an analysis of the driving forces of energy related carbon dioxide emissions in china s industrial sector abstract both energy consumption and the growth of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in china are attributed to the industrial sector energy conservation and co2 emissions reduction in china s industrial sector is decisive for achieving a low carbon transition we analyze the change of energy related co2 emissions in china s industrial sector from 1991 to 2010 based on the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method results indicate that industrial activity is the major factor that contributes to the increase of industrial co2 emissions while energy intensity is the major contributor to the decrease of co2 emissions industry size shows a varying trend interchanging intervals of growth along the study period moreover both energy mix and carbon intensity of energy use have negative effects on the increase of co2 emissions the cointegration method is adopted to further explore determinants of co2 emissions in china s industrial sector results show that there exists a long run relationship between industrial co2 emissions and affecting factors such as co2 emissions per unit of energy consumption industrial value added labor productivity and fossil fuel consumption china s industrial co2 emissions are mainly attributed to the coal dominated energy structure policy suggestions are thus provided to reduce industrial co2 emissions in china

contagion volatility persistence and volatility spill overs the case of energy markets during the european financial crisis the aim of this paper is to investigate if and to what extent events in financially troubled eu markets greece ireland and portugal affected energy prices during the eu financial crisis more specifically i we test for contagion effects of bond prices on energy commodity prices ii we examine whether the nature of energy price volatility is affected and iii we investigate whether bond volatility from the financially distressed eu markets spills over to energy commodity return volatility our results indicate the existence of significant contagion effects notable changes in the nature of energy commodity volatility during the eu financial crisis and spill over effects the results are robust to the use of short term yields instead of long term bond price changes and to the inclusion of spain and italy in the sample

institutions factor prices and taxation virtues of strong states many of the most pernicious economic institutions and policies create entry barriers or manipulate factor prices to transfer resources from entrepreneurs and workers to groups that hold political power these inefficiencies partly result from the fact that direct and efficient fiscal instruments that can be used for taxation and redistribution of resources are absent one might then conclude that increasing state capacity and expanding the set of available fiscal instruments should improve the allocation of resources by preventing the use of these inefficient indirect methods of redistribution this reasoning ignores the effect of greater state capacity and the change in the set of available fiscal instruments on the political equilibrium however because the availability of more efficient means of taxation increases the potential benefits of controlling state power it also intensifies costly political conflict aimed at capturing the control of the state this indirect effect counteracts the benefits from more efficient taxation and may dominate the direct benefits the paper establishes the possibility that the allocation of resources may deteriorate substantially in response to an autonomous increase in state capacity and the set of fiscal instruments it also argues that in the british case which is a key historical example that points to the central role of increased state capacity in economic development this change was not autonomous instead it was an equilibrium response to changes in political institutions that placed better checks on the exercise of power by the executive this reasoning suggests that the study of the effect of fiscal capacity and the evaluation of policies aimed at increasing state capacity in less developed economies should be done in the context of dynamic models of political economy in which fiscal capacity and political constraints are jointly determined this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

bayesian estimation and selection of nonlinear vector error correction models the case of the sugar ethanol oil nexus in brazil nonlinear adjustment toward long run price equilibrium relationships in the sugar ethanol oil nexus in brazil is examined we develop generalized bivariate error correction models that allow for cointegration between sugar ethanol and oil prices where dynamic adjustments are potentially nonlinear functions of the disequilibrium errors a range of models are estimated using bayesian monte carlo markov chain algorithms and compared using bayesian model selection methods the results suggest that the long run drivers of brazilian sugar prices are oil prices and that there are nonlinearities in the adjustment processes of sugar and ethanol prices to oil price but linear adjustment between ethanol and sugar prices

changing energy intensity of economies in the world and its decomposition abstract this paper decomposes energy intensity change across countries into five components attributable to technological catch up technological progress and changes in capital energy ratio labor energy ratio and output structure it is found that 1 technological progress capital accumulation and output structure change contributed to the decline of energy intensity from 1980 to 2010 2 changes in labor energy ratio drove up energy intensity and 3 spatial and temporal heterogeneity existed regarding relative importance of the five components

market institutions and price relationships the case of coffee in the ethiopian commodity exchange while the ethiopian commodity exchange ecx is widely considered a successful market institution very little rigorous empirical investigation has been done on it this paper contributes to filling this knowledge gap using a unique set of spatially disaggregated prices for five different coffee varieties we examine how the ecx has influenced the dynamics of international and domestic prices for coffee the largest traded commodity in terms of trade value on the exchange floor we follow a multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity garch approach to assess the extent of market interdependence conditional correlations and volatility transmission we also evaluate structural changes in price dynamics over time our results suggest that contrary to popular media stories the ecx s success in strengthening coffee price relationships has been limited we discuss the underlying reasons and implications of this finding

political cleavages and changing exposure to trade combining the classical theorem of stolper and samuelson with a model of politics derived from becker leads to the conclusion that exogenous changes in the risks or costs of countries external trade will stimulate domestic conflict between owners of locally scarce and locally abundant factors a traditional three factor model then predicts quite specific coalitions and cleavages among owners of land labor and capital depending only on the given country s level of economic development and its land labor ratio a preliminary survey of historical periods of expanding and contracting trade and of such specific cases as the german marriage of iron and rye u s and latin american populism and asian socialism suggests the accuracy of this hypothesis while the importance of such other factors as cultural divisions and political inheritance cannot be denied the role of exogenous changes in the risks and costs of trade deserves further investigation

long run prices of primary commodities and oil prices acutely volatile movements in primary commodity prices have drawn considerable interest from empirical researchers exports of these commodities account for the bulk of export earnings of developing countries the traditional demand based framework was unable to explain the marked deterioration in these prices during the 1980s this paper tries to ascertain the role played by real oil prices in explaining the extremely volatile movements in real prices of primary commodities by taking into account oil price shocks over the period 1973 1996 using monthly data real primary commodity prices and real oil prices are cointegrated additionally the error in the cointegrating relation stimulates real commodity price adjustment not real oil price adjustment

analyzing the time frequency lead lag relationship between oil and agricultural commodities abstract we analyze the time frequency co movement of and lead lag relationship between price indices of oil and 21 agricultural commodities and attempt to identify the leader and follower among the considered price indices for the 1980m1 2017m5 period the empirical analysis is conducted using four wavelet tools wavelet coherency phase difference multiple correlation and multiple cross correlation the first two tools are used to identify the time frequency co movement of and lead lag relationship between price indices of oil and 21 agricultural commodities and the third and fourth tools are used to identify the leader and follower among all series of price indices across different scales our results on wavelet coherency show a high degree of co movement at a long run horizon for the entire period between the price indices of oil and coal cotton fishmeal maize rice rubber and wheat furthermore the connection between these commodity markets and the oil market strengthened after 2000 indicating the importance of financial crisis phenomena and geopolitical turbulence additional findings show that short run investors should invest in the beef and swine pork markets as they have very little correlation with the oil markets the results of multiple correlation and multiple cross correlation analysis show that the coffee price was leader or follower across all time scales except wavelet scale 16 where barely was a leader or a follower

primary commodity prices co movements common factors and fundamentals the behavior of commodities is critical for developing and developed countries alike this paper contributes to the empirical evidence on the co movement and determinants of commodity prices using nonstationary panel methods we document a statistically significant degree of co movement due to a common factor within a factor augmented var approach real interest rate and uncertainty as postulated by a simple asset pricing model are both found to be negatively related to this common factor this evidence is robust to the inclusion of demand and supply shocks which both positively impact on the co movement of commodity prices

index decomposition analysis applied to co2 emission studies index decomposition analysis ida was first extended from energy consumption to energy related co2 emission studies in 1991 since then many studies have been reported covering various countries and emission sectors however unlike the case of energy consumption studies a comprehensive literature survey that focuses specifically on emission studies has so far not been reported in this paper we attempt to fill this gap by reviewing 80 papers appearing in peer reviewed journals from 1991 to 2012 in this application area the first part of this paper deals with the developments with regard to the ida approaches used by researchers and the scope and focus of their studies in the second part the empirical results reported in the surveyed studies are analyzed consolidated and presented by emission sector the objective is to reveal the relative contributions of key effects on changes in the aggregate carbon intensity and this is done by emission sector and by country the findings of both parts are useful in understanding the development of ida in the application area of emission study as well as the key drivers of aggregate carbon intensities in the past and their possible future developments

why did the elites extend the suffrage democracy and the scope of government with an application to britain s age of reform a new rationale is presented for why an elite may want to expand the franchise even in the absence of threats to the established order expanding the franchise can turn politicians away from particularistic politics based on ad personam redistribution within the elite and foster competition based on programs with diffuse benefits if these programs are valuable a majority of the elite votes in favor of an extension of the franchise despite the absence of a threat from the disenfranchised we argue that the evolution of public spending and of political competition in nineteenth century britain is consistent with our model i introduction at the beginning of the nineteenth century in most countries narrow elites had a disproportionate influence on public affairs even in england where parliament was an influential institution suffrage was mostly the privilege of the wealthy and some members of parliament were elected in boroughs with as few as 100 voters while cities such as manchester did not have any representative a century later most western countries had universal male suffrage with female suffrage to arrive shortly thereafter what brought about this democratic revolution in many cases the elites were forced out of power after violent revolutions however there are important examples such as england where democratization took the form of gradual extensions of the suffrage and these were accompanied by little overt violence it is the peculiar pride of england that the record of social and political reform is to be found on the statute book not in the annals of revolution cheyney 1931 p vii such peaceful democratizations are difficult to rationalize within the benchmark political economic models in those models extending the franchise dilutes the elite s power to influence policy and results

renewable energy policy framework and bioenergy contribution in the european union an overview from national renewable energy action plans and progress reports abstract the use of renewable energy is projected to increase substantially in the european union to reach a share of 20 in final energy consumption and 10 renewable energy in transport by 2020 the renewable energy contribution is further expected to increase to 55 75 of gross final energy consumption in 2050 according to the latest reports the european union has made significant progress since 2005 and is on track to reach its 2020 renewable energy targets this paper provides a review of the policy framework for renewable energy in the european union and an analysis of the progress made by the use of renewable energy as well as the expected developments until 2020 and beyond it focusses on the contribution of bioenergy the major source among renewables in the european union as biomass availability is a critical issue for the bioenergy production this paper provides an analysis of the biomass demand for reaching the 2020 targets in relation with the expected domestic supply and biomass potential

inequality in landownership the emergence of human capital promoting institutions and the great divergence this paper suggests that inequality in the distribution of landownership adversely affected the emergence of human capital promoting institutions e g public schooling and thus the pace and the nature of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy contributing to the emergence of the great divergence in income per capita across countries the prediction of the theory regarding the adverse effect of the concentration of landownership on education expenditure is established empirically based on evidence from the beginning of the 20th century in the u s

food oil volatility spillovers and the impact of distinct biofuel policies on price uncertainties on feedstock markets over recent decades the link between crude oil and agricultural markets has been reinforced following the introduction of biofuels we use timely measures of co variation spillovers to analyze the role of crude oil in shaping price uncertainties of agricultural commodities which are largely used as biofuel feedstocks our sectoral and market specific measures distinguish tranquil 1995 2005 and crisis episodes 2006 2015 as well as periods during which either consumption mandates or tax credits were enacted to spur biofuels during the crisis period crude oil volatility transmissions account for 16 20 of price uncertainties in ethanol biodiesel feedstock markets on average moreover we find evidence of enhanced volatility transmissions under tax credit regimes compared with consumption mandates the results from pooled regressions confirm stronger volatility transmissions by about 12 under the enactment of tax credits

oligarchies and development in a global economy a tale of two elites this paper studies how comparative advantage and the political elites endowments shape long run performance in economies with imperfect political institutions the trade regime interacts with industrial policy and regulations on capital mobility in governing capital accumulation in a capital scarce economy capitalist oligarchs striving for import substitution industrialization isi initially shelter the economy from trade while promoting industrial policies that promote total factor productivity growth in the manufacturing sector this gradually shifts the comparative advantage toward manufacturing and renders the economy attractive to foreign investors allowing for trade and foreign capital inflows are thus complementary policies that spur growth in the capital oligarchy by contrast landed oligarchs in a capital scarce economy favor openness to trade at an early stage of development neglect industrial policies and block foreign capital to maximize extractable rents the policy mix causes the economy to stagnate consistent with the experiences of south korea and argentina in the postwar era the model predicts that the success of isi policies depends crucially on the conditions governing the incentives for capital accumulation jel f10 f20 p40 p50 o10 o24

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

co movement of major energy agricultural and food commodity price returns a time series assessment abstract using monthly data between 1970 and 2013 we provide a comprehensive analysis of the extent of co movement measured by correlation coefficients among the nominal price returns of 11 major energy agricultural and food commodities we study the degree and the time evolution of unconditional and conditional correlations using a uniform spacings estimation and testing approach multivariate dynamic conditional correlation models and a rolling regression procedure we find that 1 the price returns of energy and agricultural commodities are highly correlated 2 the overall level of co movement among commodities increased in recent years especially between energy and agricultural commodities and in particular in the cases of maize and soybean oil which are important inputs in the production of biofuels and 3 the stock market volatility is positively associated with the co movement of price returns across markets especially after 2007

development of the wind power in brazil political social and technical issues abstract this paper aims to present a review of the increasing contribution of wind power to the brazilian electric matrix and an analysis of the main impact on technical political and social aspects this work takes into account the state of art of the wind power technology the wind resource potential and the evolution of installed capacity in the country the institutional programs and the fiscal incentives provided by the brazilian government are also discussed in this paper including its impacts on the society we have reviewed national and international reports and relevant scientific papers to realize this work the analysis shows that electric crisis in 2001 led the brazilian government to develop new energy policies that supported the rapid growth of the wind industry from imported technology later on in the year 2004 the government mandated that the technology be developed within the country it is expected that from 2011 of approximately 1500 mw until 2021 the installed wind capacity would increase by a factor of 600 however the national technology acquisition and development is still incipient it is important to produce locally wind turbine components and is highly desirable to increase collaboration between industries and universities in the country

do energy prices stimulate food price volatility examining volatility transmission between us oil ethanol and corn markets this paper examines volatility transmission in oil ethanol and corn prices in the united states between 1997 and 2011 we follow a multivariate garch approach to evaluate the level of interdependence and the dynamics of volatility across these markets preliminary results indicate a higher interaction between ethanol and corn markets in recent years particularly after 2006 we only observe however significant volatility spillovers from corn to ethanol prices but not the converse we also do not find major cross volatility effects from oil to corn markets the results do not provide evidence of volatility in energy markets stimulating price volatility in grain markets

ask carl forecasting tail probabilities for energy commodities abstract we use a set of conditional auto regressive logit carl models to predict tail probabilities for returns calculated from futures of four energy commodities we show that carl models are very useful to forecast the probability of tail events in energy markets and the forecasting ability of the models generally increases when commodity implied volatility is added as a predictor we further present new bivariate models to jointly forecast the probabilities that returns from a given commodity and from the s p 500 index are on the left tail and models for the coexceedances we find that carl family models have always a better forecasting performance than garch and quantile augmented volatility models in a univariate and multivariate setting conversely when modelling coexceedances carl models exhibit a better predictive capacity only for brent and heating oil

decomposition of co2 emissions change from energy consumption in brazil challenges and policy implications this study evaluates the changes in co2 emissions from energy consumption in brazil for the period 1970 2009 emissions are decomposed into production and consumption activities allowing computing the full set of energy sources consumed in the country this study aims to develop a comprehensive and updated picture of the underlying determinants of emissions change from energy consumption in brazil along the last four decades including for the first time the recently released data for 2009 results demonstrate that economic activity and demographic pressure are the leading forces explaining emission increase on the other hand carbon intensity reductions and diversification of energy mix towards cleaner sources are the main factors contributing to emission mitigation which are also the driving factors responsible for the observed decoupling between co2 emissions and economic growth after 2004 the cyclical patterns of energy intensity and economy structure are associated to both increments and mitigation on total emission change depending on the interval the evidences demonstrate that brazilian efforts to reduce emissions are concentrated on energy mix diversification and carbon intensity control while technology intensive alternatives like energy intensity has not demonstrated relevant progress residential sector displays a marginal weight in the total emission change

democracy collective action and intra elite conflict we analyze a model where there is uncertainty about the future power of two ex ante symmetric elites to appropriate surplus and ex ante surplus sharing agreements are not binding we show that in an oligarchy the stronger elite appropriates the entire available surplus whereas a democracy results in a more balanced surplus allocation between the two elites in a democracy the newly enfranchised non elite organize to act collectively so that the weaker elite can credibly threaten to form a coalition with the organized non elite against the stronger elite such a threat ensures that the more balanced surplus sharing proposal chosen by majority voting is renegotiation proof therefore sufficiently risk averse elites unanimously choose democracy as a form of insurance against future imbalances in relative power we emphasize that franchise extension to and low cost of organizing collective political activity for the non elite are both necessary features of a democracy our formal analysis can account for the stylized facts that emerge from a comparative analysis of indian and western european democracies

impact of food price volatility on the us restaurant sector although fluctuations in agricultural commodity prices appear to be a source of risk to the us restaurant sector the effect that volatility of food price has on the performance returns of that s

key drivers for unsustainable resource use categories effects and policy pointers abstract prevailing resource use patterns of the global socio industrial metabolism are unsustainable an increasing number of people globally require ever more materials including energy carriers land and water for rising living standards and lifestyles converging towards western industrialised patterns therefore these resources will continue becoming both scarcer and depleted while environmental impacts associated with their consumption e g run away climate change will continue to rise for effective resource policies drivers for such unsustainable resource use and their effects need to be better understood and mapped by means of meta analysis of more than 60 sources of relevant literature we identified a set of ten driver categories that affect unsustainable resource use inter alia prevailing consumption and production patterns use and design of infrastructure and technology underlying paradigms and world views resource prices and the level of knowledge and information of resource users cumulative effects of the drivers contribute for instance up to 30 of phosphorus loss from soil and around 30 of building energy loss globally although the data does not allow clear cut causal attribution of effects it enables the distinction between direct and indirect drivers in relation to a multi dimensional network of drivers causing unsustainable resource use resource policy should combine policy objectives and instruments into policy mixes to target key drivers and their interrelations while policy mixes need to respond to context specific driver settings targeting consumer behaviour emerges as a general driver focus of policy mixes combining different instrument types and implementing them in a time dynamic sequence can mitigate trade offs between different instruments and in the longer term increase feasibility of profound behaviour changes

political limits to globalization we live in an unprecedented age of globalization where technology ideas factors of production and goods are increasingly mobile across national boundaries the current wave of globalization is distinguished from previous ones in part because of the major role of infor mation technology nevertheless globalization is not irreversible openness to international trade finance and technology is a choice that countries make and despite the facilitating role of information technology many countries even many leading players in the world econ omy including the united states china india brazil and russia could decide to close their borders a major cause of the end of the previ ous also historically unprecedented nineteenth century wave of globalization was disillusion ment with the international economic order in

mitigating climate change decomposing the relative roles of energy conservation technological change and structural shift abstract we decompose the contribution of five drivers of energy use and co 2 emissions reductions in achieving climate change goals over 2005 2100 for various climate policy scenarios this study contributes to the decomposition literature in three ways first it disaggregates drivers of energy demand into technological progress and demand for energy services represented in terms of useful energy allowing us to estimate their contributions independently an improvement over other economy wide decomposition studies secondly this approach reduces the ambiguity present in many previous measures of structural change we delineate structural shifts into two separate measures changes in fuel mix within a given resource or service pathway and changes in mix among distinct energy resources or end use services finally this study applies decomposition methods to energy and emission trajectories from two mutually informing perspectives i primary energy resources crude oil natural gas coal nuclear and renewables and ii end uses of energy services residential and commercial buildings industry and transportation our results show that technological improvements and energy conservation are important in meeting climate goals in the first half of the coming century and that nuclear and renewable energy and ccs technology are crucial in meeting more stringent goals in the second half of the century we examine the relative roles of the drivers in reducing co 2 emissions separately for developed and developing regions although the majority of energy and emission growth and by extension the greatest opportunities for mitigation will occur in developing countries the decomposition shows that the relative roles of the five drivers are broadly consistent between these two regions

the interaction between food prices and oil prices this paper provides a statistical methodology to estimate the impact of oil price uncertainty on food prices in doing so it examines the joint impact of oil price and food price uncertainties and their correlation on the food price also the theoretical model was applied to the oil based trinidad and tobago and the empirical results confirm the theoretical predictions the empirical results indicate that a higher oil price increases food price also a higher oil price volatility yields a higher food price moreover an increase in the oil supply reduces the food price

the lmdi approach to decomposition analysis a practical guide in a recent study ang energy policy 32 2004 compared various index decomposition analysis methods and concluded that the logarithmic mean divisia index method is the preferred method since the literature on the method tends to be either too technical or specific for most potential users this paper provides a practical guide that includes the general formulation process summary tables for easy reference and examples

a multivariate garch model of international transmissions of stock returns and volatility the case of the united states and canada this study examines the short run dynamics of returns and volatility for stocks traded on the new york and toronto stock exchanges the main finding is that inferences about the magnitude and persistence of return innovations that originate in either market and that transmit to the other market depend importantly on how the cross market dynamics in volatility are modeled moreover much weaker cross market dynamics in returns and volatility prevail during later subperiods and especially for canadian stocks with shares dually listed in new york implications for international asset pricing hedging strategies and regulatory policy are discussed

the dependence structure across oil wheat and corn a wavelet based copula approach using implied volatility indexes abstract this paper examines the dependence structure between three commodities implied volatility indexes oil wheat and corn during bear normal and bull markets and at different scales for this purpose we combine wavelet and copula methods to analyse the changes of the tail dependence at different scales or investment horizons the results support evidence of time varying asymmetric tail dependence between the pair of cereals as well as between oil and the two cereals at different time horizons short term horizon medium term horizon and long term horizon suggesting that the dependence structure is sensitive to time horizons these results have important implications for the analysis of portfolio risk management

decomposition analysis of debt s impact on china s energy consumption abstract debt can influence the energy consumption of private sectors and public agencies by changing their fiscal budget constraints from 1996 to 2016 china has had rapid debt growth and become the second largest borrower in the world additionally china has been the largest energy consumer since 2009 the impact of debt growth on its energy consumption however is not much addressed in the literature using an extended lmdi model we investigate the impact of china s debt on its energy consumption from 1996 to 2016 in a new way the results show that 1 among the closed set of debt related factors and other conventional variables studied private debt per capita makes the strongest contribution to china s energy consumption and population has a moderate impact on the growth of energy consumption 2 energy efficiency improvement output efficiency of government debt debt structure adjustment and increased tertiary industry share are mitigating forces of energy consumption these results provide a new holistic perspective for the chinese government to formulate synergistic policies of risk control and pollution control

energy intensity a decomposition and counterfactual exercise for latin american countries abstract this paper investigates trends in energy intensity over the last 40 years based on a sample of 75 countries it applies the fisher ideal index to decompose the energy intensity into the relative contributions of energy efficiency and economic structure then the determinants of these energy indexes are examined through panel data regression techniques special attention is lent to latin american countries lac by comparing its performance to that of a similar set of countries chosen through the synthetic control method when analyzed by income level energy intensity has decreased in a range between 40 and 54 in low and medium income countries respectively efficiency improvements drive these changes while the structural effect does not represent a clear source of change the regression analysis shows that per capita income petroleum prices fuel energy mix and gdp growth are main determinants of energy intensity and efficiency while there are no clear correlations with the activity component in the case of lac the energy intensity decreased around 20 which could be interpreted as an under performance however the counterfactual exercise suggests that lac has closed the gap with respect to its synthetic control

volatility spillovers in china s crude oil corn and fuel ethanol markets price volatility spillovers among china s crude oil corn and fuel ethanol markets are analyzed based on weekly price data from september 5 2003 to august 31 2012 employing the univariate egarch model and the bekk mvgarch model respectively the empirical results indicate a higher interaction among crude oil corn and fuel ethanol markets after september 2008 in the overall sample period the results simultaneously provide strong evidence that there exist unidirectional spillover effects from the crude oil market to the corn and fuel ethanol markets and double directional spillovers between the corn market and the fuel ethanol market however the spillover effects from the corn and fuel ethanol markets to the crude oil market are not significant

supply and demand elasticities in the u s ethanol fuel market abstract the market for ethanol has grown from approximately 1 2 billion gallons in 1997 to almost 5 billion gallons in 2006 with the huge increase in ethanol demand in recent years the growth in derived demand for corn has driven up many food prices this paper uses monthly data from 1997 2006 to estimate the market supply and demand for ethanol at the national level the simultaneous determination of the supply and demand curves using two stage least squares allows for the calculation of supply and demand side elasticities which are important results in light of the tremendous growth in this market and recent legislation concerning ethanol

energy intensity developments in 40 major economies structural change or technology improvement this study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the wiod database a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data we use logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition to 1 study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007 2 attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy and 3 highlight sectoral and regional differences we first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high these general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies first and foremost the united states in most cases heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries notable exceptions are japan the united states australia taiwan mexico and brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction

autocracy democracy and trade policy abstract this paper develops a politico economic model for use in studying the role of intra elite conflict in the simultaneous determination of a country s political regime trade policy and income tax based redistribution scheme three socioeconomic groups are involved two elite groups and workers whose preferences regarding trade policy and income taxation are derived from a simple open economy model the critical point is that income taxation induces a rich poor elite workers political cleavage while trade policy opens the door to intra elite conflict in this model when there is no intra elite conflict changes in trade policy are associated with political transitions coups democratizations open up the economy if and only if both elite groups are pro free trade protectionist however in the presence of intra elite conflict autocracies respond to popular revolts by changing trade policy and reallocating political power within the elite to the elite group with the same trade policy preference as the workers rather than offering to democratize the country the change in trade policy is credible because the elite group with the same trade policy preference as the workers controls the autocracy moreover in the presence of intra elite conflict coups tend to result in the maintenance of the existing trade policy unless popular demands are extremely radical and or the elite group with the same trade policy preference as the workers is exceptionally weak

energy for sustainable development a case of developing countries abstract today there are 1 4 billion people around the world that lack access to electricity some 85 of them in rural areas without additional dedicated policies by 2030 the number of people drops but only to 1 2 billion some 15 of the world s population still lack access the majority of them living in sub saharan africa the number of people relying on the traditional use of biomass is projected to rise from 2 7 billion today to 2 8 billion in 2030 addressing these inequities depends upon international recognition that the projected situation is intolerable a commitment to effect the necessary change and setting targets and indicators to monitor progress a new financial institutional and technological framework is required as is capacity building in order to dramatically scale up access to modern energy services at the local and regional levels in this paper we discussed the energy situation of the developing countries for sustainable development

how much co2 emissions do we reduce by saving electricity a focus on methods abstract in this paper we evaluate two approaches for estimating co2 emission reduction from electricity savings one based on average co2 intensities of electricity generation and another that relies on marginal co2 intensities it is found that the average co2 intensity approach has a significant shortcoming when it comes to scenario based approaches for co2 emission reduction this shortcoming lies in the chicken egg problem created where larger future electricity savings are actually big enough to change the co2 intensity in such a way that it cannot be used anymore to estimate the co2 emission reduction we show that in these cases the marginal approach is preferred to correctly apply this approach it is important to determine the co2 intensity of the future power mix which will not be built in order to avoid under or overestimation of the co2 savings calculated we propose a seven step approach which can be used in scenario based potential studies as guidance for estimating the co2 emission reductions from not only electricity savings but also renewable electricity and mitigation options that consume electricity such as electric cars and heat pumps using our approach would avoid a disconnection of the co2 reduction potential with the underlying reference scenario

time frequency causality and connectedness between international prices of energy food industry agriculture and metals abstract this study analyzes the lead lag relationship between the price indices of energy fuels and each of food industrial inputs agriculture raw materials metals and beverages in the time frequency domain to this end we first use the wavelet coherency and phase differences next we use the diebold and yilmaz 2012 and barunik and krehlik 2017 spillover indices to analyse the connectedness among the set of the price indices under consideration the period of the study is 1990m1 to 2017m5 the wavelet coherency results reveal that there are important and significant relations between the fuel and food prices the fuel and industrial prices and the fuel and metal prices these results also show that there are phase relationships between those paired prices the volatility spillover results indicate that the agricultural sector is the most affected by shocks from the other markets the return series of the industrial input prices at all frequencies appears to be the main source of volatility transmission to the prices of the other commodities over the whole period this finding underlines the relevance of the industrial inputs to policy makers particularly when they design policies to provide incentives related to industrial production

federal policies for renewable electricity impacts and interactions abstract three types of policies that are prominent in the federal debate over addressing greenhouse gas emissions in the united states are a cap and trade program ctp on emissions a renewable portfolio standard rps for electricity production and tax credits for renewable electricity producers each of these policies would have different consequences and combinations of these policies could induce interactions yielding a whole that is not the sum of its parts this paper utilizes the haiku electricity market model to evaluate the economic and technology outcomes climate benefits and cost effectiveness of three such policies and all possible combinations of the policies a central finding is that the carbon dioxide co2 emissions reductions from ctp can be significantly greater than those from the other policies even for similar levels of renewable electricity production since of the three policies ctp is the only one that distinguishes electricity generated by coal and natural gas it follows that ctp is the most cost effective among these approaches at reducing co2 emissions an alternative compliance payment mechanism in an rps program could substantially affect renewables penetration and the electricity price effects of the policies hinge partly on the regulatory structure of electricity markets which varies across the country

multilevel lmdi decomposition of changes in aggregate energy consumption a cross country analysis in the eu 27 abstract this paper aims at analysing the factors behind the change in aggregate energy consumption in the eu 27 also identifying differences between member states the logarithmic mean divisia index method lmdi is applied to multiplicatively decompose at the country level the variation in aggregate energy consumption in the eu 27 member states for the 2001 2008 period we also analyse the sensitivity of the results when several aggregation levels are considered with energy intensity used as the criterion to aggregate countries this allows us to check robustness of results also enabling an improved understanding of both inter and intra unit effects results indicate that improvements in energy efficiency in the eu 27 were not enough to overcome the pressure of european economic activity on aggregate energy consumption mediterranean countries and especially former communist states increased their energy consumptions most of them favoured by structural change the analysis also reveals that the impact of intra group movements on aggregate energy consumption is partially offset when moving from higher to lower aggregation levels

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

regional and sectoral attribution to percentage changes in the european divisia carbonization index abstract concerns on rising concentrations of co2 in the atmosphere and global warming have increased in recent years numerous environmental studies analyze the trends in co2 emissions and their main drivers in this paper we focus on the dynamics of the carbonization effect as a driving force for co2 emissions in the european union eu by implementing the sato vartia logarithmic mean divisia index method the trend of european emissions in the 2000 2010 period is factorized by both sector and country the analysis stresses the relevance of the carbonization and intensity effects in order to reduce emissions then based on so called attribution analysis we present a new theoretical framework that enables the attribution of both economic sector and individual eu member state to percentage changes in the carbonization index results show strong concentration of this reducing influence in some big economies in fact germany the united kingdom france and italy have contributed by more than 50 industry emerges as the most influential sector contributing to offset any improvement in the carbonization index our findings suggest strategies aiming at encouraging innovation technical change research on higher quality energies fuel substitution and installation of abatement technologies particularly in the industrial sector of large economies

biofuel related price transmission using renewable identification number prices to signal mandate regime this paper improves on existing methods of testing price links between biofuels petroleum petroleum products and agricultural commodity feedstocks by incorporating information contained in the prices of renewable identification numbers rins that are used for biofuel mandate compliance theoretical equations are developed to show the role rin prices can play in the relationships among energy biofuel and agricultural commodity prices rin price data are used a to infer values of fuels where market data are unavailable and b to define binding and non binding mandate regimes a specific empirical exercise exploits the rin price data to conduct cointegration tests on high frequency data representing spot and futures prices relating to ethanol and biodiesel from february 2009 through march 2015 finding little evidence of short term biofuel and petroleum product substitution during this period

decomposing the decoupling of co2 emissions and economic growth in brazil abstract this paper examines the occurrence of a decoupling between the growth rates in economic activity and co 2 emissions from energy consumption in brazil from 2004 to 2009 this decoupling was highlighted when economic activity and co 2 emissions moved in opposite directions in 2009 more generally we observe several periods of relative decoupling in brazil but not to the extent witnessed in 2009 to identify the determinants of emissions change we develop a decomposition model based on a log mean divisia index lmdi framework the results indicate that the carbon intensity and energy mix are the main determinant of emissions reduction in brazil between 2004 and 2009 modifications in the economy structure are also associated to emission mitigation in the period such evidence demonstrates similarities with events of decoupling registered for the interval 1980 1994 in brazil finds from brazil differ from observations in other countries in which improvement in energy intensity has been the most common determinant of emissions reduction

how is volatility in commodity markets linked to oil price shocks abstract this study investigates the effects of oil price shocks on volatility of agricultural and metal commodities we decompose an oil price shock to its underlying components including macroeconomics and oil specific shocks the applied method is the structural vector autoregressive svar model and the time span is from april 1983 to may 2014 the investigation is divided into two subsamples before and after may 2006 for agriculture taking into account the 2006 2008 food crisis and change in u s ethanol production policy and before and after january 2008 for metals considering the recent global financial crisis we find that based on impulse response functions the response of volatility of each commodity to an oil price shock differs significantly depending on the underlying cause of the shock for the both periods moreover according to variance decomposition the explanatory power of oil shocks becomes stronger after the crisis the different responses of commodities are described in detail by investigating market characteristics in each period

volatility spillovers between food and energy markets a semiparametric approach previous literature on volatility links between food and energy prices is scarce and mainly based on parametric approaches this article examines these links by using a semiparametric garch model recently proposed by long et al 2011 which is essentially a nonparametric correction of the parametric conditional covariance function the analysis focuses on price links between crude oil ethanol and sugar prices in brazil results suggest strong volatility links between the prices studied parametric approximations of the conditional covariance matrix may lead to misleading results that can be improved upon by using nonparametric techniques

interdependence between cash crop and staple food international prices across periods of varying financial market stress abstractthis paper investigates the price dynamics between a selection of international staple food and cash crop futures prices this price interaction is particularly relevant for developing coun

driving forces for aggregate energy consumption a cross country approach abstract although a cornerstone for development past and current energy use has often posed a major challenge for policymakers with respect to planning and management within this context in this paper an updated multi sectorial cross country assessment of energy consumption trends was undertaken aiming at identifying the main drivers of changes in aggregate energy consumption these drivers have been interpreted in the light of the policy measures that have been implemented over the years by different countries to achieve a sustainable development of the energy sector the cross country assessment encompasses a set of developed united kingdom portugal and spain and emerging brazil china and india countries resorting to the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition method changes in the aggregate energy consumption were decomposed into three main explanatory effects activity structure and intensity the major findings achieved reflect the relevance of intensity and activity effects in detriment of the structural effect the assessment of energy consumption trends using the lmdi decomposition method provides critical information regarding which is the dominant factor that should be focused in policy design

nonlinearities in the u s corn ethanol oil gasoline price system we use a smooth transition vector error correction model to assess price relationships within the u s ethanol industry monthly ethanol corn oil and gasoline prices from 1990 to 2008 are used in the analysis results indicate the existence of long run relationships among the prices analyzed strong links between energy and food prices are identified

is energy efficiency a driver or an inhibitor of energy consumption changes in spain two decomposition approaches abstract the 2000 2008 expansion period of the economy was accompanied by an important increase of energy consumption the desire of decoupling has led us to analyse the driving forces behind the energy consumption changes during this expansion period through a structural decomposition analysis sda based on the spanish input output tables previous decomposition has been supplemented by a logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi analysis of the energy consumption changes during a longer period 2000 2013 the results show that the energy intensity was the main inhibitor effect of the energy consumption changes of sectors of production not only during the recession but also during the expansion period secondly the energy intensity was a driver of the energy consumption change of households during the expansion period however during the recession period the energy intensity of private transport contributed to reducing energy consumption having an inhibitor effect therefore if the activity effect is still the most important driver the energy intensity effect has become the main inhibitor of energy consumption changes the energy policy recommendation is to focus on household energy consumption in the future if the spanish government aims to attain the eu energy efficiency objectives

the energy intensity in lithuania during 1995 2009 a lmdi approach abstract the measurement assessment and effective mitigation of energy intensity compose a foremost objective of contemporary energy policy although the european union eu member states have been experiencing the convergence in energy efficiency indicators lithuania acceded to the eu in 2004 still remains peculiar with relatively high energy intensity our study therefore is aimed at analyzing the energy intensity trends in lithuanian economy as a whole as well as in separate economic sectors the investigation covers the period of 1995 2009 the logarithmic mean divisia index was applied for decomposition analysis our analysis has shown that energy efficiency falls during economic downturn in order to facilitate these challenges the lithuanian government as well as business should opt for increasing energy efficiency in the most problematic sectors of transport and services in addition the analysis of legal acts namely national energy efficiency programme for 2006 2010 and energy efficiency action plan for 2010 2016 was taken into consideration some suggestions thus were offered for successful implementation of strategic goals outlined in the aforementioned strategic documents

intra union flexibility of non ets emission reduction obligations in the european union the eu proposal on greenhouse gas emission reduction has 28 targets for 2020 an eu wide one for co2 emissions covered by the european trading system ets and one target for non ets emissions per member state implementation is more expensive than needed i consider three alternative proposals to reduce costs in the irish proposal member states can purchase ets permits to offset excess non ets emissions in the polish proposal member states can sell excess non ets emissions in the ets in the swedish proposal member states can trade their non ets allocations i compare these alternatives to the default policy no flexibility outside the ets and the cost effective solution full flexibility i calibrate a simple model to the results of the eu impact assessment which did not disclose all details and made odd assumptions the non ets allocation exceeds the projected emissions for three member states the alternative flexibility mechanisms would be used to only a limited extent but would cut the costs of meeting the target the swedish and polish proposals come closest to the cost effective solution because of the hot air the irish proposal performs best if there are negative surprises in either abatement costs or emissions the swedish proposal will become policy

eu climate change policy 2013 2020 using the clean development mechanism more effectively in the non eu ets sector abstract under european union proposals for co 2 emission reduction between 2013 and 2020 a member state can transfer to another member state the right to use its unused clean development mechanism cdm credits the paper addresses three issues in relation to these cdm warrants cdm w first how should the member state treat the cdm w in making decisions concerning emission reduction the price of the property right is an important signal for a member state in deciding the level of domestic abatement compared to trading in cdm w s in other words a shadow price for cdm w s should be used in formulating the emission strategy in order to determine whether or not a member state is a buyer or seller of cdm w s second what mechanism should be used to facilitate the exchange of cdm w s the preferred mechanism depends on the market size over which there appears to be some ambiguity market intermediaries such as over the counter trades and exchanges are preferred if market size is small auctions if the market size is large third who should realise the value of cdm w s the state existing polluters etc the value of cdm w s should accrue to the state

impact of energy prices and cellulosic biomass supply on agriculture energy and the environment an integrated modeling approach abstract the accelerated growth in biofuel markets has both created and reinforced linkages between agriculture and energy the evolution of biofuel markets over the next 10 20 years and the implications for energy agriculture and the environment are uncertain building on an integrated agriculture energy modeling framework this study analyzes a baseline and three alternative scenarios two scenarios based on energy prices crude oil and natural gas and one based on assumptions regarding cellulosic biomass availability by examining the impact of scenarios driven by a changes in the energy sector and b changes in the agricultural sector we can compare the differential effects on biofuels markets commodity prices and quantities in each sector and co 2 emissions scenario comparisons show biofuel markets affected more by crude oil prices than natural gas prices however higher natural gas prices shift the biofuel production mix away from corn grain based to more cellulosic ethanol via multiple mechanisms alternatively the scenario with no cellulosic feedstock lowers total ethanol production and raises ethanol and corn prices in terms of environmental impacts higher ethanol levels driven by higher oil prices lead to lower co 2 emissions in comparison the no cellulosic scenario results in the highest co 2 trajectory relative to the baseline

stagnating energy efficiency in the swedish building sector economic and organisational explanations the development towards higher energy efficiency in the swedish building sector stagnated in the late 1980s and 1990s in new buildings the average specific energy use for heating is twice as high as in the best performing buildings 20 years ago by combining econometric studies and interviews with actors in the building sector we analyse the underlying economic and organisational causes for this development in the stock of buildings specific energy use for heating kwh m2 yr has a high correlation with increasing energy prices and price elasticities have not changed markedly over time this implies that the stagnation to a large extent can be explained by energy price trends on the contrary in new buildings the correlation between energy prices and specific energy use is much weaker one important cause of low sensitivity to price changes is that information about the life cycle cost lcc of different investment alternatives is often not available to the involved actors the most common investment criterion is instead the requirements of the national building energy standard which has developed into a norm rather than a minimum for energy performance in this paper we also discuss potential improvements in the learning processes within the sector

carbon dioxide emissions intensity of portuguese industry and energy sectors a convergence analysis and econometric approach abstract given the relevance of energy and pollution issues for industrialised countries and the importance of industry and energy sectors to the achievement of their economic and environmental goals it is important to know if there is a common pattern of emissions intensity fuel intensity and energy intensity between industries to know if it justifies a more specific application of energy policies between sectors which sectors have the greatest potential for reducing energy use and which are the long term effects of those specific variables on the mitigation of emissions we found that although there is literature on decomposition of effects that affect emissions the study of the convergence and of the relationships between these variables does not include ratios or effects that result from the decomposition analysis thus the above questions are not answered much less for the portuguese reality the purpose of this paper is to study i the existence of convergence of some relevant ratios as carbon dioxide co 2 emissions intensity co 2 emissions by fossil fuel consumption fossil fuel intensity energy intensity and economic structure between industry and energy sectors in portugal and ii the influence that the consumption of fossil fuels the consumption of aggregate energy and gdp have on co 2 emissions and the influence that the ratios in which co 2 emissions intensity decomposes can affect that variable using an econometric approach namely panel corrected standard errors estimator we concluded that there is sigma convergence for all ratios with exception of fossil fuel intensity gamma convergence verifies for all ratios with exception of co 2 emissions by fossil fuel from the econometric approach we concluded that the considered variables have a significant importance in explaining co 2 emissions and co 2 emissions intensity

why did the west extend the franchise democracy inequality and growth in historical perspective during the nineteenth century most western societies extended voting rights a decision that led to unprecedented redistributive programs we argue that these political reforms can be viewed as strategic decisions by the political elite to prevent widespread social unrest and revolution political transition rather than redistribution under existing political institutions occurs because current transfers do not ensure future transfers while the extension of the franchise changes future political equilibria and acts as a commitment to redistribution our theory also offers a novel explanation for the kuznets curve in many western economies during this period with the fall in inequality following redistribution due to democratization i introduction the nineteenth century was a period of fundamental political reform and unprecedented changes in taxation and redistribution britain for example was transformed from an oligarchy run by an elite to a democracy the franchise was extended in 1832 and then again in 1867 and 1884 transferring voting rights to portions of the society with no previous political representation the decades after the political reforms witnessed radical social reforms increased taxation and the extension of education to the masses moreover as noted by kuznets inequality which was previously increasing started to decline during this period the gini coefficient for income inequality in england and wales had risen from 0 400 in 1823 to 0 627 in 1871 but fell to 0 443 in 1901 two key factors in the reduction in inequality were the increase in the proportion of skilled workers williamson 1985 and the redistribution of income toward the poorer segments of the society for example taxes rose from 8 12 percent of national product in 1867 to 18 8 percent by 1927 and the progressivity of the tax system increased substantially see lindert 1989

market interdependence and volatility transmission among major crops this article provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of volatility across major agricultural commodities in the united states volatility interactions across markets may lower the effectiveness of diversification strategies to mitigate price risks and should be taken into account when analyzing the pricing behavior of different agricultural commodities we follow a multivariate garch approach to evaluate the time evolution of conditional correlations and volatility transmission across corn wheat and soybeans price returns on a daily weekly and monthly basis the period of analysis is from 1998 to 2012 the estimation results indicate a lack of lead lag relationships between corn wheat and soybeans price returns at the mean level we find however important volatility spillovers across commodities particularly at the weekly and monthly level wheat and corn seem to play a major role in terms of volatility transmission despite the supposed higher financial market integration of agricultural commodities we do not observe that agricultural markets have become more interdependent in recent years

time frequency dynamics of return spillover from crude oil to agricultural commodities we explore return spillover from crude oil to ethanol corn soybean and wheat on daily data during 17 may 2005 27 june 2018 this study is unique in capturing the time frequency dynamics of return

unravelling projected energy savings in 2020 of eu member states using decomposition analyses abstract the objective of this paper is to provide deeper insights into the energy savings efforts of eu member states by exploring the impact of new policies the recent economic recession and other effects using decomposition analyses the results of the study show that the difference between the two official eu baseline projections primes 2007 pre recession pre climate and energy package and primes 2013 post recession including the new policies of the package can be explained by the combined impact of the new policies the economic recession and other effects such as differences in energy prices however the impact of the other effects remains largely unexplained in the official primes 2013 report and is clouding the right interpretation of the policy effect by providing these insights this study could help policy makers in better understanding scenario outcomes and the impact of their policies if eu member states would be able to achieve their 2020 energy savings targets then an important step has been taken to bridge the energy savings gap since the economic recession plays a major role in bridging this gap and economic recovery is aimed for further intensification of energy efficiency policies is crucial to contribute to the ghg reduction target for 2030 and beyond

the influence of biofuels economic and financial factors on daily returns of commodity futures prices abstract biofuels production has experienced rapid growth worldwide as one of the several strategies to promote green energy economies indeed climate change mitigation and energy security have been frequent rationales behind biofuel policies but biofuels production could generate negative impacts such as additional demand for feedstocks and therefore for land on which to grow them with a consequent increase in food commodity prices in this context this paper examines the effect of biofuels and other economic and financial factors on daily returns of a group of commodity futures prices using generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch family models in univariate and multivariate settings the results show that a complex of drivers are relevant in explaining commodity futures returns more precisely the standard and poor s s p 500 positively affects commodity markets while the us euro exchange rate brings about a decline in commodity returns it turns out in addition that energy market returns are significant in explaining commodity returns on a daily basis while monetary liquidity is not this would imply that biofuel policy should be carefully monitored in order to avoid excessive first generation subsidization which would trigger a fuel vs food conflict

speculation and volatility spillover in the crude oil and agricultural commodity markets a bayesian analysis this paper assesses factors that potentially influence the volatility of crude oil prices and the possible linkage between this volatility and agricultural commodity markets stochastic volatility models are applied to weekly crude oil corn and wheat futures prices from november 1998 to january 2009 model parameters are estimated using bayesian markov chain monte carlo methods speculation scalping and petroleum inventories are found to be important in explaining the volatility of crude oil prices several properties of crude oil price dynamics are established including mean reversion an asymmetry between returns and volatility volatility clustering and infrequent compound jumps we find evidence of volatility spillover among crude oil corn and wheat markets after the fall of 2006 this can be largely explained by tightened interdependence between crude oil and these commodity markets induced by ethanol production

impacts of ethanol policy on corn prices a review and meta analysis of recent evidence abstract the literature on the impacts of biofuels on agricultural commodity prices is characterized by contradictory findings we review studies published between 2007 and 2014 that estimate the effects of u s corn ethanol policy on corn prices and find estimates ranging from nil to over 80 such divergent results make it difficult to assess the merits of alternative biofuel policies to bring more clarity to the issue and facilitate comparisons across studies we assemble a database of over 150 medium to long run estimates of the effect of corn ethanol production on corn prices from 29 published studies we first normalize corn price impacts by the change in corn ethanol volume to control for the large differences in ethanol quantities across scenarios we then conduct a meta analysis to identify the factors that drive the remaining variation in corn price impacts across studies in addition to ethanol volumes we find that modeling framework projection year inclusion of ethanol co products and biofuel production from other feedstocks explain much of the differences in price effects the results indicate that a one billion gallon expansion of the us corn ethanol mandate in the year 2015 would lead to a three to four percent increase in corn prices with smaller price changes projected in future years

lmdi decomposition approach a guide for implementation since it was first used by researchers to analyze industrial electricity consumption in the early 1980s index decomposition analysis ida has been widely adopted in energy and emission studies lately its use as the analytical component of accounting frameworks for tracking economy wide energy efficiency trends has attracted considerable attention and interest among policy makers the last comprehensive literature review of ida was reported in 2000 which is some years back after giving an update and presenting the key trends in the last 15 years this study focuses on the implementation issues of the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition methods in view of their dominance in ida in recent years eight lmdi models are presented and their origin decomposition formulae and strengths and weaknesses are summarized guidelines on the choice among these models are provided to assist users in implementation

volatility spillover between oil and agricultural commodity markets abstract this study examines volatility transmission between oil and selected agricultural commodity prices wheat corn soybeans and sugar we apply the newly developed causality in variance test and impulse response functions to daily data from 01 january 1986 to 21 march 2011 in order to identify the impact of the food price crisis the data are divided into two sub periods the pre crisis period 01 january 1986 to 31 december 2005 and the post crisis period 01 january 2006 21 march 2011 the variance causality test shows that while there is no risk transmission between oil and agricultural commodity markets in the pre crisis period oil market volatility spills on the agricultural markets with the exception of sugar in the post crisis period the impulse response analysis also indicates that a shock to oil price volatility is transmitted to agricultural markets only in the post crisis period this paper thereby shows that the dynamics of volatility transmission changes significantly following the food price crisis after the crisis risk transmission emerges as another dimension of the dynamic interrelationships between energy and agricultural markets

grain price and volatility transmission from international to domestic markets in developing countries summary understanding the sources of domestic food price volatility in developing countries and the extent to which it is transmitted from international to domestic markets is critical to help design better global regional and domestic policies to cope with excessive food price volatility and to protect the most vulnerable groups this paper examines short term price and volatility transmission from major grain commodities to 41 domestic food products across 27 countries in africa latin america and south asia we follow a multivariate garch approach to model the dynamics of monthly price return volatility in international and domestic markets the period of analysis is 2000 through 2013 in terms of price transmission we only observe significant interactions from international to domestic markets in few cases to calculate volatility spillovers we simulate a shock equivalent to a 1 increase in the conditional volatility of price returns in the international market and evaluate its effect on the conditional volatility of price returns in the domestic market the transmission of volatility is statistically significant in just one quarter of the maize markets tested more than half of rice markets tested and all wheat markets tested volatility transmission seems to be more common when trade imports or exports are large relatively to domestic requirements

ethanol and trade an analysis of price transmission in the us market abstract this paper examines the price transmission mechanisms between domestic ethanol and imported ethanol in the us market using a multivariate johansen approach the data and model support one cointegrating relationship between the prices of domestically produced ethanol imported ethanol and other relevant products gasoline crude oil and corn the rejection of weak exogeneity of the imported ethanol price and corn price implies that these two prices would adjust to changes in the price linkage those empirical findings indicate that the impact of eliminating trade barriers on the imported ethanol price would spillover to the domestic ethanol price and subsequently to corn price

imbalance in europe s effort sharing decision scope for strengthening incentives for energy savings in the non ets sectors abstract europe s 2020 greenhouse gas ghg reduction target consists of two sub targets one for the emissions trading scheme ets sectors and one for the non ets sectors the non ets target covers co 2 emissions in buildings transport and non ets industry and non co 2 ghg emissions the non ets target is known as europe s effort sharing decision this article discusses the gdp per capita method the european commission has applied in setting member state specific targets for the non ets the effort sharing and shows that it results in an imbalanced reduction effort among the member states it turns out that the principal mechanism of the gdp per capita method low gdp countries get room to catch up with high gdp countries by allowing them to increase emissions is obscured by the non co 2 ghgs the baseline projections of which are highly policy induced and not correlated with the growth of gdp per capita we propose an alternative method that 1 corrects for the policy induced decrease of non co 2 ghg emissions and 2 is based on energy savings potentials this approach could be used in future target setting for non ets sectors including in the case that the overarching eu wide target would be strengthened and would provide a direct support to europe s energy savings ambitions and policies

a theory of trade policy under dictatorship and democratization abstract this paper develops a new model of trade policy under dictatorship and democratization the paper makes two contributions one is to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between political institutions and economic efficiency by studying the endogenous interaction between the form of government and trade policy the paper s second contribution is to show how a dictatorship can manipulate trade policy to maintain its grip on power in the face of permanent world price shocks thus opening the door to a re examination of trade policy responses to technology shocks the model is used to explain an interesting episode of trade policymaking between 1815 and 1846 during which time britain substantially liberalized trade while prussia on the other side of the grain market significantly increased protectionism

the roles of inter fuel substitution and inter market contagion in driving energy prices evidences from china s coal market abstract coal has been dominating energy supply and consumption in china with the country becoming the largest energy supplier and consumer worldwide due to inter fuel substitution of crude oil and inter market contagion of international coal market china s coal price might be interrelated with crude oil price and international coal price however the precise roles of these two effects in determining china s coal price are unknown this paper contributes to previous literature by investigating this issue we find that co movements between china s coal price and crude oil price largely hinge on the shares of oil and coal in china s energy mix while its co movements with international coal price depend on scales of coal trade inter fuel substitution dominated the interaction of china s coal market with other energy types but the importance of inter market contagion has been increasing we also find that china might have become an originator for driving the returns of crude oil and international coal in particular after 2008 furthermore china s coal market is still a net volatility recipient for shocks from both crude oil market and international coal market given the increased integration of global energy markets we anticipate this paper to provide a better understanding on the dynamic changes in china s coal prices

fossil fuel price uncertainty and feedstock edible oil prices evidence from mgarch m and virf analysis abstract this paper focuses on examining the impact of crude oil price volatility on the price changes of major edible oils rapeseed soybean and sunflower which are the main feedstock for the biodiesel industry in the european union for this purpose a four variate version of non diagonal garch in mean model that allows for asymmetry in the variance covariance matrix is used an important conclusion that emerges from this study is that the crude oil price uncertainty appears to be responsible for a significant decline in price returns of major feedstock edible oils considered in this study the volatility impulse response analyses support the conclusion that the conditional variances of both edible and crude oil and covariances between them are generally highly responsive to historical shock however the size of the impacts is mainly commodity specific finally we investigate the causality from crude oil price volatility to edible oil prices and the effects of oil price shocks on edible oil prices by using the granger causality test and generalized impulse response function analysis respectively the empirical results show that there is strong evidence of causality from crude oil price volatility to all edible oil prices under study and generalized impulse response analysis shows that the edible oil markets significantly respond to the shocks in oil prices

dynamic spillovers among major energy and cereal commodity prices abstract over the past decade the sharp increases in the prices of oil and agricultural commodities have raised serious concerns about the heightened volatility of these markets and the possible negative interactions between them this article deals with the dynamic return and volatility spillovers across international energy and cereal commodity markets it also examines the impacts of three types of opec news announcements on the volatility spillovers and persistence in these markets for this purpose we make use of the var bekk garch and var dcc garch models for the daily spot prices of eight major commodities including wti oil europe brent oil gasoline heating oil barley corn sorghum and wheat our results provide evidence of significant linkages between these energy and cereal markets moreover the opec news announcements are found to exert influence on the oil markets as well as on the oil cereal relationships finally we show that the persistence of volatility decreases increases for the crude oil and heating oil gasoline returns after accounting for the opec announcements in these multivariate garch models however the results are more mixed for the cereal markets overall our results can be used to improve the risk adjusted performance by having more diversified portfolios and also serve to hedge the oil risk more effectively