politics growth and inequality in rural china does it pay to join the party abstract economic reform is often constrained because rank and file bureaucrats responsible for implementation have vested interests that oppose change drawing on an unusual longitudinal survey data set for a representative rural county in northern china we show an alternative positive scenario consistent with the presence of an implicit performance based incentive contract that ties the household incomes of local officials to market liberalization increases in consumer demand and the provision of local public goods the mechanisms appear to be tolerated as the fruits of growth are shared fairly equitably thus allowing implementation of a politically and economically self reinforcing reform process

sources of aggregate labour productivity growth in canada and the united states abstract in this paper we propose a decomposition technique to examine the sources of industrial contribution to aggregate labour productivity growth we show that in terms of pure labour productivity growth the manufacturing and service sectors contributed equally to the aggregate canada u s labour productivity growth gap during the 1987 98 period but in terms of total industrial contributions which also take into account the contributions from a change in relative size the service sector was the largest contributor we also find that high labour productivity growth industries did not attract resources from stagnant industries a phenomenon consistent with baumol s cost disease of stagnant industries jel classification o47 c43

insecure property rights and government ownership of firms we develop a theory of the ownership of firms in an environment without secure property rights against state encroachment private ownership leads to excessive revenue hiding and state ownership i e national government ownership fails to provide incentives for managers and local governments in a credible way because local government ownership integrates local government activities and business activities local government may better serve the interests of the national government and thus local government ownership may credibly limit state predation increase local public goods provision and reduce costly revenue hiding we use our theory to interpret the relative success of local government owned firms during china s transition to a market economy

employment and structural impacts of material efficiency strategies results from five case studies abstract in order to come up with a sound assessment of the effects of material efficiency innovations on growth employment and competitiveness different economic mechanisms have to be considered from a methodological point of view the analysis must be able to account for technology specific aspects the employment impacts of five innovations are analyzed plastic and paper recycling increased life span of automobiles car sharing and bio based products time horizons for all strategies are scenarios until 2020 the economic impacts are context specific with regard to innovation technology and country the economic impacts highlight substantial structural adjustments the overall economic net impact on employment tends to be neutral to positive stronger positive economic impacts result if first mover advantages can be established

economic transformation and income inequality in urban china evidence from panel data using panel data of 4 730 urban residents drawn from 20 cities in china this article examines changes in income determinants between the prereform and reform eras to guide this empirical study a conceptual model is developed that emphasizes the coevolution of politics and markets to synthesize theoretical ideas in the recent debate on the transformation of state socialist societies the findings show significant changes in returns to education and in the rise of private hybrid firms in the reform era there is also strong evidence of institutional persistence in returns to positional power and in the organizational hierarchy these findings reveal multifaceted processes of transformation that call for more sophisticated theoretical models and in depth institutional analyses

are cadre offspring in the fast lane evidence from the labour market for college graduates in china this paper studies the impact of having a cadre parent on the labour market performance and channels of the intergenerational transference using a recent data set we find that college graduates w

weak ties information and influence how workers find jobs in a local russian labor market in 1973 granovetter formulated the strength of weak ties hypothesis swt which became the foundation of a vast sociological literature on social networks in labor markets until now swt has neve

locating chinese urban housing policy in an international context china s economic development has often been contrasted with that of other transition economies in europe but academics have fought shy of making direct comparisons of urban housing reform in the two systems this paper fills this gap by making such direct comparisons adopting the market housing model advocated by the world bank as an analytical framework it finds that extensive housing privatisation in china is supported by a system of urban housing property rights and a growing residential mortgage market although china has a distinctive institutional framework there is also much variety among the european transition countries and a distinctive chinese model was not identified so this micro level analysis did not support the contention that china represents a form of contested modernity nonetheless a crucial point arises from china s hybrid status as a developing as well as a transition country the bulk of the urban migrant population remains excluded from formal housing policy and enabling st

a growing trend toward knowledge work in canada abstract this paper answers three questions related to the growing trend toward knowledge occupations in canada i what was the magnitude of the trend between 1971 and 1996 ii was the trend a widespread phenomenon or was it restricted to specific industries iii what are the proximate causes of the trends using five censuses 1971 1981 1986 1991 1996 and the input output i o data the paper provides evidence that the canadian economy is becoming increasingly knowledge based although the upgrading trends differ across knowledge occupations moreover we find that this phenomenon is spread across all industrial sectors finally using a decomposition analysis borrowed from wolff and baumol three factors the substitution effect the productivity lag effect and the demand effect have been examined in order to shed some light on these trends we find that these effects vary according to the nature of the knowledge involved in these different groups of occupations thus reflecting not only the importance of the technological change skill bias but also the increasing complexity of controlling and managing the new economic activities

decomposing industrial co2 emissions of southern european countries into production and consumption based driving factors abstract industry is a leading economic sector in european countries as well as a major carbon emitter european industry has been quite successful in abating the environmental pressures and carbon emissions and increasing its energy efficiency from production over the last years however focusing only on the production side may not lead to the desired sustainable development since there are other forces such as the international trade and consumption patterns which also shape the evolution of industrial co 2 emissions the aim of this study is to investigate how changes in production and consumption of industrial products affect the co 2 emissions of industries in four southern european countries during the period 2000 2011 to this purpose a new model of index decomposition analysis is developed in order to decompose the change in co 2 emissions of the industrial sectors of greece italy spain and portugal moreover the examined period in this study is split into two sub periods 2000 2008 and 2008 2011 in order to investigate the impact of the recent economic crisis on both the driving factors and industrial co 2 emissions the overall evolution of industrial co 2 emissions was quite similar in all the countries and the decomposition results of the two sub periods revealed substantial homogeneity across countries two production based driving factors the economic activity and the energy intensity were the main driving factors which shaped the total change in co 2 emissions of industries in the examined countries the consumption based driving factors contributed mostly to the increase in industrial co 2 emissions but not at the same level as the production based ones furthermore industrial production was more significantly affected by the economic crisis than consumers expenditures the decomposition results performed at a sectoral level revealed that it was difficult for southern european consumers to switch to a more environmentally conscious use of industrial products and their consumption preferences were not significantly affected by the consequences of the economic crisis

does increasing women s schooling raise the schooling of the next generation the positive cross sectional relationship between the schooling of mothers and their children is substantially biased upward due to correlations between schooling and heritable ability as well as assortative mating an increase in the schooling of women would not have beneficial effects in terms of the schooling of children increased maternal schooling leads to reduced home time for mothers anticipating the consequences of investing in women s schooling requires attention to the role that schooling plays in the marriage market as well as to opportunities in the labor market for women

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

decomposition of aggregate carbon intensity for the manufacturing sector comparison of declining trends from 10 oecd countries for the period 1971 1991 abstract as with total energy consumption or aggregate energy intensity changes in aggregate carbon intensity may also be decomposed or attributed to changes in various components including fuel mix for electricity generation final energy mix sub sectoral economic activity and sub sectoral energy intensities the adaptive weighted divisia rolling base year index specification is applied to total carbon emissions from the manufacturing sector of 10 oecd countries for the period 1971 1991 declines in aggregate carbon intensity for these countries range from 70 and may be primarily attributed to decreases in energy intensity i e increases in the average factor productivity of energy however these declines in aggregate carbon intensity appear to have a complex linkage to increases in energy prices as well as changes in other determinants of gross industrial output

decomposition analysis of co2 emissions from electricity generation in china abstract electricity generation in china mainly depends on coal and its products which has led to the increase in co2 emissions this paper intends to analyze the current status of co2 emissions from electricity generation in china during the period 1991 2009 and apply the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi technique to find the nature of the factors influencing the changes in co2 emissions the main results as follows 1 co2 emission from electricity generation has increased from 530 96 mt in 1991 to 2393 02 mt in 2009 following an annual growth rate of 8 72 coal products is the main fuel type for thermal power generation which accounts for more than 90 co2 emissions from electricity generation 2 this paper also presents co2 emissions factor of electricity consumption which help calculate co2 emission from final electricity consumption 3 in china the economic activity effect is the most important contributor to increase co2 emissions from electricity generation but the electricity generation efficiency effect plays the dominant role in decreasing co2 emissions

economic status and health in childhood the origins of the gradient the well known positive association between health and income in adulthood has antecedents in childhood not only is children s health positively related to household income but the relationship between household income and children s health becomes more pronounced as children age part of the relationship can be explained by the arrival and impact of chronic conditions children from lower income households with chronic conditions have worse health than do those from higher income households the adverse health effects of lower income accumulate over children s lives part of the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status may work through the impact of parents income on children s health

markets and inequality in transitional economies toward testable theories nee s 1989 and in this issue market transition theory contested by xie and hannum in this issue claims that market mechanisms have predictable implications for inequality compared to nonmarket allocation market exchange enhances the bargaining power of producers nee p 910 the core argument is that cadre advantages shall decline to the extent that markets replace redistribution as the dominant mode of economic allocation while in successive publications nee has altered his judgment about how far the market transition has proceeded in rural china and whether his theory does predict a decline of cadre privilege he has not altered the core claim about market allocation market economies vary widely in their patterns of power and privilege in ways unrelated to the extent to which a market economy has been established the variability of market economies warns against attempts to predict changes in inequality without first specifying the kinds of enterprises and other institutions that characterize the emerging market economy or even the characteristics of markets themselves we have been tempted into these predictions by the memorable polanyian contrast between two ideal typical economies redistributive and market that has proven a rich source of hypotheses about stratification szelenyi 1978 1983 and the theory of the firm kornai 1992 under state socialism this contrast has crystallized a research agenda by posing an important historical question about the social impact of the rise of market allocation in planned economies especially as it concerns the fate of communist officials but many now find that these ideal types and the continuum that bridges them are a poor guide to the analysis of emerging market economies see bian and logan 1996 lin 1995 rona tas 1994 1995 walder 1992 1995 and stark and xie and hannum in this issue general claims about the impact of markets should be viewed skeptically for the impact of markets works through the allocation of assets the characteristics of emerging markets and the political processes by which market economies are established markets per se are not the issue

comparing structural decomposition analysis and index to analyze and understand historical changes in economic environmental employment or other socio economic indicators it is useful to assess the driving forces or determinants that underlie these changes two techniques for decomposing indicator changes at the sector level are structural decomposition analysis sda and index decomposition analysis ida for example sda and ida have been used to analyze changes in indicators such as energy use co2 emissions labor demand and value added the changes in these variables are decomposed into determinants such as technological demand and structural effects sda uses information from input output tables while ida uses aggregate data at the sector level the two methods have developed quite independently which has resulted in each method being characterized by specific unique techniques and approaches this paper has three aims first the similarities and differences between the two approaches are summarized second the possibility of transferring specific techniques and indices is explored finally a numerical example is used to illustrate differences between the two approaches

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

markets and income inequality in rural china political advantage in an expanding economy when market reform generates rapid growth in an agrarian subsistence economy changes in inequality may be due to economic growth and structural change rather than to the intrinsic features of markets the case of post mao china is examined using nationally representative survey data gathered in 1996 to address unresolved questions about findings from 1980s surveys well into reform s second decade political officeholding has a large net impact on household income comparable to that of operating a private enterprise contrary to findings based on earlier surveys and expectations about the impact of growth cadre household advantages are stable across levels and forms of economic expansion returns to entrepreneurship however decline sharply with the spread of wage employment future declines in relative returns to political position are therefore unlikely to occur due to the further spread of private household entrepreneurship and theories of change based on this mechanism appear untenable

a review of pumped hydro energy storage development in significant international electricity markets the global effort to decarbonise electricity systems has led to widespread deployments of variable renewable energy generation technologies which in turn has boosted research and development interest in bulk electrical energy storage ees however despite large increases in research funding many electricity markets with increasingly large proportions of variable renewable generation have seen little actual bulk ees deployment while this can be partly attributed to the need for technological developments it is also due to the challenge of fairly rewarding storage operators for the range of services that storage provides to the wider network especially in markets that have undergone significant restructuring and liberalisation pumped hydroelectric energy storage phes is the overwhelmingly established bulk ees technology with a global installed capacity around 130 gw and has been an integral part of many markets since the 1960s this review provides an historical overview of the development of phes in several significant electrical markets and compares a number of mechanisms that can reward phes in different international market frameworks as well as providing up to date information about phes a primary motivation for this work is to provide an overview about the types of rewards available to bulk ees for the wider storage community including investors technology developers and policy makers observing that bulk ees projects seem to be unattractive investments for the private sector the paper also includes a brief discussion in terms of public sector investment

common trends and drivers of co2 emissions and employment a decomposition analysis in the industrial sector of selected european union countries the countries of the european union face the challenge of reversing the declining role of industry and achieving their targets for sustainable development combining industrial growth with fewer environmental repercussions and more jobs this paper uses a decomposition analysis in order to quantify the effect of the driving factors on two indicators of sustainable industrial development co2 emissions and employment in five european union countries during 2000 2011 the decomposition method applied is the log mean divisia index i and the models developed comprise some common or closely related driving factors the parallel investigation of the factors affecting the two indicators offers useful insights into relevant complementary and or antithetical effects the timeframe of the study is divided into two time periods before and after the start of the economic crisis 2000 2007 and 2007 2011 respectively this time division enables the evaluation of the impacts of the economic crisis directly on the drivers and indirectly on the two indicators it was deduced that in both time periods the two main drivers of industrial co2 emissions and employment were economic growth and resource intensity which counterbalance each other structural changes appeared to have a rather marginal effect even if the general tendency was the expansion of less energy labour intensive sectors finally changes in the fuel mix used in industry were beneficial to emissions reduction in all the examined countries especially in the second time period the results obtained show that the examined eu countries have not found a solid path towards sustainable and inclusive industrial development yet the stronger economies seem to move faster to this direction though

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

social identity and inequality the impact of china s hukou system abstract we conduct an experimental study to investigate the causal impact of social identity on individuals performance under incentives we focus on china s household registration hukou system which favors urban residents and discriminates against rural residents in resource allocation our results show that making individuals hukou identity salient significantly reduces the performance of rural migrant students relative to their local urban counterparts on an incentivized cognitive task and consequently significantly lowers their relative ranking in the earnings distribution under the piece rate regime however the impact of hukou identity salience is insignificant in the tournament regime suggesting that its negative effect on migrant students performance may be mitigated when competition is introduced the results demonstrate the impact of institutionally imposed social identity on individuals economic performance and potentially on inequality

overall review of pumped hydro energy storage in china status quo operation mechanism and policy barriers abstract with the integration of increased variable renewable energy generation and advent of liberalized electricity market much attention has been devoted on the development of pumped hydro energy storage phes as it has many prominent advantages of ensuring the safe and steady operation of power grid in china phes has met a booming periods for the last ten years currently there are 24 phes stations with an installed capacity of 16 95 gw while government s target of 2020 is 50 02 gw in this paper we provide an overall review of china s phes development with a detailed presentation of the installed capacity and distribution of existing and proposed phes stations examine 4 typical stations in order to give a good description for the practical functions of phes in power grid analyze the management mode and price mechanism of phes operation and point out the barriers in phes development in china state grid corporation of china sgcc which are making great efforts on china s phes development is discussed as a role model on that basis we suggest phes in the fast developing period should be temporarily operated and scheduled by grid companies in terms of exertion of its positive effects while government should also take responsibility to subsidize on the stations operation to relieve the price pressure of the ever growing integration of renewable energy

does having a cadre parent pay evidence from the first job offers of chinese college graduates abstract we estimate the wage premium associated with having a cadre parent in china using a recent survey of college graduates carried out by the authors the wage premium of having a cadre parent is 15 and this premium cannot be explained by other observables such as college entrance exam scores quality of colleges and majors a full set of college human capital attributes and job characteristics these results suggest that the remaining premium could be the true wage premium of having a cadre parent

towards a national circular economy indicator system in china an evaluation and critical analysis abstract it is widely acknowledged that china s economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of its natural capital and environment in order to deal with this problem the circular economy ce has been chosen as a national policy for sustainable development national laws and regulations have been enacted to facilitate the implementation of ce and national ce demonstration projects have been initiated such that national benchmarking activities could be completed china is the first country to release nationally focused ce indicators so that objective and credible information on the status of ce implementation can be recognized these ce indicators are valuable metrics for policy and decision makers and can help achieve ce goals and outcomes this unique indicator system has not been communicated to international communities this paper aims to more broadly introduce this unique national ce indicator system china s ce efforts are first detailed with various provisions of the national indicator system a critical analysis of such an indicator system is presented we show that certain benefits can be gained but substantive revision is also needed due to the lack of a comprehensive set of sustainability indicators which should include social business indicators urban industrial symbiosis absolute material energy reduction and prevention oriented indicators concerns related to barriers on implementation are also presented in this paper the knowledge gained from chinese efforts on ce indicators are valuable to both developed and developing nations seeking to implement sustainable development measures within their regulatory policies

the economic growth enigma capital labour and useful energy abstract we show that the application of flexible semi parametric statistical techniques enables significant improvements in model fitting of macroeconomic models as applied to the explanation of the past economic growth since 1900 in us uk and japan the new results demonstrate quite conclusively the non linear relationships between capital labour and useful energy with economic growth they also indicate that output elasticities of capital labour and useful energy are extremely variable over time we suggest that these results confirm the economic intuition that growth since the industrial revolution has been driven largely by declining energy costs due to the discovery and exploitation of relatively inexpensive fossil fuel resources implications for the 21st century which are also discussed briefly by exploring the implications of an aceges based scenario of oil production are as follows a the provision of adequate and affordable quantities of useful energy as a pre condition for economic growth and b the design of energy systems as technology incubators for a prosperous 21st century

co2 emissions from electricity generation in seven asia pacific and north american countries a decomposition analysis abstract the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method of complete decomposition is used to examine the role of three factors electricity production electricity generation structure and energy intensity of electricity generation affecting the evolution of co2 emissions from electricity generation in seven countries these seven countries together generated 58 of global electricity and they are responsible for more than two thirds of global co2 emissions from electricity generation in 2005 the analysis shows production effect as the major factor responsible for rise in co2 emissions during the period 1990 2005 the generation structure effect also contributed in co2 emissions increase although at a slower rate in contrary the energy intensity effect is responsible for modest reduction in co2 emissions during this period over the 2005 2030 period production effect remains the key factor responsible for increase in emissions and energy intensity effect is responsible for decrease in emissions unlike in the past generation structure effect contributes significant decrease in emissions however the degree of influence of these factors affecting changes in co2 emissions vary from country to country the analysis also shows that there is a potential of efficiency improvement of fossil fuel fired power plants and its associated co benefits among these countries

review of renewable energy investment and financing in china status mode issues and countermeasures abstract with the support of national policies china s renewable energy generation industry has experienced a rapid development period and entered the world forefront level especially in the aspects of installed capacity and speed of newly installed capacity however with the rapid development of renewable energy the power generation industry is facing more and more challenges particularly in investment and financing as for wind power industry there are also some problems such as single financing channels blindness of projects investment and so on which will result in financing difficulties for some advanced projects in addition the problems for the investment of photovoltaic pv power generation leads to vicious competition and a tumble in international market thus the overcapacity of china s entire pv industry emerges generally speaking the renewable energy industry is facing a seemingly contradictory predicament of funding deficiencies and blind investment which is derived from the government centered renewable energy investment and financing this government centered mode has promoted the development of renewable energy industry in the early stage but it cannot be adapted to the requirements of sustainable development in view of these the problems of renewable energy investment and financing are deeply studied in this paper this paper proceeds as follows firstly the overview of the development of china s renewable energy industry is briefly introduced secondly the status quo of china s renewable energy investment and financing is explored in detail based on overview of the following five perspectives investment situation investment and financing bodies investment and financing means sources of funding and financing channels secondly the patterns and characteristics of renewable energy financing are summarized and a comparative analysis of wind power and photovoltaic power generation financing means is carried out finally renewable energy investment and financing issues are discussed and further feasible proposals are put forward in all this paper is of great significance in the sustainable and healthy development of china s renewable energy

china s new energy development status constraints and reforms abstract as the conventional energy resources are limited and environmental problems are becoming increasingly prominent new energy resources being environmental friendly and renewable are paid more and more attention by all the countries at present the development and utilization of new energy resources in china has made progress however due to the factors such as the international energy competition situation china s productivity level and its development phase and the lagging of related system and mechanism reforms china s new energy has been faced with constraints in the aspects of the system efficiency supply region and technology if related reforms were not implemented the development of new energy in china would be severely hindered for a long period of time in the future in view of this this paper reviewed the development status of china s new energy industry and analyzed five aspects of constraints moreover a discussion was carried out from four aspects of the system consumption production technology reforms in order to break the corresponding constraints finally the future development planning of new energy was presented all in all the deep investigation into china s new energy development status constraints reforms and planning in this paper is aimed at promoting the reform of new energy resources production and utilization modes improving the policy system continuously addressing the deep rooted institutional contradictions of the new energy industry and providing the reference and advice for the transformation of china s energy structure

does it pay to attend an elite private college cross cohort evidence on the effects of college type on earnings although a substantial and rising labor market premium is associated with college attendance in general little is known about how this premium varies across institutions of different types and across time in this paper we explicitly model high school students choice of college type characterized by selectivity and control based on individual and family characteristics including ability and parental economic status and an estimate of the net costs of attendance we estimate selectivity corrected outcome equations using data from both the national longitudinal study of the high school class of 1972 and high school and beyond which permit us to determine the effects of college quality on wages and earnings and how this effect varies across time even after controlling for selection effects strong evidence emerges of a significant economic return to attending an elite private institution and some evidence suggests this premium has increased over time

using logarithmic mean divisia index to analyze changes in energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in mexico s iron and steel industry using international comparisons and log mean divisia index this paper analyzes energy and co2 emission trends of mexico s iron and steel industry during the period 1970 2006 examining co2 emissions related to energy use and production process the decomposition analysis is based on the structure efficiency analysis for international comparisons considering industrial structure and the best available technology results show that for the period 1970 2006 activity drove up primary energy use by 227 instead of the actual 133 while structure and efficiency effects drove it down by 5 and by 90 respectively the important improvement in mexican iron and steel primary energy efficiency reduced the gap between best international practice and actual primary energy consumption from 103 in 1970 to only 15 in 2006 co2 emissions from fuel consumption and production process increased by 134 and in addition to structure and efficiency fuel share effect also drove down emissions by 4 2 in the entire period

factors shaping aggregate energy intensity trend for industry energy intensity versus product mix understanding the mechanisms of change of energy consumption in industry has attracted much attention since the 1973 world oil crisis a popular line of research has been to decompose changes in the aggregate energy intensity of industry to give the relative impacts arising from energy intensity change and product mix change using a decomposition technique many empirical studies covering a large number of countries have been reported the main objective of this paper is to put together the empirical results reported in these studies in a coherent framework and identify possible systematic features of particular interest are the basic trends in this line of research the relative importance of energy intensity change and product mix change possible variations over time and between country groups in the energy impacts of these changes and inconsistencies in findings among studies an overview of the decomposition technique including its strengths weaknesses and role in industrial energy consumption studies is also presented

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

do lenders favor politically connected firms rent provision in an emerging financial market corruption by the politically connected is often blamed for economic ills particularly in less developed economies using a loan level data set of more than 90 000 rms that represents the universe of corporate lending in pakistan between 1996 and 2002 we investigate rents to politically connected rms in banking classifying a rm as political if its director participates in an election we examine the extent nature and economic costs of political rent provision we nd that political rms borrow 45 percent more and have 50 percent higher default rates such preferential treatment occurs exclusively in government banks private banks provide no

from green growth to sound policies an overview abstract green growth is an attractive slogan with a variety of possible meanings this essay critically examines several potential meanings of this slogan and provides a brief overview of some of the main implications of the other papers in this special issue taken together these papers argue for the importance of careful analysis of energy environmental policies particularly ambitious ones claiming to offer huge benefits with little or no cost

the impact of industrial structure efficiency on provincial industrial energy efficiency in china abstract regional disparity in terms of industrial energy efficiency is noticeable in china due to the unbalanced economic progress in past decades analyzing the provincial industrial energy efficiency and its influencing factors is of great significance to formulate differentiated policies to date the influence of many social economic factors on the industrial energy efficiency have been examined but the impact of the inter industry structure has almost been ignored in this paper the slacks based measure model incorporating undesirable output is applied to evaluate the industrial energy efficiency both at the provincial level and the sectoral level in china for the period 2010 to 2016 then industrial structure efficiency is introduced which reflects the inter industry structure and takes the sectoral level energy efficiency into consideration and the impact of the industrial structure efficiency on provincial industrial energy efficiency is tested by tobit regression model the results show that huge discrepancies of provincial industrial energy efficiency exist and the industrial structure efficiency is confirmed to be a determinative factor to the provincial industrial energy efficiency with the coefficient of 0 525 policy recommendations are provided for adjusting the provincial inter industry structure and improving the industrial energy efficiency

climate change policy market structure and carbon leakage abstract the 1997 kyoto protocol on climate change obliges the industrialized countries to initiate the international effort of abating anthropogenic greenhouse gas ghg emissions if such an initiative is to be taken the associated competitive effects may lead to significant relocation of developed countries energy intensive production this paper examines this issue i adopt an oligopolistic structure combined with increasing returns to scale production technologies to represent the strategic interaction among the firms producing energy intensive products this representation is then embedded within a multi regional computable general equilibrium model which in turn is used for quantifying these relocational effects the results suggest that significant relocation of energy intensive industries away from the oecd may occur depending on the type of market structure with leakage rates as high as 130 in which case ghg control policies in the industrialized countries actually lead to higher global emissions

a new frontier approach to model the eco efficiency in european countries abstract this study aims to evaluate the resource and environment efficiency problem of european countries we specify a new stochastic frontier model where gross domestic product gdp is considered as the desirable output and greenhouse gases ghg emissions as the undesirable output capital labor fossil fuels and renewable energy consumption are regarded as inputs gdp ghg ratio is maximized given the values of the other four variables the study is divided into two distinct periods 2000 2004 and 2005 2011 this division is related to the implementation of the kyoto protocol in 2005 and will allow us to evaluate the difference between the levels of efficiency before and after the establishment of environmental targets since stochastic frontier models are typically ill posed a new maximum entropy approach to assess technical efficiency which combines information from the data envelopment analysis and the structure of composed error from the stochastic frontier approach without requiring distributional assumptions is presented in this work

decomposition of co2 emissions over 1980 2003 in turkey abstract there is a multi dimensional need for studying the energy situation in turkey and to obtain insight into the development of co2 emissions on the one hand recent projections of the oecd show that turkey has a yearly gdp growth potential of over 7 on the other hand recent projections of undp and world bank indicate that the level of co2 emission is going to rise six fold by 2025 with respect to the level of emissions in 1990 it is a great challenge to both meet the growth target and keep the co2 under control thereupon this paper tries to unfold factors that explain co2 emissions by undertaking a complete decomposition analysis for turkey over the period 1980 2003 the analysis shows as is common to relatively fast growing economies that the biggest contributor to the rise in co2 emissions is the expansion of the economy scale effect the carbon intensity and the change in composition of the economy which nearly move in tandem also contribute to the rise in co2 emissions albeit at a slower rate the energy intensity of the economy which is decreasing is responsible for a modest reduction in co2 emissions hence in congruence with the scale effect a decoupling of carbon emissions and economic growth is not found in turkey over the period 1980 2003

the effects of social networks on employment and inequality we develop a model where agents obtain information about job opportunities through an explicitly modeled network of social contacts we show that employment is positively correlated across time and agents moreover unemployment exhibits duration dependence the probability of obtaining a job decreases in the length of time that an agent has been unemployed finally we examine inequality between two groups if staying in the labor market is costly and one group starts with a worse employment status then that group s drop out rate will be higher and their employment prospects will be persistently below that of the other group

revolution reform and status inheritance urban china 1949 1996 do regime change and market reform disrupt patterns of intergenerational mobility china s political trajectory is distinctive from that of other communist regimes in two ways during its first three decades the regime enforced unusually restrictive barriers to elite status inheritance and during the subsequent market transition unlike most of its counterparts the communist party survived intact data from a multigeneration survey suggest that despite their obvious exclusion from the party and related administrative careers in the mao era certain prerevolution elites transmitted one type of elite status to their offspring to a surprising degree party elites in contrast were hit hard by radical maoism but recovered quickly afterward and their offspring inherited elite status at much higher rates

a comparison of environmental and energetic performance of european countries a sustainability index recently european countries agreed on a new 2030 pact establishing challenging levels for a set of climate and energy indexes in order to achieve a more competitive safe and sustainable energy system in order to evaluate current sustainability performances of european countries from the environmental and energetic perspectives this research proposes a multi criteria decision analysis mcda that starting from both eurostat data and the analytic hierarchy process ahp allows a direct comparison of nations to this aim multiple indexes are taken into account e g greenhouse gas ghg emissions government expenditures for environmental protection recycled and reused waste from electric and electronic equipments weees recycled and reused waste from end of life vehicles elvs recycled materials from municipal solid wastes msws share of renewable energy re in electricity share of re in transport share of re in heating and cooling and primary energy consumption this assessment model provides a sustainability value for each european country and the related ranking with the european average results show as even nowadays twelve out of twenty eight european countries have a value greater than the european average in 2013 top four nations sweden denmark finland and austria have high indexes of sustainability and sweden is the best country from both the environmental and energetic perspectives

decomposition analysis for assessing the progress in decoupling industrial growth from co2 emissions in the eu manufacturing sector decomposition analysis is used in this paper not only to explain changes in industrial co2 emissions but also to comparatively evaluate the progress made in 14 eu countries in decoupling emissions from industrial growth the analysis is performed for the period 1990 2003 by distinguishing two time intervals for assessing progress prior to and following the agreement on the kyoto protocol the refined laspeyres model is used to determine the impact of 5 explanatory factors output energy intensity structure fuel mix and utility mix the obtained results are further elaborated in order to assess the real efforts undertaken in each country and their effectiveness in dissociating the economic and environmental dimensions of development moreover a rescaling procedure is implemented in order to adjust efforts to the average progress in the eu and proceed to a fair comparative evaluation it is found that most eu countries made a considerable but not always sufficient decoupling effort while no significant acceleration is observed in the post kyoto period

energy related ghg emission in agriculture of the european countries an application of the generalized divisia index abstract sustainable agriculture food security and welfare of the farmers require an integrated analysis of the performance of the agricultural sector in this paper we follow the energy environment economy framework and focus on decomposition of changes in the energy related greenhouse gas ghg emission in agricultural sectors of the selected european union eu countries the research relies on country level data from fao and eurostat describing economic activity energy use and ghg emission in the agricultural sectors of the european countries during 1995 2012 the main drivers carbon factor of energy consumed in agriculture energy intensity of agricultural production and growth in agricultural production and their impacts on the energy related ghg emissions in agriculture are analysed for selected countries the generalized divisia index is applied to decompose the changes in the energy related ghg emissions france latvia and belgium appeared as the only countries with increase in ghg emissions during 1995 2012 in the case of france energy intensity went up along with increase in the scale of agricultural production in latvia and belgium an increase in carbon factor appeared as the major factor driving an increase in ghg emissions the appropriate policies need to be employed in these countries seeking to reduce ghg emissions from energy consumption in agriculture improvements in energy efficiency appear to be a more feasible mean for ensuring further reductions in ghg emission

networks in the modern economy mexican migrants in the u s labor market this paper attempts to identify job networks among mexican migrants in the u s labor market the empirical analysis uses data on migration patterns and labor market outcomes based on a sample of individuals belonging to multiple origin communities in mexico over a long period of time each community s network is measured by the proportion of the sampled individuals who are located at the destination the united states in any year we verify that the same individual is more likely to be employed and to hold a higher paying nonagricultural job when his network is exogenously larger by including individual fixed effects in the employment and occupation regressions and by using rainfall in the origin community as an instrument for the size of the network at the destination

a spatial temporal decomposition approach to performance assessment in energy and emissions abstract there has been growing interest among researchers and policymakers in comparing or benchmarking countries on the basis of their performance in energy consumption or energy related co 2 emissions such studies allow variations among countries to be revealed the contributing factors identified and the scope for improvement better understood at the same time tracking changes or quantifying improvements in energy use or emissions over time in a country have long been a focus area of researchers and policy makers to provide a fuller picture on country performance in a multi country study over time it would be of interest to integrate the above mentioned spatial and temporal analyses in a single analysis framework this paper deals with this issue using the technique of index decomposition analysis a spatial temporal approach is introduced and two application cases are presented to illustrate how the approach can be applied the first analyzes variations and changes in the aggregate co 2 intensity of electricity production for ten countries from 1990 to 2010 and the second deals with variations and changes in the aggregate energy intensity for eight economic regions of china from 2002 to 2012 in addition two different ways of presenting the results are introduced our study shows that the proposed approach can supplement studies which are conducted purely on a spatial or temporal basis

the abatement of carbon dioxide intensity in china factors decomposition and policy implications to deal with the challenges brought about by climate changes china decided to reduce the carbon dioxide co2 intensity by 40 45 per cent from 2005 to 2020 using the decomposition technique this study finds that energy intensity is the most important force to drive the decline of co2 intensity between 1980 and 2008 followed by structural factors such as the adjustment of energy and industrial structure therefore any environmental policy to promote energy efficiency will play the biggest role in achieving the target of abating co2 intensity in 2020

decomposition of aggregate carbon intensity for freight trends from 10 oecd countries for the period 1971 1993 abstract historical patterns of aggregate carbon intensity from freight are different than those from other sectors while aggregate carbon intensity declined for all other sectors aggregate carbon intensity for freight increased the adaptive weighted divisia rolling base year index specification is applied to carbon emissions from the freight sector of 10 oecd countries for the period 1970 1993 increases in aggregate carbon intensity for nine of the countries range from less than 20 to over 150 and may be primarily attributed to shifts in modal structure toward more carbon intensive modes these increases in aggregate carbon intensity are driven primarily by an increase in activity which parallels the growth in gdp furthermore changes in fuel price and vehicle purchase taxes do not appear to be effective instruments for reducing energy consumption for this end use alternative policy options including less carbon intensive fuels and technologies and reduced congestion appear to be better choices