pooled cross country and time series data the ekc hypothesis is examined with respect to commercial energy consumption the source of many serious environmental problems it was found that while both industrializing and industrialized countries have added to their energy requirements by exporting manufactured goods the growth has been substantially higher in the former at the same time industrialized countries have been able to reduce their energy requirements by importing manufactured goods exports of manufactured goods by industrialized countries has thus been an important factor in generating the upward sloping portion of the ekc and imports by industrialized countries have contributed to the downward slope

institutions and the resource curse countries rich in natural resources constitute both growth losers and growth winners we claim that the main reason for these diverging experiences is differences in the quality of institutions more natural resources push aggregate income down when institutions are grabber friendly while more resources raise income when institutions are producer friendly we test this theory building on sachs and warner s influential works on the resource curse our main hypothesis that institutions are decisive for the resource curse is confirmed our results contrast the claims of sachs and warner that institutions do not play a role

environmental innovations in services manufacturing services integration and policy transmissions abstract this paper investigates the relevant factors behind the almost unexplored realm of environmental innovation in services using a dataset of 8161 italian service firms specifically we test whether manufacturing services integration matters for environmental innovations in addition taking account for the heterogeneity of the service industries we analyse whether environmental policies for manufacturing transmit induced innovation effects to services our findings show that i the drivers of environmental innovations related to carbon abatement and energy efficiency differ across industries and ii cooperation training environmental management systems and public funding play key roles in these processes the integration of services and manufacturing through push and pull effects and the environmental policy transmission effect from manufacturing to services generally do not seem to have a positive impact on the diffusion of environmental innovations

the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory part b critical issues according to the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory the process of economic growth is expected to limit the environmental degradation created in the early stages of development the first article of this study reviews the empirical studies examining various factors other than income that may lead to an ekc pattern the current article reviews in the first part the major critiques on the ekc speculation which relate to the following issues the normal distribution of world income the feedback from environmental degradation to economic growth the characteristics of the pollutant in question various econometric issues the evolution of consumption when income rises and the assumption about a common developmental pattern in all countries the second part discusses additional matters reported indirectly in the literature and or must be further examined there are doubts whether the gdp series captures the transition of production to the three productive sectors in empirical estimations and whether services are less polluting compared to industry activities finally the original kuznets theory which laid the groundwork for the ekc concept does not seem to solve income inequality problems

hroot hamburg registration and organization online tool abstract hroot hamburg registration and organization online tool is a web based software designed for managing participants of economic experiments this package provides important features to assure a randomized invitation process based on a filtered pre specified subject pool and a complete documentation of the selection procedure for potential participants of an experiment

future oil supply the changing stance of the international energy agency the iea was established in 1974 with a mandate to promote energy security amongst its members namely the states of the oecd and to advise those members on sound energy policy its recent forecasts of the medium and long term prospects for oil supply however have wavered alternating from optimistic to pessimistic and back again for policy makers such inconsistency is difficult to deal with firstly we examine whether the changing outlooks seen in iea forecasts made between 2007 and 2010 truly reflect a demonstrable underlying change in the known facts and we can find no such factual changes reported by the iea secondly we examine whether the serious criticisms of the iea s 2008 forecast made by other analysts have yet been addressed and we conclude that they have not thirdly we consider the possible effects of the current economic downturn upon the iea s assumptions and upon future oil supply we conclude that all the forecasts made by the iea appear to be too optimistic throughout this period

the swing voter s curse in the laboratory this paper reports the first laboratory study of the swing voter s curse and provides insights on the larger theoretical and empirical literature on pivotal voter models our experiment controls for different information levels of voters as well as the size of the electorate the distribution of preferences and other theoretically relevant parameters the design varies the share of partisan voters and the prior belief about a payoff relevant state of the world our results support the equilibrium predictions of the feddersen pesendorfer model and clearly reject the notion that voters in the laboratory use naive decision theoretic strategies the voters act as if they are aware of the swing voter s curse and adjust their behavior to compensate while the compensation is not complete and there is some heterogeneity in individual behavior we find that aggregate outcomes such as efficiency turnout and margin of victory closely track the theoretical predictions

energy requirements of consumption urban form climatic and socio economic factors rebounds and their policy implications household consumption requires energy to be used at all stages of the economic process thereby directly and indirectly leading to environmental impacts across the entire production chain the levels structure and determinants of energy requirements of household consumption therefore constitute an important avenue of research incorporating the full upstream requirements into the analysis helps to avoid simplistic conclusions which would actually only imply shifts between consumption categories without taking the economy wide effects into account this paper presents the investigation of the direct and indirect primary energy requirements of australian households contrasting urban suburban and rural consumption patterns as well as inter and intra regional levels of inequality in energy requirements furthermore the spatial and socio economic drivers of energy consumption for different categories of energy requirements are identified and quantified conclusions regarding the relationships between energy requirements household characteristics urban form and urbanization processes are drawn and the respective policy implications are explored

the convergence of u s state level energy intensity abstract this study extends a neoclassical growth model to include the accumulation of physical capital and energy consumption within a panel of fifty states plus the district of columbia in the u s the theoretical model allows us to examine the implications for convergence in economic growth and energy intensity from the theoretical model we formulate an empirical approach using a dynamic panel model that is estimated using a general method of moments framework to test the conditional rates of convergence the empirical results indicate convergence in energy intensity and our estimates accurately predict both the growth in and convergence of energy intensity across our entire sample consistent with other findings in the literature our results imply that energy use over the past four decades plays a small and positive role in state level per capita economic growth and convergence based on these results we discuss policy implications for state level income growth and energy consumption

carbon curse in developed countries among the ten countries with the highest carbon intensity six are natural resource rich countries this suggests the existence of a carbon curse resource rich countries would tend to follow more carbon intensive development paths than resource poor countries we investigate this assumption empirically using a panel data method covering 29 countries oecd and bric and seven sectors over the 1995 2009 period first at the macroeconomic level we find that the relationship between national co 2 emissions per unit of gdp and abundance in natural resources is u shaped the carbon curse appears only after the turning point second we measure the impact of resource abundance on sectoral emissions for two groups of countries based on their resource endowments we show that a country rich in natural resources pollutes relatively more in resource related sectors as well as all other sectors our results suggest that the debate on climate change mitigation should rather focus on a comparison of resource rich countries versus resource poor countries than the developed country versus developing country debate

generics and new goods in pharmaceutical price indexes drug prices and their rate of inflation are a major focus of current policy debates on u s health care in this paper we show that where patent expiration and generic entry are significant as they are for many important classes of drugs movements in the official price indexes may be poor indicators of the actual prices paid and the resulting changes in consumer welfare when a drug goes off patent those consumers who regard the branded and generic versions as more or less perfect substitutes experience a substantial price decline and concomitant welfare gain which the current methods used by the statistical agencies fail to capture we suggest a number of alternative ways of proceeding although our computations are based on a limited number of cases they imply that the overall rate of inflation in drug prices may be quite seriously overstated while generic pharmaceuticals are the topic of our calculations the problem discussed is also of wider importance generic drugs are a special and possibly easy case

incentives and cheating abstract we study how cheating behavior is affected by incentives after replicating the finding in the cheating game literature that lying does not increase with incentives we show that this insensitivity is not a characteristic of the intrinsic lying cost but rather a result of concern about being exposed as a liar in a modified mind game in which this concern is eliminated we find that people lie more and in particular lie more when the incentives to do so increase thus our results show that for many participants the decision to lie follows a simple cost benefit analysis they compare the intrinsic cost of lying with the incentives to lie once the incentives are higher than the cost they switch from telling the truth to lying

long term diversification paths and energy transitions in europe the concentration of the energy mixes of eight european countries is measured latecomers historically enjoyed lower levels of concentration in their energy mixes early comers followed an inverted u path of concentration latecomers a u path a time effect and size effect explains the different patterns small energy consuming countries will be able to do faster transitions

alternatives to conventional crude oil when how quickly and market driven abstract we examine the effect of uncertainty concerning remaining supplies of conventional crude oil and its production path on the date alternative fuels will be needed the quantity of alternative fuels needed and how this uncertainty affects firms willingness to provide alternatives in a timely fashion despite large uncertainties about the quantity of oil that remains and its production path the start date for replacements is likely to fall within a twenty two year period that is narrower and earlier than previous estimates the twenty two year window represents considerable uncertainty about the date of the peak and this uncertainty creates an asymmetry in the strategy that maximizes the welfare of firms relative to total social welfare which works against the market s ability to generate a smooth transition from oil to alternative fuels the timeliness of this transition is critical the production paths generated here suggest that 10 million barrels per day or more of alternative fuels will be needed within a decade of the peak in production of conventional crude oil

democratic accountability and retrospective voting a laboratory experiment understanding the incentives of politicians requires understanding the nature of voting behavior i conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate whether voters focus on the problem of electoral selection or if they instead focus on electoral sanctioning if voters are forward looking but uncertain about politicians unobservable characteristics then it is rational to focus on selection but doing so undermines democratic accountability because selection renders sanctioning an empty threat in contrast to rational choice predictions the experimental results indicate a strong behavioral tendency to use a retrospective voting rule additional experiments support the interpretation that retrospective voting is a simple heuristic that voters use to cope with a cognitively difficult inference and decision problem and in addition suggest that voters have a preference for accountability the results pose a challenge for theories of electoral selection and voter learning and suggest new interpretations of empirical studies of economic and retrospective voting

effective climate energy solutions escape routes and peak oil abstract many well intended climate energy strategies are ineffective in the absence of serious environmental regulation this holds among others for direct support of clean energy voluntary energy conservation technical standards on a limited set of products unilateral stringent carbon pricing and awaiting peak oil as a climate strategy all of these suffer from escape routes that indirectly increase co2 emissions and thus make the original strategy ineffective on the other hand environmental regulation alone may lead to a myopia bias stimulating early dominance of cost effective technologies and a focus on incremental innovations associated with such technologies rather than on radical innovations although adopting a partial viewpoint keeps the analysis simple we urgently need a more inclusive systems perspective on climate solutions this will allow the formulation of an effective climate policy package that addresses the various escape routes

an ekc pattern in historical perspective carbon dioxide emissions technology fuel prices and growth in sweden 1870 1997 the environmental kuznets curve ekc has been subject to research and debate since the early 1990s this articleexamines the inverted u trajectory of swedish co2 emissions during an extended time

long term substitutability between environmental and man made goods abstract substitutability between environmental and man made goods plays a major role in the sustainability debate the notion of substitutability covers a continuous spectrum with perfect substitutability at one end and poor substitutability at the other in this paper it is shown that if economic growth sustains a sharp distinction emerges between perfect and poor substitutability without any intermediate interpretation of substitutability if poor substitutability prevails environmental resources will eventually constitute the major part of total consumption value we relate our results to baumol s disease and assess the implications of this phenomenon for the compensation of environmental losses

changes in the united kingdom s natural relations in terms of society s metabolism and land use from 1850 to the present day abstract in this paper we present our understanding of how society and nature have interacted in the course of history in terms of society s metabolic interchange with the biophysical environment presenting a theoretical model we begin by focusing on the interface between society and nature society s natural relations as conceptualized by the idea of metabolism which draws upon marxist theory complemented by a systems approach the concept of metabolism portrays society as a system which has to establish and maintain a permanent throughput of energy and matter to produce and maintain society s material components the amount of resource flow is operationalized by using material and energy flow accounting methods empirically these methods are applied to the uk s economy in a time series approach from 1850 to the present day we discuss different aggregates of inputs such as domestic material extraction foreign trade of materials energy input and additionally give an account of land use change obviously these changing natural relations are linked to socio economic activities hence we make a first attempt to discuss different periods of socio economic development by drawing from a regulation approach and try to link them to physical indicators such as direct material and energy input and domestic material consumption dmc thereby we hope to contribute to a historical understanding of socio economically driven environmental change within the framework of ecological economics

the effects of class size on student achievement new evidence from population variation abstract i identify the effects of class size on student achievement using longitudinal variation in the population associated with each grade in 649 elementary schools i use variation in class size driven by idiosyncratic variation in the population i also use discrete jumps in class size that occur when a small change in enrollment triggers a maximum or minimum class size rule the estimates indicate that class size does not have a statistically significant effect on student achievement i rule out even modest effects 2 to 4 percent of a standard deviation in scores for a 10 percent reduction in class size

factors behind the environmental kuznets curve a decomposition of the changes in air pollution the environmental kuznets curve theory suggeststhat economic growth in the long run may reduceenvironmental problems in this article we usea decomposition analysis to isolate eightdifferent factors in order to investigate theorigins of changes in emissions to air over theperiod from 1980 to 1996 among these factorsare economic growth changes in the relativesize of production sectors and changes in theuse of energy given constant emissions perproduced unit economic growth alone would havecontributed to a significant increase in theemissions this potential degradation of theenvironment has been counteracted by first ofall more efficient use of energy and abatementtechnologies in addition the substitution ofcleaner for polluting energy types and othertechnological progressions and politicalactions have reduced the growth in emissions consequently the growth in all emissions hasbeen significantly lower than economic growth and negative for some pollutants the results indicate that policymakers mayreduce emissions considerably through creatingincentives for lower energy use andsubstitutions of environmental friendly forenvironmental damaging energy types inaddition to support environmental friendlyresearch or to conduct direct emission reducingactions such as abatement requirements orbanning of environmental damaging products this is particularly relevant to countries andsectors with relatively high energy intensitiesand low pollution abatement

identifying voter preferences the trade off between honesty and competence abstract we set up two experiments to measure how voters trade off the competence and honesty of candidates in elections we measure the competence and honesty of candidates by asking them to work on a real effort task and decide whether to report truthfully or not the value of their work in the first stage the earnings are the result of the competence and honesty of one randomly selected participant in the second stage subjects can select who will determine their earnings based on the first stage s competence and honesty of the alternative candidates we find that most voters tend to have a bias towards caring about honesty even when this results in lower payoffs

reference points and effort provision a key open question for theories of reference dependent preferences is what determines the reference point one candidate is expectations what people expect could affect how they feel about what actually occurs in a real effort experiment we manipulate the rational expectations of subjects and check whether this manipulation influences their effort provision we find that effort provision is significantly different between treatments in the way predicted by models of expectation based reference dependent preferences if expectations are high subjects work longer and earn more money than if expectations are low

quasi experimental estimates of the effect of class size on achievement in norway using a comprehensive norwegian administrative database we exploit independent quasi experimental methods to estimate the effect of class size on student achievement at the end of lower secondary school identification based on maximum class size rules and population variation and variations on these methods give very similar estimates we cannot reject that the class size effect is equal to zero and can rule out effects as small as 1 5 percent of a standard deviation for a one student change in class size during three consecutive years