questioning the empirical basis of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 new evidence from a panel stationarity test robust to multiple breaks and cross dependence abstract this paper investigates the time series properties of per capita co2 emissions and per capita gdp levels for a sample of 86 countries over the period 1960 2000 for that purpose we employ a state of the art panel stationarity test which incorporates multiple shifts in level and slope thereby controlling for cross sectional dependence through bootstrap methods our analysis renders clear cut evidence that per capita gdp levels are nonstationary for the world as a whole while per capita co2 is found to be regime wise trend stationary the analysis of country groups shows that for africa and asia per capita co2 is best described as nonstationary while per capita gdp appears stationary around a broken trend in addition we find evidence of regime wise trend stationarity in both variables for the country groups consisting of america europe and oceania the results of our analysis carry important implications for the statistical modelling of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 since the differing order of integration in both variables for the world as a whole and for africa and asia calls into question the validity of panel cointegration techniques which assume that both variables are nonstationary and cointegrated with one another cointegration techniques would not be appropriate either for the case of america europe and oceania which are characterised by per capita gdp and co2 emissions being stationary around a broken trend similar conclusions are reached when we analyse country groups based on levels of development failure to properly characterise the time series properties of the data by not controlling for an unknown number of structural breaks and for cross sectional dependence could be responsible for the fragility and lack of robustness surrounding the estimation of environmental kuznets curves

how much does water consumption drop when each household takes charge of its own consumption the case of the city of seville making individuals take charge of their own domestic water consumption is one of the measures used to reduce the growing demand for this resource and to achieve sustainable consumption compatible with the goal of equity the use of individual meters instead of communal meters and fixing tariffs by inhabitant rather than by household are two measures aimed at achieving these objectives this article assesses the measures put in place in the seville metropolitan area during the last 20 years with an unobserved component model set up in a state space framework estimated using maximum likelihood water consumption elasticity to individual meters has changed from 0 307 to 1 317 with the introduction of per inhabitant tariffs which demonstrates that there are water saving synergies when the two measures are implemented together the reductions in water consumption achieved with these measures are also longer lasting than the changes in consumption habits during the frequent droughts in seville

pollution and economic growth evidence from central and eastern european countries abstract we investigate the relationships between pollution and growth in eleven central and eastern european cee countries aggregate results robust to different estimators and control variables reveal an increasing nonlinear link between gdp and co2 for the group of cee countries however at a disaggregated country level the relationship between gdp and co2 is characterized by much diversity among cee countries namely n shaped inverted n u shaped inverted u monotonic or no statistical link thus despite an aggregated upward trend some cee countries managed to secure both higher gdp and lower co2 emissions from a policy perspective eu policymakers could pay more attention to these countries and amend the current unique environmental policy to account for country heterogeneities in order to support economic growth without damaging the environment

a note on price perception in water demand models a household s decision to acquire price knowledge is endogenous in the demand for utility services and may affect elasticities and consumption levels a simultaneous equation model with endogenous switching is developed to evaluate the effects of price

is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions abstract we analyze the effect of fuel mix model specification and the level of development on the presence and size of a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions the results indicate that fuel mix the specification for income and the level of economic development affect conclusions about whether there is a turning point in the relationship between economic activity and energy use and carbon emissions including fuel shares generally reduces the size of a turning point that is estimated from a panel that includes observations from both oecd and non oecd nations but this result varies according to the level of development for oecd nations there is limited support for a turning point in the relationship between income and per capita energy use and or carbon emissions for non oecd nations there is no turning point in the relationship between income and either energy use or carbon emissions instead the relationship is positive together the results indicate that forecasters and policy makers should not depend on a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use or carbon emissions to reduce either

on the specification of price in studies of consumer demand under block price scheduling using a new model formulation and data from a sample of colorado utilities we investigated the price specification controversy marginal price versus average revenue when estimating residential water demand the improved statistical fit using average

privately operated water utilities municipal price negotiation and estimation of residential water demand the case of france this paper addresses the issue of price negotiation between a municipality and a private water utility operator and its implications for residential water demand estimation we use appropriate econometric procedures to estimate a water demand equation on a panel of french municipalities we find evidence that negotiated water price depends on municipality s characteristics causing endogeneity of price in the demand equation the impact of average household income housing and system features such as metering is investigated both on municipal consumption and price estimated price and income elasticities are significant and close to previous household level studies

do individual preferences explain the environmental kuznets curve abstract some economists maintain the optimistic view that individual preferences of rich people eventually lead to a virtuous circle relationship between rising income and environmental degradation in this article i review some of the models that establish a relationship between individual preferences and environmental quality these models provide a basis for discussion of the key role played by two factors individual preferences and technology they do not however capture the distributive conflicts that occur between different social groups in the process of defining environmental policy neither do they provide a good basis for distinguishing between environmental costs caused by the decisions of particular consumers and those which affect the same consumers this point is related to the various manners in which environmental costs are displaced displacement often occurs within a country for current costs and is even clearer and more relevant when costs are transferred across a great distance or to a remote future in such cases there are few incentives to reduce consumption or alter its composition displacement moreover can become a strategy pursued more or less consciously for maintaining high and rising levels of consumption without dealing with the associated environmental costs

do droughts have long term effects on water consumption evidence from the urban area of barcelona this article examines the long term effects of droughts on water consumption using data of municipalities of the urban area of barcelona two important characteristics of the sample of municipalities are the relatively low water consumption in the pre drought period and the fact that indoor uses are clearly predominant controlling for prices income and various socio demographic factors we find a reduction in water consumption not only during the drought episode but also in subsequent periods these permanent reductions in water use may be explained by household behavioural changes technological changes or structural water policy changes

between estimates of the emissions income elasticity abstract recent papers by wagner and vollebergh et al point out some fundamental econometric problems with traditional methods of estimating the environmental kuznets curve ekc and propose alternative approaches that avoid these issues wagner notes that traditional methods do not take into account the presence of powers of unit root variables and cross sectional dependence in the data while vollebergh et al point out that the time effects are not uniquely identified in the ekc model the between estimator is a simple estimator that also addresses the concerns of these authors it makes no a priori assumption about the nature of the time effects and is likely to provide consistent estimates of long run relationships in real world data situations i apply several common panel data estimators including the between estimator to oecd and global carbon and sulfur emissions datasets the between estimates of the sulfur income elasticity are 0 732 in the oecd and 1 067 in the global data set and the estimated carbon income elasticity is 1 612 in the oecd and 1 509 globally

economic development and co2 emissions a nonparametric panel approach we examine the empirical relation between co2 emissions per capita and gdp per capita during the period 1960 1996 using a panel of 100 countries relying on the nonparametric poolability test of baltagi et al baltagi b h hidalgo j li q 1996 a nonparametric test for poolability using panel data journal of econometrics 75 345 367 we find evidence of structural stability of the relationship we then specify a nonparametric panel data model with country specific effects estimation results show that this relationship is upward sloping nonparametric specification tests do not reject monotonicity but do reject the polynomial functional form which leads to the environmental kuznets curve in several studies

incentives to water conservation under scarcity comparing price and reward effects through stated preferences abstract focusing on two different european institutional contexts a stated preference approach is adopted to elicit the willingness to save water under three alternative incentive policies a water price increase monetary reward and symbolic prize in addition two water scarcity scenarios a critical and a regular scenario are devised to analyze how information on water scarcity moderates the effect of incentives empirical results show that users become sensitive to monetary incentives while they remain insensitive to non monetary ones when water is scarce batteries of pre tests on the sample and robustness checks on the results strengthen the reliability of our findings and partially circumvent concerns related to the use of a stated preference approach the study adds to the literature on the efficacy of economic incentives in the water sector and the role of local factors in explaining water users response

energy consumption carbon dioxide emissions and economic development evaluating alternative and plausible environmental hypothesis for sustainable growth abstract pursuit of excellence in economic development in the midst of damaging the natural environment is a shameless growth the economic impacts on environmental degradation are quite visible in industrialized economies where human health is compromised by rapid economic growth and energy induced emissions this study examines the interrelationship between energy consumption economic growth and carbon dioxide co2 emissions under the six alternative and plausible hypothesis including environmental kuznets curve ekc pollution haven hypothesis phh population based emissions ipat energy led emissions sectoral growth emissions and emissions emancipated human development index ehdi in the context of low and middle income countries high income countries and in aggregated panel over the period of 1975 2015 the results supported the ekc hypothesis ipat hypothesis energy induced emissions and sectoral growth emissions in different regions of the world while phh and ehdi hypothesis does not confirm across regions this study exclusively determines the key socio economic and environmental problems in a large pool of the world economies to understand the need of development policy agenda for sustainable growth

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

demand specification for municipal water management evaluation of the stone geary form to specify demand in most water allocation problems researchers face a tradeoff between flexibility and parsimony flexible forms are less constraining on elasticity estimates but require large parameter sets that tend to cause poor out of sample forecasts and computational difficulties using a five year panel of texas municipalities the parsimonious stone geary form yields estimated demand functions that are comparable to flexible form results the stone geary specification also provides an estimate of the portion of water use that may not be responsive to price and is useful in analysing price structures and designing conservation policies

malnutrition and child labor in pre industrial and developing economies it is common to find i entire families including children working together in family farms or urban factories and ii a positive link between a person s consumption and her productivity this paper argues that there is a natural reason for the concurrence of i and ii as a rule households are characterized by intra household altruism an increase in the income of an individual increases the consumption of all household members hence when an employer pays an adult worker a high wage to enhance her productivity part of it ends up augmenting her children s consumption and productivity one way for the employer to prevent this leakage and internalize the externality is to employ the children as well this explains the higher incidence of family labor in poor societies where ii is more likely to be true

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

identifying reduced form relations with panel data the case of pollution and income abstract in this paper we propose a solution to the non robustness that plagues the estimation of inverted u shaped relationships using panel data such as the relation between pollution and income when dependent and independent variable like pollution and income are both time related separating the effect of the independent variable from time effects brings about a fundamental identification dilemma the imposition of restrictions on the controls might drive the shape of the relationship between the dependent pollution and independent income variables our solution consists of imposing the very weak constraint that arbitrary cross sectional units have the same relationship we apply our methodology to two widely studied cases namely so 2 and co 2 emissions interestingly our estimates are insensitive to the required subjective choices but also strongly differ from the literature so far we find consistent positive income effects for both cases and time effect estimates with a clear u shaped trend for so 2 emissions but only slightly so for co 2 emissions

the other transformation in econometric practice robust tools for inference angrist and pischke highlight one aspect of the research that has positively transformed econometric practice and teaching they emphasize the rise of experiments and quasi experiments as credible sources of identification in microeconometric studies which they usefully term design based research but in so doing they miss an important part of the story a second research strand aimed at developing tools for inference that are robust to subsidiary modeling assumptions my first aim in these remarks therefore is to highlight some key developments in this area i then turn to angrist and pischke s call for adopting experiments and quasi experiments in macroeconometrics while sympathetic i suspect the scope for such studies is limited i conclude with some observations on the current debate about whether experimental methods have gone too far in abandoning economic theory

alternate price specifications for estimating residential water demand with fixed fees using a new model formulation and data from a sample of colorado utilities we investigated the price specification controversy marginal price versus average revenue when estimating residential water demand the improved statistical fit using average revenue as the price variable was shown to be an artifact of the unitary elastic identity created when monthly rate schedules contain a fixed fee when the fixed fee was purged from the data average price was not significant but marginal price remained significant in the preferred double log marginal price model estimated price elasticity was 0 3 and conservation programs had no significant effect on water use

reexamining the empirical evidence for an environmental kuznets curve this paper uses an updated and revised panel data set on ambient air pollution in cities worldwide to examine the robustness of the evidence for the existence of an inverted u shaped relationship between national income and pollution we test the sensitivity of the pollution income relationship to functional forms to additional covariates and to changes in the nations cities and years sampled we find that the results are highly sensitive to these changes and conclude that there is little empirical support for an inverted u shaped relationship between several important air pollutants and national income in these data

an empirical survey of residential water demand modelling abstract the increased reliance on demand side management policies as an urban water consumption management tool has stimulated considerable debate among economists water utility managers regulators consumer interest groups and policymakers in turn this has fostered an increasing volume of literature aimed at providing best practice estimates of price and income elasticities quantifying the impact of non price water restrictions and gauging the impact of non discretionary environmental factors affecting residential water demand this paper provides a synoptic survey of empirical residential water demand analyses conducted in the last 25 years both model specification and estimation and the outcomes of the analyses are discussed

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

shirking and choking under incentive based pressure a behavioral economic theory of performance production abstract significant empirical evidence exists within psychology and economics that greater incentives under pressure can lead to lower performance outcomes however standard economic theory does not account for this possibility efficiency wage models for example conclude a positive relationship between wage incentives and productivity while efficiency wage models are shown to describe productivity behavior in numerous settings said models do not describe labor markets featuring counterproductive performance pressure we put forth a theoretical model of performance production in which performance incentives induce productive effects and counterproductive effects the model treats explicit monitoring and distraction as distinct counterproductive processes within a cohesive theory of performance production in settings featuring performance pressure we find that higher levels of performance contingent compensation may decrease not only labor output i e likelihood of task success but also labor input i e effort if counterproductive processes decrease the marginal effectiveness of effort sufficiently the latter finding challenges a common view that performance decrements under pressure occur despite greater effort levels

trade the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve examining the linkages abstract this paper examines the extent to which the ekc inverted u relationship can be explained by trade and specifically the migration or displacement of dirty industries from the developed regions to the developing regions the pollution haven hypothesis phh using detailed data on north south trade flows for pollution intensive products the evidence for the phh is assessed emissions of 10 air and water pollutants are then estimated controlling for trade openness structural change and dirty north south trade flows evidence of pollution haven effects is found although such effects do not appear to be widespread and appear to be relatively small compared to the roles played other explanatory variables

determinants of residential water demand in germany abstract we econometrically analyze the impact of several economic environmental and social determinants for the per capita demand for water in about 600 water supply areas in germany besides prices income and household size we consider the effects of population age the share of wells housing patterns precipitation and temperature we also explore why current per capita residential water consumption in the new federal states is about 30 lower than in the old federal states since average cost pricing may cause an endogeneity problem we apply instrumental variable procedures in addition to single equation ordinary least squares but find no evidence that prices are endogenous our estimation results suggest that the price elasticity of water demand in germany is around 0 24 the income elasticity is positive decreases with higher income levels and is at least three times higher in the new federal states than in the old federal states current differences in prices and income levels explain about one third of the gap in residential water use between the two regions household size and the share of wells have a negative impact on per capita water demand and water use increases with age finally the findings provide some evidence that rainfall patterns rather than total rainfall affect water consumption while temperature appears to have no impact at all all outcomes are robust to a log log and two types of semi log specifications for the water demand function

income and emission a panel data based cointegration analysis this paper presents the results of an investigation of the causality issue of incomeemission relationship based on time series econometric techniques of unit root test cointegration and related error correction model for a panel data set here the nature of causality between per capita co2 emission pcco2 and per capita gdp pcgdp has been examined using a cross country panel data set covering 88 countries for the period 1960 90 using the panel unit root test procedure of im et al 1997 ips we have found that the hypothesis of unit root i e non stationarity of the time series of pcgdp and pcco2 can not be rejected for individual country groups as both the variables are found to follow i 1 process we next have performed the panel data co integration test and finally we have estimated the ecm for these country groups for which significant income emission cointegration was obtained to explore the nature of dynamics implicit in the given panel data set our findings suggest that there is more or less a bi directional causal relationship between income pcgdp and co2 emission pcco2 for africa central america america as a whole eastern europe western europe europe as a whole and the world as a whole that means the movement of the one variable directly affects the other variable through a feedback system thus the policy makers should be cautious to make proper decision about the control of emission level

is all domestic water consumption sensitive to price control this paper presents a model of residential water demand based on the stone geary utility function which explicitly considers a threshold of water that is insensitive to price and a quantity that can adapt instantaneously to price changes first the threshold is assumed constant being then allowed to vary according to past levels of consumption a proxy for households water using equipment and habits a measure of the depreciation rate of habits is derived and the effectiveness of price and non price conservation measures are compared the results provide useful policy recommendations for the studied case of seville spain

estimation of the demand for electricity the residential consumer of electricity is often faced with a price schedule where the price per kwh differs according to the amountof electricity consumed 1 instead of a single price per kwh a price schedule exists from which electricity is purchased in blocks at a decreasing marginal price in a econometric demand analysis of household electricity consumption one of the main questions is concerned with the price varible to be chosen should it be the marginal price the average price or perhaps both price varibles in this study residential demand functions for electricity are estimated employing different price variables in demand functions employing both average price and marginal price the coefficients on average price are right the negative signs reflect the expected inverse relationships between the quality of electricity demanded and the average price on the other hand nonsignificant but positive signs on marginal price are obtained this result contradicts the findings of roth 1981

water demand under alternative price structures we estimate the price elasticity of water demand with household level data structurally modeling the piecewise linear budget constraints imposed by increasing block pricing we develop a mathematical expression for the unconditional price elasticity of demand under increasing block prices and compare conditional and unconditional elasticities analytically and empirically we test the hypothesis that price elasticity may depend on price structure beyond technical differences in elasticity concepts due to the possibility of endogenous utility price structure choice observed differences in elasticity across price structures may be due either to a behavioral response to price structure or to underlying heterogeneity among water utility service areas

the environmental kuznets curve tipping points uncertainty and weak identification we consider an empirical estimation of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for carbon dioxide and sulphur with a focus on confidence set estimation of the tipping point various econometric parametric and nonparametric methods are considered reflecting the implications of persistence endogeneity the necessity of breaking down our panel regionally trends and temporal instability and the small number of countries within each panel in particular we propose a parametric inference method that corrects for potential weak identification of the tipping point weak identification may occur if the true ekc is linear while a quadratic income term is nevertheless imposed into the estimated equation relevant literature to date confirms that non linearity of the ekc is indeed not granted which provides the motivation for our work we also propose a non parametric counterpart to the parametric confidence set for sensitivity analysis viewed collectively our results confirm an inverted u shaped ekc in the oecd countries but generally not elsewhere although a local pollutant analysis suggests favorable exceptions beyond the oecd our measures of uncertainty confirm that it is difficult to identify economically plausible tipping points policy relevant estimates of the tipping point can nevertheless be recovered from a local pollutant long run or non parametric perspective

environment kuznets curve for co2 emissions a cointegration analysis for china abstract this study examines the long run relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of china by employing time series data of 1975 2005 in particular the study aims at testing whether environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between co 2 emissions and per capita real gdp holds in the long run or not auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology is employed for empirical analysis a quadratic relationship between income and co 2 emission has been found for the sample period supporting ekc relationship the results of granger causality tests indicate one way causality runs through economic growth to co 2 emissions the results of this study also indicate that the carbon emissions are mainly determined by income and energy consumption in the long run trade has a positive but statistically insignificant impact on co 2 emissions

identification weak instruments and statistical inference in econometrics we discuss statistical inference problems associated with identification and testability in econometrics we consider inference in non parametric models and weakly identified structural models weak instruments we point out that many ill defined statistical problems such as non testable hypotheses occur in these areas and are typically associated with asymptotic approximations in non parametric models such problems include testing moments and inference under heteroscedasticity or serial dependence of unknown form for weakly identified structural models difficulties are typically associated with improper pivots and we review recent developments aimed at proposing more reliable procedures including alternative proposed statistics bounds projection split sampling conditioning monte carlo tests jel classification c1 c12 c14 c15 c3 c5 identification instruments faibles et inference statistique en econometrie nous analysons les problemes d inference associes a l identification et a la testabilite en econometrie nous considerons l inference dans les modeles non parametriques et les modeles structurels faiblement identifies instruments faibles nous remarquons que beaucoup de problemes mal poses tels que des hypotheses non testables apparaissent dans ces domaines et que ceux ci sont typiquement associes a l emploi d approximations asymptotiques dans les modeles non parametriques de tels problemes incluent les tests sur les moments et l inference sous heteroscedasticite ou dependance serielle de forme non specifiee dans les modeles structurels faiblement identifies ces difficultes sont habituellement associees a l emploi de fonctions pivotales impropres et nous presentons un survol des methodes recentes ayant pour objectif d obtenir des procedures plus fiables ce qui comprend les differentes statistiques proposees l emploi de bornes la subdivision d echantillon les techniques de projection le conditionnement et les tests de monte carlo

estimating water demand under increasing block tariffs using aggregate data and proportions of users per block forming a strategy for the management of a water resource requires reasonable knowledge of the effects that alterations in the control variables bring on water use such knowledge of the determinants influencing domestic water demand constitutes an essential ingredient of a pricing policy for domestic water supply special attention should be paid to the effects of the level shape and frequency of the tariff since these are the variables that can be altered by the policy maker

perception of price when price information is costly evidence from residential electricity demand a bstract residential electricity consumption is an example of a good for which it is costly to determine marginal price since price changes with the quantity purchased according to multistep block rate schedules this paper investigates the effect of the price information problem on consumers price perceptions an alternative hypothesis of average price perception is tested against the marginal price postulate which assumes wellinformed consumers the model which includes a price perception variable allows the estimation of the price to which consumers actually respond the empirical results support the hypothesis that consumers respond to average price perceived from the electricity bill

the economic rationale for investing in nutrition in developing countries abstract studies of experimental and socioeconomic survey data on the direct productivity effects of nutrition indicate growing though qualified evidence of positive direct effects of nutrition on labor productivity of poorer individuals in developing countries greater productivity effects for nutrition than for formal schooling studies on the indirect productivity effects of nutrition through cognitive achievement schooling and preschool ability also indicate positive productivity effects through these channels therefore for productivity reasons alone policies that favor better nutrition among the poorer members of society merit serious consideration that productivity and equity concerns are in harmony is an important plus

effect of price information on residential water demand microeconomic theory predicts that people decrease consumption when price increases the magnitude of the effect depending on price elasticity the law of demand however implicitly assumes that consumers know prices an assumption that is not always satisfied in markets with ex post billing when prices are not transparent elasticity estimates are potentially lower than their full information potential evidence of low price elasticity abounds in residential water demand studies limiting the effectiveness and desirability of using price signals as a conservation tool it is hypothesized that resident s sluggish response to price is partly due to the absence of price information on water bills differences in the informational content of bills are documented for the first time on the basis of sample bills collected from 383 utilities across the usa a standard aggregate water demand model is augmented with qualitative variables describing differences in billing information allowing such variables to a

income productivity in china on the role of health this study provides empirical evidence regarding the income productivity of health human capital in china we appeal to concepts from human capital theory to support a basic model that treats health as a form of human capital in the income production process our model examines the economic return at the household level from the health of its individual members we estimate this with a longitudinal sample drawn from the china health and nutrition survey chns allowing us to exploit within variation in health and income to address possible unobservables biasing estimates of the impact of health on income in the simple cross sectional setting household income is strongly influenced by the health of its members particularly in rural areas these findings could have important implications for health and economic policy making aimed at reducing the long standing urban rural economic gap and more comprehensively insuring the rural population against health and economic risk

residential water demand responds asymmetrically to rising and falling prices this paper econometrically estimates residential water consumption in germany between 2007 and 2013 based on a panel of almost 3000 supply areas in particular the analysis distinguishes periods o

are price strategies effective in managing demand of high residential water users abstractencouraging water use efficiency and water conservation is one of the primary goals of water utility companies nationwide this study estimates price elasticity of residential water demand to measure the responsiveness of water use to price changes particularly for high water users household level water use data for high residential water users from central florida were analysed using 3 stage least square 3sls estimated price elasticity ranges between 0 07 and 0 14 this price elasticity estimate is below most of the estimates reported in the literature in absolute value the results imply that for price strategies to be effective in managing water demand of high residential water users a significant price increase would be needed overall this study highlights the importance of designing water conservation policies tailored to specific groups of customers and the importance of using these strategies effectively and fairly for different customer groups

the environmental kuznets curve does one size fit all abstract this paper uses a new panel data set on state level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929 1994 to test the appropriateness of the one size fits all reduced form regression approach commonly used in the environmental kuznets curve literature empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted u shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level parameter estimates suggest however that previous studies which restrict cross sections to undergo identical experiences over time may be presenting statistically biased results

urban water demand with periodic error correction monthly demand for publicly supplied water to u s residences and businesses is estimated from a 10 year panel of 167 cities a periodic error correction model integrates monthly annual and long run time scales statistical consistency is validated by unit root tests adapted to the monthly frequency water and wastewater price elasticity of demand is estimated by sector calendar month and time horizon

growth and pollution convergence theory and evidence stabilizing pollution levels in the long run is a pre requisite for sustainable growth we develop a neoclassical growth model with endogenous emission reduction predicting that along optimal sustainable paths pollution growth rates are i positively related to output growth scale effect and ii negatively related to emission levels defensive effect this dynamic law reduces to a convergence equation that is empirically tested for two major and regulated air pollutants sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides with a panel of 25 european countries spanning the years 1980 2005 traditional parametric models are rejected by the data more flexible regression techniques confirm the existence of both the scale and the defensive effect supporting the model predictions

is there an environmental kuznets curve for sulfur abstract most existing estimates of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for sulfur which use samples of mainly high income countries indicate a maximum emissions turning point at middle to lower high income levels of gdp per capita we use a larger and more globally representative sample than previous sulfur ekc studies we find that sulfur emissions per capita are a monotonic function of income per capita when we use a global sample and an inverted u shape function of income when we use a sample of high income countries a model estimated in first differences results in a monotonic ekc when estimated with both high income and global samples reductions in emissions are time related rather than income related

co2 emissions in australia economic and non economic drivers in the long run abstractaustralia has sustained a relatively high economic growth rate since the 1980s compared to other developed countries per capita co2 emissions tend to be highest amongst oecd countries creating new challenges to cut back emissions towards international standards this research explores the long run dynamics of co2 emissions economic and population growth along with the effects of globalization tested as contributing factors we find economic growth is not emission intensive in australia while energy consumption is emissions intensive second in an environment of increasing population our findings suggest australia needs to be energy efficient at the household level creating appropriate infrastructure for sustainable population growth high population growth and open migration policy can be detrimental in reducing co2 emissions finally we establish globalized environment has been conducive in combating emissions in this respect we establish the beneficial effect of economic globalization