the effect of income on child development this study presents estimates of the effect of parental income on children s cognitive social and emotional development the effect of current income is small especially when income is treated as endogenous the effect of permanent income is substantially larger but relatively small when compared to the magnitude of recent policy induced changes in income family background characteristics play a more important role than income in determining child outcomes policies that affect family income will have little direct impact on child development unless they result in very large and permanent changes in income

interfuel substitution biomass consumption economic growth and sustainable development evidence from brazil abstract this paper examines the possibilities of substituting the fossil fuels including natural gas coal and oil for biomass consumption in brazil for the period 1980 2015 we used the ridge regression procedure to generate the parameter estimates from a second order taylor series approximation of log linear trans log specification for robustness sake we constructed an index of sustainable development sd as additional regressand alongside the conventional gross domestic product gdp overall the results show strong evidence of substitution possibilities between biomass and the fossil fuels in both the gdp and the sd models indicating that brazil can continue with its growth and sustainability agenda by using more biomass and less fossil fuels the results also show that the sd model gives a more robust output elasticity estimates as it detects the inherent negative effect of some of the fossil fuels on the economy that are not directly observable in the gdp model

household choices and child development the growth in labor market participation among women with young children has raised concerns about the potential negative impact of the mother s absence from home on child outcomes recent data show that mother s time spent with children has declined in the last decade while the indicators of children s cognitive and noncognitive outcomes have worsened the objective of our research is to estimate a model of the cognitive development process of children nested within an otherwise standard model of household life cycle behavior the model generates endogenous dynamic interrelationships between the child quality and employment processes in the household which are found to be consistent with patterns observed in the data the estimated model is used to explore the eects of schooling subsidies and employment restrictions on household welfare and child development

allocative inefficiency and the capital energy controversy abstract the purpose of the paper is to estimate a system of input demands for greek manufacturing deviating from the standard practice of assuming strict cost minimization the study allows for the presence of price distortions and allocative inefficiency in the decision process this assumption affects parameter estimates and estimated elasticities materially and throws new light on the capital energy controversy in greek manufacturing

monetary integration and economic reform recent research in contract theory views ownership as a substitute for complete contracts here this approach is applied to monetary integration countries face a coordination problem conducting monetary policy negative spillovers ensure uncoordinated policy generates too high inflation ex ante policy makers can undertake politically costly economic reform this has a positive spillover because it improves the outcome of the monetary policy game ex post contracting over policy may be possible but it supposed that ex ante contracting over reform and monetary policy is not this paper analyses when monetary union is a good substitute for this inability to commit

energy efficiency and conservation in china s chemical fiber industry abstract china is currently experiencing rapid economic growth as a result of industrialization and urbanization in the next 20 years china s energy demand will increase substantially and energy conservation will become imperative for the country s low carbon economic transformation since 1998 china s chemical fiber production has ranked first in the world in 2011 china s chemical fiber production accounted for about 70 of the world s total output therefore energy saving is important for china s chemical fiber industry and can provide immense benefits and hence the need for thorough and intense research in this paper the co integration method is used to test the relationship between energy consumption and its influencing factors such as gdp energy prices population and r d expenditures the results show that there is a long term relationship between the variables based on this we estimate energy demand and predict the energy saving potential for the industry under different scenarios we apply the monte carlo simulation method to verify the reliability of the prediction scenario analysis is adopted to predict energy demand and energy saving in the industry under different scenarios finally we propose some policy suggestions on energy saving based on the research

estimates of inter fuel substitution possibilities in chinese chemical industry abstract the chemical sector is a key driver of china s remarkable growth record and accounts for about 10 of the country s gdp this has made the industry energy intensive and consequently a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions ghg and other pollutants this study has attempted to investigate the potential for inter fuel substitution between coal oil natural gas and electricity in chinese chemical sector by employing a translog production and cost function ridge regression procedure was adopted to estimate the parameters of the function estimation results show that all energy inputs are substitutes in addition the study produces evidence that the significant role of coal in the chinese chemical fuel mix converges over time albeit slowly these results suggest that price based policies coupled with capital subsidy programs can be adopted to redirect technology use towards cleaner energy sources like electricity and natural gas hence retaining the ability to fuel the chemical sector while also mitigating ghg emissions notwithstanding one must understand that the extent to which substituting electricity for coal will be effective depends on the extent to which coal or oil is used in generating electricity the findings of this study provide general insights and underscore the importance of chinese government policies that focus on installed capacity of renewable electricity energy intensity targets as well as merger of enterprises

inter factor inter fuel substitution carbon intensity and energy related co2 reduction empirical evidence from china carbon dioxide co2 reduction which is the central issue in addressing global warming depends on the extent that clean energy can substitute for co2 emitting coal and non energy factors can substitute for energy factor the purposes of this paper are to empirically investigate inter factor inter fuel substitution in china and to evaluate the determinants of china s energy related carbon intensity as well as mitigation effects of carbon tax considering china s rapid increase in energy consumption and the slow adjustment in substitution the two stage estimation method and the dynamic error correction mechanism are employed in this study the empirical results suggest substitutability among different types of energy sources as well as substitutability among energy labor and capital the magnitude of cross price elasticities indicates that the substitutions are inelastic which limits the scope of the chinese government to implement substitution strategy aiming at energy conservation and environmental management china s carbon intensity declined during 1985 2012 most of which can be attributed to labor substitution and energy price increase however carbon intensive technology being embodied in china s capital investment energy consuming equipment has contributed to the increase in carbon intensity a carbon tax of rmb 50 tonne could reduce 332 9 million tonnes co2 emissions on the basis of 2012 in addition if ignoring the feedback between inter factor inter fuel substitutions co2 mitigation potential would be underestimated

monetary union and labor market reform abstract policy makers incentives to undertake costly labor market reform depend on the international monetary system a regime of noncooperative monetary policy is compared with monetary union we find that noncooperative policy leads to more reform of factors that affect the inflation bias which regime leads to more reform of factors affecting labor market flexibility depends on the size of monetary policy spillovers and the degree of correlation of supply shocks we show that monetary union produces higher expected inflation but a lower variance of inflation welfare can be higher or lower with monetary union

industrial energy substitution during the 1980s in the greek economy abstract factor substitution in greek manufacturing during the 1980s is examined using pooled data in static and dynamic translog expenditure share models inputs are capital labor electricity and non electrical energy liquid solid gas own price elasticities for capital and labor are inelastic but for electricity more elastic 0 90 results indicate substitutability among factors in the short run in the long run electricity and capital are complements as are labor and non electrical energy greek manufacturing is predicted to continue decreased consumption of liquid fuels to the year 2000 continuing the electrification begun in the 1970s

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

structural convergence under reversible and irreversible monetary unification abstract we explore endogenous monetary unification in the context of a model in which a country with serious structural distortions and hence high inflation is admitted into a monetary union once its economic structure has converged sufficiently towards that of the existing participants if unification is reversible so that the new entrant can always be forced to leave the union again later convergence stops for a while after the high inflation country has joined with irreversible unification in contrast temporary divergence occurs and unification will be delayed

perceptual and structural barriers to investing in natural capital economics from an ecological footprint perspective this paper argues that perceptual distortions and prevailing economic rationality far from encouraging investment in natural capital actually accelerate the depletion of natural capital stocks moreover conventional monetary analyses cannot detect the problem this paper therefore makes the case for direct biophysical measurement of relevant stocks and flows and uses for this purpose the ecological footprint concept to develop the argument the paper elaborates the natural capital concept and asserts the need of investing in natural capital to compensate for net losses it shows how the ecological footprint can be used as a biophysical measure for such capital and applies this concept as an analytical tool for examining the barriers to investing in natural capital it picks four issues from a rough taxonomy of barriers and discusses them from an ecological footprint perspective it shows why marginal prices cannot reflect ecological necessities how interregional risk pooling encourages resource liquidation how present terms of trade undermine both local and global ecological stability and how efficiency strategies may actually accelerate resource throughput affirming the necessity of biophysical approaches for exploring the sustainability implications of basic ecological and thermodynamic principles it draws lessons for current development

using latent variable approach to estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the energy rebound effect has been a significant issue in china which is undergoing economic transition since it reflects the effectiveness of energy saving policy relying on improved energy efficiency based on the ipat equation and brookes explanation of the rebound effect this paper develops an alternative estimation model of the rebound effect by using the estimation model and latent variable approach which is achieved through a time varying coefficient state space model we estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the results show that the rebound effect evidently exists in china as a result of the annual average of 39 73 over 1954 2010 before and after the implementation of china s reform and opening up policy in 1978 the rebound effects are 47 24 and 37 32 with a strong fluctuation and a circuitously downward trend respectively indicating that a stable political environment and the development of market economy system facilitate the effectiveness of energy saving policy although the energy saving effect of improving energy efficiency has been partly realised there remains a large energy saving potential in china

the impact of parental income on early schooling transitions a re examination using data over three generations abstract this paper applies new semi parametric techniques to estimate the effects of parental income on the probability of being held back in elementary school in france we use information on grandparents past socioeconomic status and parents education level to separate the parental income effects from the effects of the unmeasured determinants of children s performance at school that are correlated with parental income when considering the probability of being held back in elementary school we find that the effects of parental poverty are much larger than the effects of a child s sex or age age within his her class or of the parents education level our findings suggest that policy decisions that increase income transfers to relatively poor families have a potentially very large impact on children s early performance at school

economic growth and interfactor interfuel substitution in korea this paper investigates the impact of increases in oil consumption and changes in wage rates on the interfactor interfuel substitution in korea a two stage translog cost function is estimated to incorporate the feedback effect between the interfactor and interfuel substitution empirical results show that the substitutability complementarity relationships among factors and fuels exhibit substantially different patterns before and after 1989

modelling household energy expenditures using micro data this paper is concerned with the empirical modeling of domestic demand for energy in the united kingdom at the level of the individual household a two stage budgeting model of household demand for energy conditional on durable ownership is developed at the first stage income is allocated between energy and nonenergy consumption while at the second stage energy expenditure is disaggregated the second stage allocation is assumed to be between gas electricity and a composite good other fuels estimation takes place using a sample of some 50 000 households drawn from the annual u k family expenditure survey for the years 1972 83 a source that has not been fully exploited in the analysis of energy demand to date copyright 1989 by royal economic society

the energy rebound effect in china s light industry a translog cost function approach abstract china is in its industrialization and urbanization development stage which requires strong energy support with the largest population in the world the energy endowment of china is relatively small therefore energy conservation is one of the key tools for china s sustainable development and energy security when making policies for conservation the chinese government needs to deal with rebound effect carefully in 2012 china s light industry consumed 316 million tons of coal equivalents accounting for 9 percent of the country s total energy consumption which is about the total amount of energy consumed by south korea based on the translog cost function the magnitude of rebound effect in china s light industry is estimated for the first time using the dynamic ordinary least squares and seemingly unrelated regression methods considering the asymmetric effects of energy prices on energy consumption the rebound effect is approximately 37 7 and all the inputs are substitutes except for labor and energy the different magnitude of rebound effect between light and heavy industry is discussed and some policy implications are provided for more effective energy conservation allowing for the rebound effect

stock watson dynamic ols dols and error correction modelling approaches to estimating long and short run elasticities in a demand function new evidence and methodological implications from an application to the demand for coal in mainland china in this paper robust elasticity estimates of coal demand for china are derived using annual data 1953 92 in so doing we illustrate the use of a powerful yet practically convenient and recently developed modelling procedure devised by stock and watson known as dynamic ols dols who provide evidence based on monte carlo simulations of this estimator being superior in small samples compared to a number of alternative estimators as well as being able not only to accommodate higher orders of integration but also to account for possible simultaneity within regressors of a potential demand system furthermore cointegration and error correction methods are employed to derive short run price and income elasticities estimated results are quite robust not only in terms of statistical prowess but also in terms of economic intuition and indicate that over the long run both price and income elasticities are close to unity while short run price and income elasticities are less in absolute value than their long run counterparts there seems to be some divergence in short run parameters from a subsample analysis overall results seem to imply that for china coal consumption should remain relatively constant as future modernization strategies for economic development are pursued in addition the study has clear methodological implications for estimating the long and short run elasticities in a demand function in general and in a wide variety of fields in future applied research

an empirical study of direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china transport sector accounts for about 8 of total energy consumption in china and this share will likely increase in the visible future improving energy efficiency has been considered as a major way for reducing transport energy use whereas its effectiveness might be affected by the rebound effect this paper estimates the direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china by using the linear approximation of the almost ideal demand system model and simulation analysis our empirical results reveal the existence of direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china a majority of the expected reduction in transport energy consumption from efficiency improvement could be offset due to the existence of rebound effect we have further investigated the relationship between the magnitude of direct rebound effect and households expenditure it was found that the direct rebound effect for passenger transport tends to decline with the increase of per capita household consumption expenditure

innis lecture universal early childhood interventions what is the evidence base universality is a hallmark of canadian social policy for very young children the evidence base for these policies is small non experimental and offers mixed results in contrast the evidence base for targeted early childhood interventions is largely experimental and offers strong guidance policy makers and advocates often cite the research on targeted programs in support of universal programs although this is problematic for a number of reasons universal programs require a better understanding of the developmental trajectories of more advantaged children evidence from the nlscy suggests there are some potentially important differences in the association of early and later childhood developmental outcomes by family economic resources l universalite est une caracteristique de la politique sociale canadienne pour la petite enfance les resultats sur lesquels on peut construire ces politiques sont minces et non experimentaux et pas toujours coherents d autre part les resultats pour les interventions ciblees sont largement experimentaux et fournissent des directions claires les definisseurs de politiques ainsi que leurs supporteurs citent souvent les resultats de recherches sur les programmes cibles pour articuler leur support pour des programmes universels meme si c est problematique pour diverses raisons les programmes universels reclament une meilleure comprehension des trajectoires de developpement des enfants plus avantages les resultats de l enquete longitudinale nationale sur les enfants et les jeunes suggerent qu il y a des differences potentiellement importantes dans le developpement des enfants de familles qui ont des ressources economiques differentes

turning green into gold a framework for energy performance contracting epc in china s real estate industry abstract there is a growing interest in a sustainable built environment and green technologies are gaining worldwide attention however implementing green technologies usually requires more investment than using traditional technologies and the payback period tends to be very long in china most developers sell their properties and subsequently transfer the ownership to customers hence a crucial problem for promoting green construction is that developers cannot obtain economic profits gold from implementing green technologies meanwhile other stakeholders such as property management companies are also hesitant to adopt green technologies because of the large investment involved and their lack of experience to tackle this problem an energy performance contracting epc based framework is proposed to turn green investment into gold benefit by careful sharing of the risks existed the framework was developed by conducting a focus group meeting with three experienced representatives from developer property management company and energy service company respectively a real life case study which includes both energy efficient system retrofit and new construction is used to estimate the costs and benefits involved to demonstrate and verify the conceptual framework the results show that the proposed framework can support the application of green technologies in both types of projects economic benefits as well as environmental benefits can be gained for the project stakeholders and the whole society

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

china s energy economy technical change factor demand and interfactor interfuel substitution with its rapid economic growth china s primary energy consumption has exceeded domestic energy production since 1994 leading to a substantial expansion in energy imports particularly of oil china s energy demand has an increasingly significant impact on global energy markets in this paper allen partial elasticities of factor and energy substitution and price elasticities of energy demand are calculated for china using a two stage translog cost function approach the results suggest that energy is substitutable with both capital and labor coal is significantly substitutable with electricity and complementary with diesel while gasoline and electricity are substitutable with diesel china s energy intensity is increasing during the study period 1995 2004 and the major driver appears to be due to the increased use of energyintensive technology

empirical estimates of the direct rebound effect a review beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the macroeconomics of social pacts in this paper we analyze macroeconomic interactions between trade unions the central bank and the fiscal policymaker we explicitly model unions concern for public expenditure paving the way for an analysis of the potential gains from cooperation between the fiscal policymaker and the unions i e the so called corporatist or social pacts that have characterized economic policies in a number of european countries in the last few decades we also highlight the profoundly different incentives generated by institutional arrangements such as the maastricht criteria and the stability and growth pact the former has unambiguously induced more efficient outcomes the latter is likely to backfire

socioeconomic status and child health why is the relationship stronger for older children case lubotsky and paxson 2001 show that the well known relationship between socio economic status ses and health exists in childhood and grows more pronounced with age however in cross sectional data it is difficult to distinguish between two possible explanations the first is that low ses children are less able to respond to a given health shock the second is that low ses children experience more shocks we show using panel data on canadian children that 1 the gradient we estimate in the cross section is very similar to that estimated previously using u s children 2 both high and low ses children recover from past health shocks to about the same degree and 3 that the relationship between ses and health grows stronger over time mainly because low ses children receive more negative health shocks in addition we examine the effect of health shocks on math and reading scores we find that health shocks affect test scores and future health in very similar ways our results suggest that public policy aimed at reducing ses related health differentials in children should focus on reducing the incidence of health shocks as well as on reducing disparities in access to palliative care

does parents money matter abstract this paper asks whether parents income per se has a positive impact on children s abilities previous research has established that income is positively correlated across generations this does not prove that parents money matters however since income is presumably correlated with ability this paper estimates the impact of parents income by focusing on income variation due to factors union industry and job loss that arguably represent luck i find that changes in parents income due to luck have a negligible impact on children s human capital for most families although parents money does matter for families whose father has low education

estimating the rebound effect in us manufacturing energy consumption abstract the energy price shocks of the 1970s are usually assumed to have increased the search for new energy saving technologies where eventual gains in energy efficiencies will reduce the real per unit price of energy services and hence the consumption of energy will rise and partially offset the initial reduction in the usage of energy sources this is the rebound effect which is estimated for the us manufacturing sector using time series data applying the dynamic ols method dols when allowing for asymmetric price effects the rebound effect is found to be approximately 24 for the us manufacturing sector

re spending rebound a macro level assessment for oecd countries and emerging economies abstract it is well known that energy conservation can lead to rebound effects that partly offset the original energy savings one particular rebound mechanism is re spending of money savings associated with energy savings on energy intensive goods or services we calculate the average magnitude of this re spending rebound for different fuels and countries and for both energy and carbon co2 emissions we find that emerging economies neglected in past studies typically have larger rebounds than oecd countries since such economies play an increasingly important role in the global economy the re spending rebound is a growing concern the re spending effect is generally larger for gasoline than for natural gas and electricity paradoxically stronger financial incentives to conserve energy tend to increase the rebound this suggests that with climate regulation and peak oil the re spending rebound may become more important we discuss the policy implications of our findings

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

impacts of technological change on factor substitution between energy and other inputs within us agriculture 1950 79 abstract past efforts to estimate elasticities of substitution between inputs both in and out of agriculture have usually made use of a single data set to provide the elasticities between the input pairs and have led to highly conflicting results particularly with respect to the substitution between capital or machinery and energy this study reveals that the elasticity of substitution between a number of input pairs in agriculture can vary by substantial amounts depending on the time period used for the estimation energy in agriculture which was a complement for machinery in the 1950s was a substitute by the 1970s

the new stability and growth pact a first assessment abstract the paper proposes a theoretical model of fiscal policy offering new insights on some of the key policy trade offs involved in the recent reform of the stability and growth pact as suggested by the proponents of the reform greater room for case specific economic judgment in the implementation of the pact may improve welfare in our model these gains occur because the consolidation path implied by the implementation of the pact does not discourage high quality measures in practice however the difficulty to extract true policy intent from budget figures may hinder the qualitative assessment of fiscal policy hence reforming a rules based fiscal framework with a view to enhance its economic rationale would also require closer monitoring a better grasp of the policies underlying the budget and ultimately stricter enforcement in that sense recent reforms are at best unhelpful

reform of refined oil product pricing mechanism and energy rebound effect for passenger transportation in china new huadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program of the energy foundation g 1203 15828 national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013

capital stock labor energy substitution and production efficiency study for china abstract this study estimates the elasticities of substitution for china from 1953 to 2006 by the two level constant elasticity of substitution ces production function with three factor inputs capital stock labor and energy a technological change rate and non constant returns to scale are under considered all possible combinations and two other subdivided periods are carried out respectively and their technological change rates elasticities of substitution and returns to scale are found this study also provides an analysis of production efficiency by using marginal productivity of specific factor input according to the estimated results and distinguishes the marginal productivities deriving from the three different combinations it suggests that the decision makers of china need to consider the effects of different factor inputs on gdp growth

canadian contributions to family economics canadian scholars have made substantial contributions to the relatively new field of family economics these include new models of how men and women match in marriage markets and of how decisions are made in multi person households several were early contributors to the literature on married women s labour supply and labour supply in a family context and helped to develop empirical methods in this area a particular focus has been on the impacts of policy relevant parameters such childcare costs on family labour supply and child well being new work on child development the impact of early life conditions and the processes of intergenerational transmission also highlight the importance of family context in determining economic well being

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

energy conservation in china s light industry sector evidence from inter factor and inter fuel substitution following the impressive economic achievements in the past decades china is faced with energy and environmental challenges to carry out more effective and targeted energy policies the heterogeneities of different industrial sectors are of great importance the energy consumption of china s light industry in 2012 was 316 million tons of coal equivalents which is about the energy consumption of south korea the paper explored the substitution relationships between various input factors and fuel sources and showed that electricity price reform is crucial for energy conservation in china s light industry then the dynamics of energy intensity change is examined by decomposing energy intensity into budget effect substitution effect output effect and technology advance effect the result revealed that the substitution effect between input factors is a key driving force however technology progress seems to contribute very little for future energy policy alternatives promoting the implementation of new conservation technology and electricity price reform may be effective measures

family income and child outcomes in canada a positive relationship between income and child outcomes has been observed in data from numerous countries a key question concerns the extent to which this association represents a causal relationship as opposed to unobserved heterogeneity we use data from the national longitudinal survey of children and youth to implement a series of empirical strategies for estimating the existence and size of the effect of income on three measures of cognition our results indicate that the effect of income on these outcomes may well be positive but that it is likely to be smaller than conventional estimates jel classification i10 revenu des familles et comportement des enfants au canada il existe une relation positive entre le revenu des familles et les comportements des enfants dans les releves statistiques de nombreux pays une question centrale demeure jusqu a quel point est ce que cette correlation represente une relation causale par opposition a du bruit les auteurs utilisent l enquete longitudinale nationale sur les enfants et les jeunes elnej pour mettre en place une serie de strategies empiriques pour calibrer l existence et la taille de l effet de revenu sur trois mesures de cognition les resultats montrent que l effet de revenu sur ces comportements peut fort bien etre positif mais qu il est vraisemblablement plus faible que ce que suggerent les evaluations conventionnelles

dynamic translog and linear logit models a factor demand analysis of interfuel substitution in us industrial energy demand abstract we compare and contrast two popular dynamic flexible functional forms for cost functions the translog and the logit j bus econ stat 8 1990 347 353 using data on us industrial energy demand from 1960 to 1992 which has been analysed by previous studies energy econ 11 1989 89 94 appl econ 21 1989 931 945 j bus econ stat 13 1995 459 465 we show the crucial role played by different dynamic formulations of the translog in this analysis of factor demands with respect to rates of dynamic adjustment and substitution possibilities we conclude that the poor performance of the dynamic translog relative to the dynamic logit cannot be explained solely by dynamic model mis specification or the inclusion of price unresponsive non energy fuel use data our most robust empirical result is that coal and oil are substitutes

capital energy substitution evidence from a panel of irish manufacturing firms abstract we use a translog cost function to model production in the irish manufacturing sector over the period from 1991 to 2009 we estimate both own and cross price elasticities and morishima elasticities of substitution between capital labour materials and energy we find that capital and energy are substitutes in the production process across all firms we find that a 1 rise in the price of energy is associated with an increase of 0 04 in the demand for capital the morishima elasticities which reflect the technological substitution potential indicate that a 1 increase in the price of energy causes the capital energy input ratio to increase by 1 5 the demand for capital in energy intensive firms is more responsive to increases in energy prices while it is less responsive in foreign owned firms we also observe a sharp decline in firms responsiveness in the first half of the sample period

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

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

asymmetric substitutability between energy and capital evidence from the manufacturing sectors in 10 oecd countries abstract this paper investigates the substitutability between energy and capital in the manufacturing sectors of ten oecd countries since 1980 by applying a cost function approach that has been widely used to analyze industrial energy demand first we attempt to determine the source of the disagreement in the literature on the substitutability between energy and capital and reach a conclusion regarding the substitutability between energy and capital dividing energy and capital into sub inputs we analyze their substitutability the empirical results indicate that fuel tends to complement capital in most countries whereas electricity and capital are substitutes thus this study confirms that heterogeneity in energy sources is a primary component of the systematic variation in the substitutability between energy and capital second we examine asymmetric substitutability between energy and capital by estimating the morishima elasticity of substitution the estimates of the morishima elasticity of substitution demonstrate that the substitution of energy for capital has dominated the substitution of capital for energy this asymmetric substitutability is natural from the producer perspective because capital costs are much greater than energy costs in most countries these results imply that the adoption of energy saving technologies has not been induced in response to increased energy prices

free riding convergence and two speed monetary unification in europe this paper shows that two speed monetary unification carries a danger low inflation countries in europe have an interest in delaying entry of the high inflation country because it would raise the average inflation rate however this country might refuse to join when the first group find it qualified to that is when convergence has taken place this is because the high inflation country can employ its monetary policy to stabilize against shocks given that the currency union members have optimally chosen a lower inflation rate hence a tradeoff exists between the necessity for convergence and the free rider problem

the phillips curve the persistence of inflation and the lucas critique evidence from exchange rate regimes comment we present evidence from the united states and the united kingdom that the persistence of price inflation is significantly higher under managed exchange rate regimes than under gold based fixed exchange rate regimes these differences are also reflected in expectations augmented phillips curves we use a two country macro model with forward looking price setters to demonstrate that higher monetary accommodation of inflation and exchange rate accommodation of inflation differentials increase inflation persistence the evidence does not contradict this hypothesis it supports the hypothesis of forward looking price setters and highlights the empirical significance of the lucas critique jel e31 e42 f33

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

factor and fuel substitution in china s iron steel industry evidence and policy implications climate change which is induced from energy consumption and co2 emissions has got people s attention hence many strategies and ways are being adopted to mitigate co2 emissions energy substitution is crucial to the promotion of energy conservation and co2 emissions reduction the purpose of this paper is to estimate both inter factor and inter fuel substitution in china s iron steel industry during the period 1985 2011 empirical results show several conclusions for china s iron steel industry 1 own price elasticity of energy is negative so increase in energy price will reduce energy input 2 energy and capital and energy and labor are substitutes and the substitution in energy capital is relatively stronger 3 though coal oil and electricity are also substitutes the substitution effect is not so obvious because of pricing distortions in china the driving forces of energy efficiency change are further discussed and the results show that technology progress is the key factor determining energy intensity therefore market oriented reforms in terms of energy prices improvement in energy substitution including inter factor and inter fuel substation and promotion of energy saving technologies are important means for ensuring future energy conservation and co2 emissions reduction practices in china s iron steel sector

does factor market distortion inhibit the green total factor productivity in china abstract this article measures green total factor productivity gtfp to discuss whether factor market distortions inhibit the green development of china s economy meanwhile export and foreign direct investment fdi are taken into account based on a threshold model considering export and fdi are closely related to factor market distortion environment and the economy the result shows that the factor market distortion has negative influences on china s gtfp growth export and fdi s spillover effect significantly moreover factor market distortion was found to be the threshold of export and fdi s spillover effect leading to inferior export and fdi which further inhibit gtfp growth this article provides a supplement to the issue from the perspective of environment based on the widely confirmed proposition that factor market distortion inhibits tfp growth according to the results we suggest that the chinese government should reduce the control of factor market as much as possible leaving the factor resources allocation to the market this will not only promote an innovation driven development but also an energy saving and environment friendly economy in china the article provides a new perspective on the influence mechanism of export and fdi on gtfp growth by discussing the impact path of factor distortion and expands the empirical framework of the research direction as well