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

the long run relationship between productivity and capital abstract using panel cointegration techniques we show a cointegrating relationship exists between capital and productivity in 446 manufacturing industries panel dols and fmols estimates reveal that innovations to productivity increase and granger cause capital movements

renewable energy partnerships in development cooperation towards a relational understanding of technical assistance abstract recent decades have witnessed a surge in international programmes established to assist the adoption of renewable energy technologies rets in low and lower middle income countries so far such programmes have yielded mixed success while partnerships between international national and local organisations have become the pre eminent model for ret programmes we know relatively little about their contribution this article traces the role of renewable energy partnerships in development cooperation shifting the analytical emphasis from barriers and drivers to key actors and their relationships it presents a relational approach for the analysis of development assistance for renewable energy drawing on theories concerning the role of strong and weak ties in inter organisational networks through an analysis of seven empirical cases from central america the article provides insights into how different forms of inter organisational relationships can facilitate implementation of ret programmes but do not necessarily enhance the capacities of local organisations in a way to support a more sustainable adoption of rets on the basis of this analysis theoretical and policy implications are given concerning the potential of relational approaches for researching technology diffusion processes and the role of strong and weak ties for the success or failure of renewable energy partnerships

the environmental consequences of globalization a country specific time series analysis abstract the dynamic relationships among trade income and the environment for developed and developing countries are examined using a cointegration analysis results suggest that trade and income growth tend to increase environmental quality in developed countries whereas they have detrimental effects on environmental quality in most developing countries it is also found that for developed countries the causal relationship appears to run from trade and income to the environment a change in trade and income growth causes a consequent change in environmental quality for most developing countries on the other hand the causality is found to run from the environment to trade and income however the opposite causal relationship holds for china

how strong is the causal relationship between globalization and energy consumption in developed economies a country specific time series and panel analysis we examine the causal relationship between globalization economic growth and energy consumption for 25 developed economies using both time series and panel data techniques for the period 1970 2014 due to the presence of cross sectional dependence in the panel countries from asia north america western europe and oceania we employ the pesaran 2007 cips test to ascertain unit root properties the westerlund 2007 cointegration test indicates the presence of a long run association between globalization economic growth and energy consumption long run heterogeneous panel elasticities are estimated through the pesaran 2006 common correlated effects mean group cmg estimator and the eberhardt and teal 2010 augmented mean group amg estimator the causality between the variables is examined via dumitrescu and hurlin 2012 and emirmahmutoglu and kose 2011 granger causality tests the empirical results reveal that for most countries globalization increases energy consumption in the usa and uk globalization is negatively correlated with energy consumption the causality analysis indicates the presence of the globalization driven energy consumption hypothesis this empirical analysis suggests insightful policy guidelines for policy makers using globalization as an economic tool to utilize energy efficiently for sustainable economic development in the long run

institutional solutions to the asymmetric information problem in health and development services for the poor summary the world s poorest pay for professional services and thus are in a market whether the services are provided in the public or private sectors the associated problems of unequal information are particularly acute in undergoverned countries where state regulation is weak we systematically review the evidence on solutions to these problems in a variety of professions payments by clients are more likely to have a positive effect on quality if they are made through locally managed organizations rather than directly to individual practitioners particularly if those organizations have an institutionalized history of other regarding values and incorporate client participation

is trade good or bad for the environment sorting out the causality we seek to contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment by asking what is the effect of trade on a country s environment for a given level of gdp we take specific account of the endogeneity of trade using exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables we find that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution statistical significance is high for concentrations of so2 moderate for no2 and lacking for particulate matter although results for other environmental measures are not as encouraging there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment

the toxic intensity of industrial production global patterns trends and trade policy this paper exploits a newly developed data set to investigate recent changes in the international distribution of industrial pollution in particular the authors examine three issues 1 the relationship between the toxic intensity of industrial production and the level of economic development 2 the impact of oecd environmental regulation on global changes in toxic intensity and 3 the relationship between trade policy and the toxic intensity of industrial production in ldc s 10 refs

a step back as donors shift institution building from the public to the private sector abstract frustrated with public sectors in developing countries donors have shifted support to nonprofit nongovernmental organizations this paper questions the preferability of the nonprofit or public sector from the donor and host country perspectives case study experience from agriculture and natural resource institutions in ecuador and the dominican republic is presented to expand upon current thinking about the role of the nonprofit sector nonprofits are found to possess substantially increased flexibility for donor purposes and avoid many of the pitfalls of the political process they are however subject to free rider problems and bear no responsibility to the general public

an investigation of co integration and causality between energy consumption and economic activity in taiwan applying hsiao a version of the granger causality method this paper examines the causality between energy and gnp and energy and employment by applying recently developed techniques of co integration and hsiao s version of the granger causality to taiwanese data for the 1955 1993 period the phillips perron tests reveal that the series with the exception of gnp are not stationary and therefore differencing is performed to secure stationarity the study finds causality running from gdp to energy consumption without feedback in taiwan it is also found that causality runs from gdp to energy but not vice versa

environmental kuznets curve for co2 emissions the case of arctic countries abstract the main new contribution of this paper is to examine the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis using time series data at individual country levels empirical focus is on the assessment of income per capita on co 2 emissions in the arctic countries by taking into account the role of energy consumption an autoregressive distributed lag ardl modeling approach to cointegration is applied to annual data for the period 1960 2010 the results provide little evidence of the existence of the ekc hypothesis for the arctic countries we also find that economic growth has a beneficial effect on the environment only in some arctic countries finally energy consumption is found to have a detrimental effect on the environment in most countries

the pollution concern in the era of globalization do the contribution of foreign direct investment and trade openness matter abstract this analysis aims to treat the contribution of the foreign direct investment inflows and trade openness to environmental degradation drawing on the data for 27 african countries over the period from 1990 to 2013 we develop an empirical model based on a set of panel methods this approach includes westerlund 2007 panel cointegration technic common correlated effects mean group cce mg estimation procedure and the granger causality test in terms of long term causality our findings reveal bidirectional long term causality between co2 nox emissions gdp trade openness and foreign direct investment besides in the short run the results recorded a unidirectional causality running from gdp to co2 and from fdi to co2 however bidirectional causality nexus was detected between trade openness and co2 additionally the findings portray bidirectional causality between gdp and nox and between trade openness and nox while a unidirectional causality from foreign direct investment to nox our analysis substantiates the importance of the foreign direct investment inflows and trade openness in mitigating the adverse effect of heavy pollutant activities and resolving the environmental puzzle growing without polluting consistent with the millennium development goals mgds of the un background

convergence or convenience international conservation ngos and development assistance in tanzania abstract international conservation ngos and development agencies have historically operated independently of one another recently their agendas have converged to consider both environmental and human needs with an emerging focus on private sector involvement in conservation new funding from international finance institutions has become available for ngo initiatives and today there is little difference between the environmental strategies of international development agencies and those of the major conservation ngos operating in tanzania while this is due in part to independent shifts in both sectors ngos may also be serving to carry out and legitimate the neoliberal policies of development institutions

trade openness and environmental quality international evidence we examine the relationship between trade openness and the environment in a cross country panel using the emission of particulate matter pm10 as the basic indicator of environmental quality the panel cointegration test results show a long run relationship between particulate matter emissions trade openness and economic growth we find that increased trade openness leads to environmental degradation for the global sample however the results differ according to the income of countries trade openness has a benign effect on the environment in high income countries but a harmful effect in middle and low income countries these results are generally robust to different measures of trade openness and environmental quality interestingly and significantly the results are consistent with the popular notion that rich countries dump their pollution on poor countries finally we find evidence of a feedback effect between trade openness and particulate matter emissions for the global sample as well as different income groups of countries

the impact of energy trade patterns on co2 emissions an emergy and network analysis abstract fossil fuel is considered to be the major cause of co2 emissions and it flows across countries through the international energy trade in this paper we analyse the impact of energy trade patterns on co2 emissions for a global sample from 2000 to 2014 we construct an international fossil fuel trade network based on emergy theory and calculate some corresponding structural parameters then we systematically evaluate the impact of energy trade on co2 emissions from the trade volume and trade relationships perspectives we obtain the following results 1 trade strength mainly affects co2 emissions through the scale effect composition effect and technique effect 2 trade security and trade centre status of one country will significantly affect co2 emissions 3 for high economic level he countries concentrating the trade volume on several finite countries will destroy the environment low economic level le countries that are proximal to the important countries of the energy market will experience an increase in pollution this research also discusses some implications for policy makers

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

is economic growth good or bad for the environment empirical evidence from korea abstract the effects of economic growth on the environment in korea for a given level of energy consumption and fossil fuels and nuclear energy in electricity production are examined in a dynamic cointegration framework to that end the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach is used we find empirical evidence supporting the existence of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for korea that is economic growth indeed plays a favorable role in influencing environmental outcomes it is also found that in both the short and long run nuclear energy has a beneficial effect on environmental quality whereas fossil fuels in electricity production and energy consumption have a detrimental effect on the environment

the returns to r d in tobin q models and the option value of future r d abstract this paper argues that the tobin q literature under estimates the r d stock used by investors in calculating market values and significantly over estimates the returns to r d thereby questioning the conclusion that there is private under investment in r d

how economic growth renewable electricity and natural resources contribute to co2 emissions abstract this study explores the relationship between economic growth and co2 emissions in the so called european union 5 eu 5 countries germany france italy spain and the united kingdom for the 1985 2016 period in doing so we employ a carbon emission function to investigate the environmental kuznets curve phenomenon which describes a relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation the empirical results confirm the existence of an n shaped relationship between economic growth and co2 emissions in the eu 5 countries we incorporate additional variables such as renewable electricity consumption trade openness natural resource abundance and energy innovation to augment the carbon emission function renewable electricity consumption natural resources and energy innovation improve environmental quality while trade openness and the interaction between economic growth and renewable electricity consumption exert a positive impact on co2 emissions this study is novel in that it presents an interaction between economic growth and renewable electricity consumption we also confirm the need for renewable energy regulations related to increasing renewable sources and promoting energy innovation to reduce the negative effects of energy and fossil energy resources on environmental degradation

investigation of the environmental kuznets curve for carbon emissions in malaysia do foreign direct investment and trade matter abstract environmental degradation has become a central issue of discussion among the economists and environmentalists in view of malaysia s position as one of the main contributors to co2 emissions in asia and its status as a fast growing economy it is vital therefore to conduct a study to identify the relationship between economic growth and co2 emissions for malaysia this study attempts to examine empirically the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for malaysia in the presence of foreign direct investment and trade openness both in the short and long run for the period 1970 to 2008 the bounds testing approach and granger causality methodology are applied to test the interrelationships of the variables the results of our study indicate that the inverted u shaped relationship does exist between economic growth and co2 emission in both the short and long run for malaysia after controlling for two additional explanatory variables namely fdi and trade importantly the results of the study also provide some crucial policy recommendations to the policy makers

energy and economic growth in the usa a multivariate approach abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between gdp and energy use for the period 1947 90 in the usa the relationship between energy use and economic growth has been examined by both biophysical and neoclassical economists in particular several studies have tested for the presence of a causal relationship in the granger sense between energy use and economic growth however these tests do not allow a direct test of the relative explanatory powers of the neoclassical and biophysical models a multivariate adaptation of the test vector autoregression var does allow such a test a var of gdp energy use capital stock and employment is estimated and granger tests for causal relationships between the variables are carried out although there is no evidence that gross energy use granger causes gdp a measure of final energy use adjusted for changing fuel composition does granger cause gdp

trade openness carbon emissions nexus the importance of turning points of trade openness for country panels abstract this paper explores the relationship between trade openness and co 2 emissions by incorporating economic growth as an additional and potential determinant of this relationship for three groups of 105 high middle and low income countries we apply the pedroni 1999 and westerlund 2007 panel cointegration tests and find that the three variables are cointegrated in the long run trade openness impedes environmental quality for the global high income middle and low income panels but the impact varies in these diverse groups of countries the panel vecm causality results highlight a feedback effect between trade openness and carbon emissions at the global level and the middle income countries but trade openness granger causes co 2 emissions for the high income and low income countries policy implications are also provided

is the income elasticity of environmental improvements less than one we estimated the income elasticity of environmental improvements for a number of european data sets the value of this parameter is consistently found to be less than one with few exceptions our findings are compared with state of the art contingent valuation studies from other countries we also compared our findings with those reported in the literature on charitable donations and corporate donations these studies show a similar pattern donations decrease as a percentage of income as income increases

aid allocation by german ngos does the degree of official financing matter using a new data set for 41 german non governmental organisations ngos we analyse the allocation of ngo aid across recipient countries in a tobit regression framework by identifying for each ngo the degree of official financing we address the largely unresolved issue of whether financial dependence on the government impairs the targeting of ngo aid it turns out that german ngos are more active in poorer countries while they do not complement official aid by working under difficult local conditions beyond a certain threshold rising financial dependence weakens their poverty orientation and provides an incentive to engage in easier environments in addition we find that the ngos follow the state as well as ngo peers when allocating aid this herding behaviour is however hardly affected by the degree of official financing

a note on the causal relationship between energy and gdp in taiwan abstract this paper re examines the causality between energy consumption and gdp by using updated taiwan data for the period 1954 1997 as a secondary contribution we investigate the causal relationship between gdp and the aggregate as well as several disaggregate categories of energy consumption including coal oil natural gas and electricity applying granger s technique we find bidirectional causality between total energy consumption and gdp we find further that different directions of cause exist between gdp and various kinds of energy consumption

intangible capital aspects of advertising and r d expenditures twenty years have passed since economists first emphasized the intangible capital aspects of advertising according to this view consumers tend to forget brands and continuous advertising is needed to maintain a given rate of sales thus advertising expenditures can be viewed as a capital good that depreciates over time and needs maintenance and repair 22 p 197 more recently weiss 25 among others has suggested that research and development r d costs might also be capitalized as such expenditures yield benefits mainly in the future 25 p 421 unfortunately most analyses of the intangible capital issue have been limited to advertising largely because no comprehensive data on r d were available until quite recently however important recent theoretical contributions on the topic and improvements in data availability now make it possible more completely to consider the intangible capital aspects of both advertising and r d expenditures here the intangible capital issue is investigated through use of a market valuation model in this approach significant future intangible capital effects of advertising and r d are suggested to the extent that current expenditures have significant effects on the market value of the firm given positive market value influences individual coefficient estimates can be used to estimate both the total stock of intangible capital as well as average annual depreciation rates for advertising and r d while these depreciation rate estimates are interfirm averages and undoubtedly err in individual instances they can be quite useful in indicating the general magnitude of corporate profit and tax misstatement due to current reporting and tax policies in section i below various articles closely related to this study are reviewed section ii develops a valuation model embodying intangible capital considerations the data are discussed in section iii and estimation results are presented in section iv and finally conclusions and implications for public policy are discussed in section v

ngo performance what breeds success new evidence from south asia abstract what is the best way for nongovernment organisations ngos to make a lasting impact on poverty this paper summarizes the findings of recent research into the impact sustainability and cost effectiveness of two ngos in india and two projects implemented by save the children fund uk in bangladesh the factors determining performance are explored through the interaction of organizational decisions with the external context although these interactions are complex and dynamic some clear conclusions emerge making a difference to livelihoods and capacities among poor people depends on ngo successes in fostering autonomous grassroots institutions and linking them with markets and political structures at higher levels these conclusions question the current predilection among donor agencies to fund large scale ngo service delivery

causality between income and emission a country group specific econometric analysis abstract empirical studies of the environmental kuznets curve ekc examine the presence or otherwise of an inverted u shaped relationship between the level of pollution and the level of income customarily in the diagram of ekc the level of income is shown on the horizontal axis and that of pollution on the vertical axis thus it is presumed that the relationship between income and pollution is one of unidirectional causality with income causing environmental changes and not vice versa the validity of this presumption is now being questioned it is being asserted that the nature and direction of causality may vary from one country to the other in this paper we present the results of a study of income co 2 emission causality based on a granger causality test to cross country panel data on per capita income and the corresponding per capita co 2 emission data briefly our results indicate three different types of causality relationship holding for different country groups for the developed country groups of north america and western europe and also for eastern europe the causality is found to run from emission to income for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan causality from income to emission is obtained finally for the country groups of asia and africa the causality is found to be bi directional the regression equations estimated as part of the granger causality test further suggest that for the country groups of north america and western europe the growth rate of emission has become stationary around a zero mean and a shock in the growth rate of emission tends to generate a corresponding shock in the growth rate of income in contrast for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan a shock in the income growth rate is likely to result in a corresponding shock in the growth rate of emission finally causality being bi directional for the country groups of asia and africa the income and the emission growth rates seemed to reinforce each other

cointegration how short is the long run abstract when testing for cointegration and faced with short sample periods it is common for researchers to turn to more frequently sampled observations that is to move from annual to quarterly or monthly data in order to increase the number of observations we argue that such a gain in the degrees of freedom is more apparent than real essentially cointegration is a long run concept and hence requires long spans of data to give tests for cointegration much power rather than merely large numbers of observations using monte carlo simulations we demonstrate this for four popular tests for cointegration

carbon dioxide emissions and trade evidence from disaggregate trade data abstract the relationship between trade and environmental quality is a major controversial issue the paper intends to provide robust evidence and new insights into the discussion specifically it examines the effect of trade on carbon dioxide emissions co2 systematically in a north north north south south north and south south context it employs a panel data instrumental variable quantile approach to control for endogeneity and account for potential quantile parameter heterogeneity some important results emerge first trade with the north increases co2 emissions whereas trade with the south mitigates co2 emissions with a relatively larger effect for less polluted host countries second for advanced countries their trade with the south or the north leads to a reduction in co2 emissions the effect that seems relatively stronger for less polluted advanced countries third for developing countries their trade with the north worsens co2 emissions whereas their trade with the south mitigates co2 emissions with a larger effect for less polluted developing countries last the environmental kuznets hypothesis is also detected across quantiles for the full sample and both developing and advanced countries subsamples the findings suggest that trade benefits the advanced countries but could hurt the developing countries when trade with high income trading partners occurs in terms of co2 emissions

a multivariate cointegration analysis of the role of energy in the us macroeconomy abstract this paper extends my previous analysis of the causal relationship of gdp and energy use in the usa in the post war period a majority of the relevant variables are integrated justifying a cointegration analysis the results show that cointegration does occur and that energy input cannot be excluded from the cointegration space the results are plausible in terms of macroeconomic dynamics the results are similar to my previous granger causality results and contradict claims in the literature based on bivariate models that there is no cointegration between energy and output

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

the impact of economic globalization on renewable energy in the oecd countries abstract this paper analyzes the determinants of renewable energy consumption in the panel data of 30 oecd countries for the period from 1970 to 2015 the unique role is given to the effect of economic globalization on renewable energy we consider several measures of economic globalization and apply different econometric techniques we find the positive impact of the per capita income the per capita carbon dioxide emissions and the real price of oil on renewable energy also a higher level of economic globalization promotes renewable energy and the evidence is robust to the different measures of economic globalization in line with our findings promoting the economic aspects of globalization will enhance renewable energy thus it can suppress the adverse effect of climate change and global warming on living human beings and natural habitats in the long run therefore we need to enhance our knowledge of how globalization promotes renewable energy not only for the oecd countries but also for other developing and developed economies from a policy perspective we suggest that policymakers and governments in oced countries should consider economic globalization as a renewable energy promoting mechanism while designing their energy demand policy for the protection of natural environmental health

aid allocation through various official and private channels need merit and self interest as motives of german donors summary the previous literature largely ignores the heterogeneity of aid channels used by each single donor country we estimate tobit models to assess the relative importance of recipient need merit and self interest of donors for various channels of official and private german aid across a large sample of recipient countries in 2005 07 our findings underscore the need for a disaggregated analysis of aid allocation aid channels differ significantly in the extent to which need and merit are taken into account yet the german case does not reveal unambiguously superior aid channels

aid delivery through non governmental organisations does the aid channel matter for the targeting of swedish aid this paper analyses whether aid channelled through non governmental organisations ngos is less affected by selfish donor motivations and better targeted to needy recipient countries than aid distributed by state agencies we employ tobit and probit models and make use of an exceptionally detailed database that allows an assessment of the allocation of swedish aid channelled through ngos in comparison to the allocation of swedish official aid our analysis provides mixed results on the one hand ngos appear to be altruistic as far as available indicators on political and commercial motivations of aid can tell on the other hand needs based targeting of aid by ngos turns out to be surprisingly weak gdp per capita of recipient countries shapes the allocation of official aid but not that of aid channelled through ngos the headcount of absolute poverty has a significantly positive effect on aid allocation but its impact is not particularly strong when ngos are involved overall the swedish case supports the sceptical view that ngos are not necessarily superior donors compared to state aid agencies

keeping a low profile what determines the allocation of aid by non governmental organizations ngos play an important role in international development cooperation but the allocation of ngo aid has rarely been mapped let alone explained based on a representative dataset for 61 important ngos from various oecd countries we analyze the targeting of ngo aid across a large number of recipient countries by jointly considering major determinants of ngo aid in a multivariate regression framework while our results show that ngos are more active in the neediest countries we reject the hypothesis that ngos complement official aid through engaging in so called difficult institutional environments rather they tend to replicate the location choices of official backdonors moreover ngos follow other ngos so that aid gets clustered finally ngos select recipient countries with common traits related to religion or colonial history taken together our findings suggest that ngos keep a low profile rather than distinguishing themselves from other donors and trying to excel under risky conditions

corporations and ngos when accountability leads to co optation interactions between corporations and nonprofits are on the rise frequently driven by a corporate interest in establishing credentials for corporate social responsibility csr in this article we show how increasing demands for accountability directed at both businesses and ngos can have the unintended effect of compromising the autonomy of nonprofits and fostering their co optation greater scrutiny of ngo spending driven by self appointed watchdogs of the nonprofit sector and a prevalence of strategic notions of csr advanced by corporate actors weaken the ability of civil society actors to change the business practices of their partners in the commercial sector to counter this trend we argue that corporations should embrace a political notion of csr and should actively encourage ngos to strengthen downward accountability mechanisms even if this creates more tensions in corporate ngo partnerships rather than seeing ngos as tools in a competition for a comparative advantage in the market place corporations should actively support ngo independence and critical capacity

the environmental consequences of trade evidence from subnational trade flows abstract the debate over the environmental consequences of free trade is not only quite heated but also entails significant policy ramifications recently cross sectional analysis at the country level has made use of exogenous determinants of trade to identify the causal effect of trade on the environment finding moderate evidence of a beneficial impact of expanded trade on environmental quality given the stakes involved we revisit this finding using subnational data on trade flows across us states and several measures of pollution not only does the analysis shed further light on the debate at the international level but also addresses a heretofore unexamined question does greater inter regional commerce at the subnational level harm the environment our findings are striking providing further evidence against a negative environmental impact of trade for the majority of measures analyzed however several sources of heterogeneity arise that are noteworthy

market value r d and patents abstract a significant relationship is found between the market value of the firm and its intangible capital proxied by past r d expenditures and the number of patents based on a time series cross section analysis of data for large u s firms

a dynamic demand model for liquor the case for pooling this paper estimates a dynamic demand model for liquor in the united states using panel data from 43 states because of taste changes over time and between states in liquor consumption purely time series or cross sectional studies do not elicit reliable price elasticity estimates this study makes the case for pooling and shows how one can control for individual state effects and endogeneity of the regressors using estimators suited for a dynamic demand model our results indicate that the long run price elasticity is in the 0 7 range the findings also support strong habit persistence a small positive income elasticity and very weak evidence of bootlegging from adjoining states the magnitude of the long run price effect suggests that sin taxes can serve not only as an important income source but also as a significant deterrent effect copyright 1995 by mit press

the curse of the haven the impact of multinational enterprise on environmental regulation abstract we analyze the behavior of multinational enterprises in the context of resource rich and poor countries and regarding high and low income countries we depart from the pollution haven hypothesis and the resource curse the pollution haven hypothesis states that multinational enterprises move their dirty operations to countries with weak environmental regulation the resource curse holds that economic growth in countries abundant in natural resources is reduced we find that more polluting firms are relatively more often located in countries with weak environmental regulation however multinational enterprises do not have a significant impact on environmental regulation in the host country it appears that it is mainly the quality of institutions that drives both the pollution haven and the resource curse

brothers in alms coordination between nonprofits on markets for donations mission driven nonprofit organizations compete for donations through fundraising activities such competition can lead to inefficient outcomes if nonprofits impose externalities on each others output this paper studies the sustainability of fundraising coordination agreements using a game theoretic model of coalition formation we show that three key characteristics determine the stability of cooperation between nonprofits i the alliance formation rule ii the extent to which fundraising efforts are strategic complements substitutes and iii whether deviation from the agreements is by an individual or by a group of nonprofits we analyze how the interaction of these three features induces or not the stability of pareto optimal full coordination in fundraising

the relationship between energy consumption energy prices and economic growth time series evidence from asian developing countries this paper estimates the causal relationships between energy consumption and income for india indonesia the philippines and thailand using cointegration and error correction modelling techniques the results indicate that in the short run unidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for india and indonesia while bidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for thailand and the philippines in the case of thailand and the philippines energy income and prices are mutually causal the study results do not support the view that energy and income are neutral with respect to each other with the exception of indonesia and india where neutrality is observed in the short run c 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classifications c22 q43 q48

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

does trade liberalization harm the environment a new test recent events such as the nafta and the completion of the uruguay round have raised concern over the impact of trade liberalization on the environment in particular it is believed that less stringent environmental standards in developing countries will give them a comparative advantage in pollutionintensive goods using single equation models existing empirical studies have found either no relationship between environment and trade flows or a positive relationship between trade liberalization and the environment this paper develops a simultaneous equations model to estimate this relationship directly incorporating the effects of openness on growth of income and of income growth on environmental damage a two good trade model with endogenous factor supply is estimated using pooled provincial data on chinese water pollution from 1987 1995 estimation of this model reveals that trade liberalization directly aggravates environmental damage via its influence on the terms of trade but indirectly mitigates it via its effect on income growth simulations suggest that trade reform during the period may have had a net beneficial impact on emissions growth

the relationship between the income elasticities of demand and willingness to pay abstract the relationship between income and willingness to pay for collectively provided public environmental goods is investigated we show that while the income elasticity of willingness to pay and the ordinary income elasticity of demand are related knowledge of one is insufficient to determine the magnitude or even the sign of the other the income elasticity of willingness to pay is influenced by additional factors which are generally unobservable examples are provided to illustrate the degree to which the two income elasticities may diverge our results indicate that even when goods are demand luxuries they may or may not have income elasticities of willingness to pay which are greater than one

the politics of government ngo relations in africa abstract non governmental organizations ngos deservedly or not have gained a reputation as the leading practitioners of rural development in africa african governments have responded ambiguously to the presence of these new agencies on the one hand valuing the economic resources ngos can raise but resisting the political pluralization implied by popular development action this article describes the growth of ngos in africa and proposes a framework for analyzing the dynamics of government ngo relations by means of examples drawn from kenya and zimbabwe among other african countries the article illustrates the strategies used by governments to exercise control and by ngos to assert autonomy an argument is made that politics rather than economics best explain the contribution of ngos to development as well as the attitude of governments toward the burgeoning voluntary sector

too close for comfort the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations abstract in promoting a new policy agenda bilateral and multilateral donor agencies are keen to finance nongovernmental organisations ngos and grassroots organizations gros on the grounds of their economic efficiency and contribution to good governance this paper reviews the impact of this trend on ngo gro programming performance legitimacy and accountability if finds that much of the case for emphasizing the role of ngos gros rests on ideological grounds rather than empirical verification in addition though the evidence is inconclusive there are signs that greater dependence on official funding may compromise ngo gro performance in key areas distort accountability and weaken legitimacy

us based ngos in international development financial and economic determinants of survival summary the accountability of non governmental organizations ngos has various dimensions from an economic perspective official financiers private donors as well as aid recipients could expect more charitable output from ngos if less efficient organizations were squeezed out of international development activities we consider administrative overheads as an important aspect of ngo efficiency our empirical analysis focuses on the effects of administrative overheads public funding and the interrelations between these two factors on the probability of market exit for almost 900 us based ngos with overseas aid activities since the mid 1980s we find that larger administrative overheads increase the probability of exit for ngos receiving any public funding however this effect weakens with increasing shares of public funding of ngos

is corporate aid targeted to poor and deserving countries a case study of nestle s aid allocation summary empirical evidence on the targeting of private aid is largely lacking even though corporate donors are an increasingly important source of aid we contribute to closing this gap by performing a case study of nestle the allocation of nestle s aid is compared to that of swiss oda and ngo aid testing for both altruistic and selfish aid motivations we conclude that nestle s aid clearly lacks focus in terms of targeting poor countries which appears to be the downside of the strong link between commercial presence and aid moreover according to our tobit estimations nestle grants more aid to recipient countries with stronger democratic but also more corrupt institutions

what ever happened to poverty alleviation abstract the failure of many programs directed toward alleviating poverty is better understood than the successes this paper identifies the traits that characterize several better performing programs funded by the ford foundation traits that are not commonly found in such programs all focused narrowly on a particular trade or activity in the beginning used credit as an entry point started by brokering loans rather than lending directly and had leadership linked to powerful institutions participants were already engaged in the economic activities supported by the programs marketing channels existed and powerful consumer groups were often in favor of production by beneficiary groups though these findings seem obvious few programs funded by donors display these characteristics suggesting that donors choose programs and organizations more carefully and not limit their funding to the nongovernmental sector

more dollars than sense refining our knowledge of development finance using aiddata summary in this introductory essay to the special issue we introduce a new dataset of foreign assistance aiddata that covers more bilateral and multilateral donors and more types of aid than existing datasets while also improving project level information about the purposes and activities funded by aid we utilize that data to provide a brief overview of important trends in foreign aid contributors to this special issue draw on aiddata as well as other sources to analyze aid transparency new donors not previously described or analyzed aid allocation and aid effectiveness our recurring theme in this introductory essay is that aiddata and these initial academic projects refine rather than revolutionize our understanding of aid the database has added significant numbers of new projects dollar amounts donors and details about those projects though there is much more yet to add we worry that aid debates have been driven by too little information and that many claims are based on limited or very poor evidence rectifying these problems will not be instantaneous refining knowledge takes a lot of time and hard work the common feature of the papers in this special issue is their careful attention to nuance and detail in spite of what some recent authors have claimed aid is neither a simple solution nor a sufficient cause of most problems in developing countries its motivations distribution and effects are complex and shifting capturing this complexity requires detailed data careful thought and sophisticated methods that allow scholars to make conditional causal and descriptive inferences 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

grassroots organizations and ngos in rural development opportunities with diminishing states and expanding markets abstract this article undertakes to deal systematically with nongovernment organizations ngos and grassroots organizations gros usually treated as a residual category ten levels for development decision making and action are identified in the tradition of central place theory three of these are considered local or grassroots because of their collective action possibilities then three sectors are delineated instead of the usual two ngos are part of the collective action sector which differs from the public and private sectors in theoretically consistent ways a careful distinction is made between institutions and organizations usually conflated in the literature examples of accelerated rural development through grassroots organizations and ngos are discussed form asia africa and latin america