assessing the role of domestic value chains in china s co 2 emission intensity a multi region structural decomposition analysis china has been facing severe pressure in co2 emissions mitigation with production fragmentation among provinces inside china domestic value chains dvcs have become increasingly important to both economic growth and co2 emissions of the country thus greening domestic value chains is crucial for china to achieve its climate goal a fundamental question behind this issue is to assess the role of dvcs in china s emission intensity and quantify the underlying drivers to this end a multi region structural decomposition analysis mr sda model is proposed in this study a change in national emission intensity is explained by two divisions of effects i e local effects and dvc effects from a forward linkage perspective this study further disentangles the dvc production links and captures its impact on emission intensity applying the proposed mr sda model to study china s co2 emission intensity change in 2002 2012 shows that the dvcs hindered further emission intensity reduction of china during this period the main determinant was the deteriorated dvc forward linkages in the central and western regions of china more detailed results and discussions are presented

structural decomposition analysis of sources of decarbonizing economic development in china 1992 2006 abstract to analyze and understand decarbonizing economic development in china this paper undertakes a structural decomposition analysis of the historical change in energy related carbon intensity in china between 1992 and 2006 the results show that the energy related carbon intensity in china decreased by about three fourths between 1992 and 2006 and reduced carbon emissions by about two billion tons the decline in the energy related carbon intensity was mainly caused by changes in production pattern especially changes in energy intensity within each sector between 1992 and 2002 however the most important driving force of carbon intensity from 2002 2006 was not the energy intensity within each sector but the input mix on the other hand changes in demand pattern pushed up the carbon intensity to further decarbonize the economy in the future it is important for china to further enforce policies on shaping the production pattern such as reducing energy intensity and pay more attention to increasing the sustainability of the demand pattern at the same time

china s balance of emissions embodied in trade approaches to measurement and allocating international responsibility international trade is characterized not only by the flow of capital and goods but also by the energy and emissions embodied in goods during their production this paper investigates the evolving role that chinese trade is playing in the response to climate change by estimating the scale of emissions embodied in china s current trade pattern and demonstrating the magnitude of the difference between the emissions it produces some of which are incurred to meet the consumption demands of the rest of the world and the emissions embodied in the goods it consumes estimating china s emissions on a consumption rather than a production basis both lowers its responsibility for carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 2006 from 5 500 to 3 840mtco2 and reduces the growth rate of emissions from an average of 12 5 per cent p a to 8 7 per cent p a between 2001 and 2006 the analysis indicates that a reliable consumption based accounting methodology is feasible and could improve our understanding of which actors and states are responsible for emissions for example recent emissions reductions by developed countries may lack credibility if production has merely been displaced to countries such as china moreover in the current institutional context production methodologies encourage leakages through trade that may do more to displace than to reduce emissions both equity and efficiency concerns therefore suggest that emissions embodied in trade should receive special attention in the distribution of post kyoto abatement burdens

evaluating natural resource investments notwithstanding impressive advances in the theory of finance over the past 2 decades practical procedures for capital budgeting have evolved only slowly the standard technique which has remained unchanged in essentials since it was originally proposed see dean 1951 bierman and smidt 1960 derives from a simple adaptation of the fisher 1907 model of valuation under certainty under this technique expected cash flows from an investment project are discounted at a rate deemed appropriate to their risk and the resulting present value is compared with the cost of the project this standard textbook technique reflects modern theoretical developments only insofar as estimates of the discount rate may be obtained from crude application of single period asset pricing theory but see brennan 1973 bogue and roll 1974 turnbull 1977 constantinides 1978 the inadequacy of this approach to capital budgeting is widely acknowledged although not widely discussed its obvious deficiency is its the evaluation of mining and other natural resource projects is made particularly difficult by the high degree of uncertainty attaching to output prices it is shown that the techniques of continuous time arbitrage and stochastic control theory may be used not only to value such projects but also to determine the optimal policies for developing managing and abandoning them the approach may be adapted to a wide variety of contexts outside the natural resource sector where uncertainty about future project revenues is a paramount concern

estimating value at risk of crude oil price and its spillover effect using the ged garch approach estimation has been carried out using garch type models based on the generalized error distribution ged for both the extreme downside and upside value at risks var of returns in the wti and brent crude oil spot markets furthermore according to a new concept of granger causality in risk a kernel based test is proposed to detect extreme risk spillover effect between the two oil markets results of an empirical study indicate that the ged garch based var approach appears more effective than the well recognized hsaf i e historical simulation with arma forecasts moreover this approach is also more realistic and comprehensive than the standard normal distribution based var model that is commonly used results reveal that there is significant two way risk spillover effect between wti and brent markets supplementary study indicates that at the 99 confidence level when negative market news arises that brings about a slump in oil price return historical information on risk in the wti market helps to forecast the brent market conversely it is not the case when positive news occurs and returns rise historical information on risk in the two markets can facilitate forecasts of future extreme market risks for each other these results are valuable for anyone who needs evaluation and forecasts of the risk situation in international crude oil markets

regulating consumer financial products evidence from credit cards we analyze the effectiveness of consumer financial regulation by considering the 2009 credit card accountability responsibility and disclosure card act we use a panel data set covering 160 million credit card accounts and a difference in differences research design that compares changes in outcomes over time for consumer credit cards which were subject to the regulations to changes for small business credit cards which the law did not cover we estimate that regulatory limits on credit card fees reduced overall borrowing costs by an annualized 1 6 of average daily balances with a decline of more than 5 3 for consumers with fico scores below 660 we find no evidence of an offsetting increase in interest charges or a reduction in the volume of credit taken together we estimate that the card act saved consumers 11 9 billion a year we also analyze a nudge that disclosed the interest savings from paying off balances in 36 months rather than making minimum payments we detect a small increase in the share of accounts making the 36 month payment value but no evidence of a change in overall payments jel codes d0 d14 g0 g02 g21 g28 l0 l13 l15

policy uncertainties what investment choice for solar panel producers abstract solar power has achieved great development in the last decade and it should continue to play a central role in the face of climate change and sustainable development challenges this paper builds a real options model that provides a microeconomic analytical framework with the least squares monte carlo lsm method to assess the investment choices of a typical solar panel producer in china facing trade and domestic supply and demand side policy uncertainties it builds a baseline scenario and three policy scenarios with decreasing anti dumping and countervailing charges constant feed in tariff fit level and reduced investment cost a typical producer will have to make an investment decision on building a new production line in five years based on a decision impact analysis within 20 years the result shows an immediate investment decision for all scenarios the producer will have higher return from investment in building a solar power plant with a constant fit export is the optimal choice in other scenarios where investment return is lower after sensitivity analysis the paper concludes and can be used as a toolkit for solar panel producers and a reference for policy makers to evaluate the impact of policy uncertainties

carbon transfer within china insights from production fragmentation abstract production fragmentation not only reshapes trade patterns but also reallocates trade related emissions this study employs china s multi regional input output tables for 2007 2010 and 2012 to explore the effect of production fragmentation on virtual carbon trade derived from three trade patterns i e final goods trade intermediate goods trade for the final stage of production and value chain related trade results showed that inter provincial trade within china reduced the national carbon emissions by 208 mt and 114 mt in 2007 and 2012 the first two trade patterns contributed to the reduction while value chain related trade resulted in carbon growth the four trillion yuan stimulus package promoted the development of energy intensive industries while inter provincial trade increased national carbon emissions by 247 mt in 2010 moreover this study revealed a list of provinces trade patterns and sectors with the high carbon reduction potential

the welfare impact of medicare hmos we estimate the welfare associated with the medicare hmo program now known as medicare choice m c we find that the creation of the m c program resulted in approximately 15 6 billion in consumer surplus and 52 billion in profits from 1993 to 2000 in 2000 dollars this program most likely generated significant net social welfare however we find that consumer surplus is geographically unevenly distributed prescription drug coverage accounts for approximately 45 of the estimated consumer surplus for 2000 consumer surplus increases in the number of plans in a county and most of the increase in welfare is due to increased premium competition

input output analysis of carbon emissions embodied in china japan trade abstractenergy related co2 emissions embodied in international trade have been widely studied by researchers all over the world by using the bilateral trade input output btio approach this study investigates the co2 emissions embodied in china japan trade during 1995 2009 and attempts to identify the driving forces for the change in co2 emissions embodied in china s exports to japan during that period by using structural decomposition analysis sda result shows that co2 emissions embodied in china s exports increased by about 100 from 1995 to 2009 whereas those embodied in china s imports increased by about 500 during the same period result of this research also reveals that the scale effect had a large influence on the increase in co2 emissions embodied in china japan trade the technical effect greatly decreased co2 emissions embodied in china s exports to japan but obviously increased those embodied in imports the influence of the structural effect was relatively small and insignificant in

who shapes china s carbon intensity and how a demand side decomposition analysis abstract as national efforts to decouple carbon emissions from economic growth intensify policymakers need more specific sub national information about the sources and reduction potentials of carbon intensity this study presents a demand side decomposition of china s carbon intensity to its regions final demand types and economic sectors based on a predefined aggregate embodied intensity aei indicator i e the ratio of embodied emissions to embodied value added we find that china s carbon intensity has been largely shaped by developed provinces capital investment demand and the construction sector however less developed provinces consumption demand and the services sector have played increasingly important roles wealthy provinces generally experienced much lower aeis and higher aei reductions compared to poor provinces from 2007 to 2012 mainly owing to the provincial differences in final demand structure and sectoral structure coastal region s emission reduction efforts at both production and demand sides were the main contributor to china s decrease in carbon intensity during the period while interior region s structural degradation in demand partially offset the decrease our results suggest that allocating national carbon intensity targets based on aei and adjusting the final demand structure of central western provinces would greatly benefit for china to achieve its ambitious carbon intensity target by 2030

options in the real world lessons learned in evaluating oil and gas investments many firms in the oil and gas business have long used decision analysis techniques to evaluate exploration and development opportunities and have looked at recent development in option pricing theory as potentially offering improvements over the decision analysis approach unfortunately it is difficult to discern the benefits of the options approach from the literature on the topic most of the published examples greatly oversimplify the kinds of projects encountered in practice and comparisons are typically made to traditional discounted cash flow analysis which unlike the option pricing and decision analytic approaches does not explicitly consider the uncertainty in project cash flows in this paper we provide a tutorial introduction to option pricing methods focusing on how they relate to and can be integrated with decision analysis methods and describe some lessons learned in using these methods to evaluate some real oil and gas investments

how do hospitals respond to price changes this paper examines hospital responses to changes in diagnosis specific prices by exploiting a 1988 policy reform that generated large price changes for 43 percent of medicare admissions i find hospitals responded primarily by upcoding patients to diagnosis codes with the largest price increases this response was particularly strong among for profit hospitals i find little evidence hospitals increased the volume of admissions differentially for diagnoses subject to the largest price increases despite the financial incentive to do so neither did they increase intensity or quality of care in these diagnoses suggesting hospitals do not compete for patients at the diagnosis level

tracing co2 emissions in global value chains abstract this paper integrates two lines of research into a unified conceptual framework trade in value added and embodied emissions in trade this allows both value added and emissions to be systematically traced at the country sector and bilateral levels through various routes in global value chains by combining value added and emissions accounting in a consistent way the potential environmental cost along global value chains can be estimated from different perspectives like production consumption and trade using this unified accounting framework we trace value added and co 2 emissions in global production and trade networks among 41 economies in 35 sectors from 1995 to 2009 based on the world input output database and show how they improve our understanding of the impacts of cross border production sharing on the environment

china s carbon emissions embodied in normal and processing exports and their driving forces 2006 2012 abstract this paper constructed a time series extended input output dataset 2006 2012 to analyze china s carbon emissions embodied in both normal and processing exports at a detailed 135 sector level the structural decomposition analysis sda was further applied to shed light on the driving forces behind the changes in their embodied emissions over the entire time period this empirical study confirms the importance of using the extended model for analyzing the trade related embodiment especially for processing exports the embodied emissions in both normal and processing exports first increased from 2006 to 2008 then dropped during the global financial crisis 2008 2009 and then rose again after 2009 the embodied emissions as a percentage of total co2 emissions were quite stable before and after the global financial crisis at around 24 over the 2006 2008 period and 18 over the 2010 2012 period from 2006 to 2012 emission intensity played the key role in reducing the embodied emissions around 595 mt co2 while the total export effect contributed the most to the increase in embodied emissions around 552 mt co2 similar analysis can be applied to other indicators such as energy water ghg emissions pollutants and materials

a real options model for renewable energy investment with application to solar photovoltaic power generation in china this paper proposes a real options model for evaluating renewable energy investment by considering uncertain factors such as co2 price non renewable energy cost investment cost and market price of electricity a phase out mechanism is built into the model to reflect the long term changes of subsidy policy we apply the proposed model to empirically evaluate the investment value and optimal timing for solar photovoltaic power generation in china our empirical results show that the current investment environment in china may not be able to attract immediate investment while the development of carbon market helps advance the optimal investment time a sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the dynamics of investment value and optimal timing under the changes of unit generating capacity subsidy level market price of electricity co2 price and investment cost it is found that the high investment cost and the volatility of electricity and co2 prices are not conducive to attract immediate investment instead increasing the level of subsidy promoting technological progress and maintaining the stability of market are useful to stimulate investment

promises and pitfalls in environmentally extended input output analysis for china a survey of the literature abstract as the world s largest developing economy china plays a key role in global climate change and other environmental impacts of international concern environmentally extended input output analysis ee ioa is an important and insightful tool seeing widespread use in studying large scale environmental impacts in china calculating and analyzing greenhouse gas emissions carbon and water footprints pollution and embodied energy this paper surveys the published articles regarding ee ioa for china in peer reviewed journals and provides a comprehensive and quantitative overview of the body of literature examining the research impact environmental issues addressed and data utilized the paper further includes a discussion of the shortcomings in official chinese data and of the potential means to move beyond its inherent limitations

real options for risk management in petroleum development investments irreversible investments made with incomplete information are the mainstay of the petroleum industry sequential non repetitive investment decisions with alternative pathways associated with exploration through full field development are common we demonstrate a policy development approach that combines the bellman equation for dynamic programming with a real options valuation algorithm this represents the first demonstration of the mathematical union of the two techniques for branching decision pathways producing a generalized policy development framework that provides risk management of investments production expansion investment decisions for a central asian gas condensate field are analyzed using the framework

on the investment uncertainty relationship in a real options model abstract it appears to be widely accepted in the real options literature that an increase in uncertainty should have an inhibiting effect on investment our article demonstrates that the notion of a negative uncertainty investment relationship is not always correct we show that in certain situations an increase in uncertainty can actually increase the probability of investing and thereby have a positive impact on investment

trade off analysis between embodied energy exports and employment creation in china moving towards sustainable consumption in china must factor in the drivers of production china s domestic energy demand is affected not only by domestic demand but also by foreign trade the accounting of energy embodied in china s international trade has attracted much attention in recent years in fact embodied energy imports exports are a part of the normal pattern of economic phenomena occurring through international trade with exports of embodied energy contributing significantly to china s economic development this research suggest that china s net embodied energy exports remained relatively stable before 2002 and then increased dramatically from 73 mtoe in 2002 to 502 mtoe by 2007 with an average annual growth rate of 47 2 over that period the total employment creation reliant on these exports is 191 3 million people including direct employment of 44 1 million people and indirect employment of 147 2 million people in 2007 and the total employment creation increased quickly between 2002 and 2007 with an average annual growth rate of 9 1 the share of employment created by exports in china s total employment increased from 16 5 in 1997 to 18 6 in 2002 and a more dramatic increase can be observed in 2007 of 28 1 the exports oriented sectors in china are energy intensive from the perspective of embodied energy consumption and the energy intensive exports are located in nearly the same sectors as the labor intensive exports china will find it difficult to sustain the trade off in costs due to unemployment if it wishes to reduce embodied energy exports china needs to exercise patience and long term reform to change the current development model because of its large economy and population base

the effects of direct trade within china on regional and national co2 emissions curbing national carbon emissions and clarifying regional carbon reduction responsibility are two challenges faced by china both of which are influenced by interregional trade to exclude the influence of trade balance this paper proposes a methodology to parcel the pollution haven hypothesis into a multi regional input output model applies it to a longer time gap which is made up of two representative periods of chinese economy 1997 2002 and 2002 2007 and clarifies the provincial and sectoral contributions to national emissions we find that 1 embodied co2 emissions first remain relatively stable and then increase sharply for the two periods and the changing trends are mainly determined by the decreasing carbon intensity and the expanding trade scale respectively 2 with the secondary industry as the main contributor regional carbon spillover is mainly concentrated in the coastal provinces but it contributes to an increase of co2 emissions in the central and western regions 3 the coastal and inland provinces contribute to the increase of national carbon emissions through interregional imports and exports respectively but the pollution haven hypothesis is not obvious and is only observed in 2002

a note on the effect of cost changes on prices in a recent article in this journal sumner 1981 took an ingenious approach to estimating the level of monopoly power in the cigarette industry he noted that differences in marginal costs exist in the industry due to varying levels of state taxes the sales prices established will satisfy the equation p i liq l mr mc where p price and q the elasticity of demand for the product in question if elasticity is a constant observing the change in marginal cost and the change in price enables one to infer the elasticity of demand perceived by the firm elasticity could then be used as a proxy for the firm s market power this technique turns out to be of very limited applicability however because it is extremely sensitive to the functional form assumed for the demand curve consider the general problem of a firm facing constant marginal costs of c in maximizing profits the firm solves

upgrading or downgrading china s regional carbon emission intensity evolution and its determinants one of china s major national targets is to environmentally upgrade its economy in this paper we define environmental upgrading as lowering the carbon intensity the disparities among china s regions suggest to examine china s carbon emission performance at the regional level for this purpose we use inter regional input output tables for 2002 2007 and 2012 that distinguish processing exports from ordinary exports the regional emission intensities eis show environmental downgrading in the period 2002 2007 and upgrading during 2007 2012 to identify the determinants of the evolution of regional eis we have employed a multiplicative structural decomposition analysis changes in direct emission coefficients and changes in production technology are found to be the major determinants however next to these standard determinants we also evaluate the effects on the changes in regional eis of changes in inter regional trade and changes in inter regional spillovers changing inter regional trade is found to have increased the ei significantly in western and central regions this suggests that more dirty production was shifted from coastal to inland regions our study yields clear policy recommendations for achieving china s transformation to a low carbon economy c 2020 elsevier b v all rights reserved

driving factors of carbon embodied in china s provincial exports in this paper we use the multi regional input output model mrio and logarithm mean divisia index approach to analyze the changes in china s carbon embodied in exports cee at the national and provincial levels the results indicate that the total cee and the cee of 17 provinces including all eastern provinces decreased between 2007 and 2010 the largest decrease in total cee is caused by an input structural effect which decreases the cee of most of the provinces the technique effect arising from changes in provincial carbon intensities causes the second largest decrease in total cee and it effectively reduces the cee of most of the provinces especially the eastern provinces changes in the export composition of most of the provinces also decrease the provincial cee a change in the provincial distribution of exports decreases the cee in 11 provinces on the one hand and increases the cee in 19 provinces on the other hand a change in export volume increases the cee of each province and the whole country but its total effect is evidently lower than the input structural effect and the technique effect c 2015 elsevier b v all rights reserved

temporal and spatial variations in consumption based carbon dioxide emissions in china china s co2 emissions have sharply increased in recent years with soaring economic development and urbanization consumption based accounting of co2 emissions could provide new insights for allocating regional mitigation responsibility and curbing the emissions a multi regional input output model is used to study the trends and disparities of consumption based emissions from chinese provinces during the period 2002 2007 results show that china s consumption based co2 emissions grew from 3549 mt in 2002 to 5403 mt in 2007 with an annual average growth rate of 8 8 the annual growth rate in the richer eastern region was over 10 because of a rapid increase in capital investment and the growth of urban consumption consumption based co2 emissions embodied in interprovincial trades contributed only 10 351 mt to the national total of such emissions in 2002 but 16 864 mt in 2007 given low per capita emissions currently china s consumption based emissions have much room to grow because of further development of urbanization and stimulation of domestic demand the government should pay greater attention to controlling co2 emissions from a consumption based perspective 2014 elsevier ltd

how the european union s and the united states anti dumping duties affect taiwan s pv industry a policy simulation abstract to address continuous increases in global energy demand countries around the world are developing coping plans that promote the development of renewable energy industries a major focus of these nations efforts is the photovoltaic pv industry since 2014 the european union eu and the united states have imposed anti dumping duties on pv industries in china and taiwan because the development of the pv industry is affected by relevant government policies taiwan is ranked second in the world in pv production and these duties will undoubtedly affect the future development of taiwan s pv industry thus pv manufacturers and the taiwanese government are extremely concerned about the impact of the anti dumping duties imposed on taiwan s pv industry in fact the development structure of the pv industry is complex and dynamic in this study by assessing industry characteristics the extant literature and responses from interviews with experts system dynamics sd is used to identify three key loops and explore the structure of the development of taiwan s pv industry finally trends in production capacity and financial conditions imposed by anti dumping duties on taiwan s pv industry are simulated to address the impact that different anti dumping duty rates could produce repeated simulations are conducted to determine the critical rate at which this industry may disappear in addition relevant topics are discussed and viable policy recommendations are proposed

option valuation of claims on real assets the case of offshore petroleum leases this paper extends financial option theory by developing a methodology for the valuation of claims on a real asset an offshore petroleum lease several theoretical and practical problems not present in applying option pricing theory to financial assets are addressed most importantly we show the necessity of combining option pricing techniques with a model of equilibrium in the market for the underlying asset petroleum reserves the advantages of this approach over conventional discounted cash flow techniques are emphasized the methodological development provides important insights for both company behavior and government policy promising empirical results are reported

solar energy markets economics and policies abstract solar energy has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years due to both technological improvements resulting in cost reductions and government policies supportive of renewable energy development and utilization this study analyzes the technical economic and policy aspects of solar energy development and deployment while the cost of solar energy has declined rapidly in the recent past it still remains much higher than the cost of conventional energy technologies like other renewable energy technologies solar energy benefits from fiscal and regulatory incentives including tax credits and exemptions feed in tariff preferential interest rates renewable portfolio standards and voluntary green power programs in many countries the emerging carbon credit markets are expected to provide additional incentives to solar energy deployment however the scale of incentives provided by the existing carbon market instruments such as the clean development mechanism of the kyoto protocol is limited despite the huge technical potential the development and large scale deployment of solar energy technologies world wide still has to overcome a number of technical financial regulatory and institutional barriers the continuation of policy supports might be necessary for several decades to maintain and enhance the growth of solar energy in both developed and developing countries

china s emissions embodied in exports how regional and trade heterogeneity matter abstract trade facilitates the shifts of emissions from one place to another although studies have shown that regionally disaggregated model and model that distinguishes processing exports at national level are necessary to estimate the embodied emissions in china s exports no study evaluates this issue by simultaneously taking both regional and trade heterogeneity into account to fill this gap we re estimate the co2 emissions embodied in china s exports at both regional and industrial level by using the newly developed inter regional input output iriop model that distinguishes processing trade from other trade at regional level results show that comparing to the iriop model the traditional multi regional input output mrio model has overestimated the environmental loss from exports by 14 25 in 2002 and 7 20 in 2012 for different regions the largest bias is found in regions and industries with the highest processing export shares therefore the iriop model gives more accurate accounting on the regional environmental loss due to national exports and thus is important for establishing effective emission mitigation policies

estimating welfare in insurance markets using variation in prices we provide a graphical illustration of how standard consumer and producer theory can be used to quantify the welfare loss associated with inefficient pricing in insurance markets with selection we then show how this welfare loss can be estimated empirically using identifying variation in the price of insurance such variation together with quantity data allows us to estimate the demand for insurance the same variation together with cost data allows us to estimate how insurers costs vary as market participants endogenously respond to price the slope of this estimated cost curve provides a direct test for both the existence and the nature of selection and the combination of demand and cost curves can be used to estimate welfare we illustrate our approach by applying it to data on employerprovided health insurance from one specific company we detect adverse selection but estimate that the quantitative welfare implications associated with inefficient pricing in our particular application are small in both absolute and relative terms

european co2 prices and carbon capture investments we assess the option to install a carbon capture and storage ccs unit in a coal fired power plant operating in a carbon constrained environment we consider two sources of risk namely the price of emission allowance and the price of the electricity output first we analyse the performance of the eu market for co2 emission allowances specifically we focus on the contracts maturing in the kyoto protocol s first commitment period 2008 to 2012 and calibrate the underlying parameters of the allowance price process then we refer to the spanish wholesale electricity market and calibrate the parameters of the electricity price process we use a two dimensional binomial lattice to derive the optimal investment rule in particular we obtain the trigger allowance prices above which it is optimal to install the capture unit immediately we further analyse the effect of changes in several variables on these critical prices among them allowance price volatility and a hypothetical government subsidy we conclude that at current permit prices immediate installation does not seem justified from a financial point of view this need not be the case though if carbon market parameters change dramatically carbon capture technology undergoes significant improvements and or a specific governmental policy to promote these units is adopted

anti dumping and countervailing duties under oligopoly abstract this paper constructs a conjectural variations model of international oligopoly in which the home country s optimal policy responses to the foreign government s subsidies and foreign firms dumping can be calculated some theoretical support is found for tariffs that countervail part of the foreign export subsidy the optimal fraction depends on the size of own and cross effects in demand and on the extent of market competition however no normative case is found for anti dumping duties

industry wide corporate fraud the truth behind the volkswagen scandal corporate fraud committed under climate mitigation pressures is becoming more frequently observed in line with the ever increasing environmental standards and relevant regulation enforcements one example is the volkswagen emission gate scandal using firm level panel data of major automobile manufacturers from 2000 to 2015 this study empirically identifies the motives behind the corporate deception scandal we develop a conceptual model summarising the factors affecting decision making and the firms environmentally responsible investments eris including the truthfulness of related public communications our findings identify legal and regulatory pressures the firm s existing level of eris competency and expertise pressures from emission regulation market competitors consumers owners or shareholders as the key factors inducing the scandal the empirical findings show that firms are more likely to experience corporate fraud if their senior managers are paid with substantial variable components that may lead them to engage in riskier business behaviour and to be more short term focused thereby supporting the well established contract theory to avoid corporate fraud and engage in legitimate business competitiveness we suggest that firms should focus on technological innovation as well as improving corporate governance and leverage ratios to effectively control and monitor management in addition policy makers should be more realistic about practical and commercial limitations in the policy setting process and take on a more supporting role in achieving technological innovations and effective corporate governance in summary we argue that cleaner production is not only the result of technologically progress and research but importantly it also involves issues associated with corporate governance and business ethics

spatial spillover effects in determining china s regional co 2 emissions growth 2007 2010 abstract this study proposes an alternative input output based spatial structural decomposition analysis to elucidate the importance of domestic regional heterogeneity and inter regional spillover effects in determining china s regional co 2 emissions growth our empirical results based on the 2007 and 2010 chinese inter regional input output tables show that changes in most regions final demand scale final expenditure structure and export scale have positive spatial spillover effects on other regions co 2 emissions growth changes in most regions consumption and export preference help reduce other regions co 2 emissions changes in production technology and investment preferences may exert positive or negative effects on other region s co 2 emissions growth through domestic supply chains for some regions the aggregate spillover effect from other regions may be larger than the intra regional effect in determining regional emissions growth all these facts can significantly help provide a better deeper understanding of the driving forces behind the growth of regional co 2 emissions and can thus enrich the policy implications concerning a narrow definition of carbon leakage through domestic inter regional trade as well as a relevant political consensus about responsibility sharing between developed and developing regions inside china

carbon emissions embodied in value added chains in china abstract the literature on carbon leakage and embodied carbon in regional trade is extensive however many studies are primarily concerned with emissions embodied in demand supply chains and ignore the issue of carbon transfer behind the value added chains we promote a model to calculate value based emissions vbes and carbon emissions embodied in the value added chain using the multi regional input output model mrio taking china as an example vbes and carbon emissions embodied in value added chains at the sub national level based on mrio tables for 1997 and 2007 in china were analyzed transferred carbon emissions embodied in regional value added chains in china showed rapid growth between 1997 and 2007 however the absolute values of inter regional net transferred carbon emissions embodied in value added chains were small and showed a declining trend therefore the regional inequality between economic growth and carbon emissions pollution reduced between 1997 and 2007 although the amount of emissions embodied in regional value added chains increased as of the inter regional economic link in china gained close proximity

china s inter regional spillover of carbon emissions and domestic supply chains in this study we apply the inter regional input output model to explain the relationship between china s inter regional spillover of co2 emissions and domestic supply chains for 2002 and 2007 based on this model we propose alternative indicators such as the trade in co2 emissions co2 emissions in trade and the regional trade balances of co2 emissions our results do not only reveal the nature and significance of inter regional environmental spillover within china s domestic regions but also demonstrate how co2 emissions are created and distributed across regions via domestic and global production networks results show that a region sc o2 emissions depend on its intra regional production technology energy use efficiency as well as its position and participation degree in domestic and global supply chains 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

risk and return in oilfield asset holdings abstract convention suggests that emerging market investment should provide commensurately lower risk or higher returns than comparable assets in developed countries this study demonstrates that emerging markets contain regulatory specificities that challenge asset valuation model convergence and potentially invert risk return convention 292 oilfield assets are used to provide evidence that under upward oil prices emerging markets are characterized by progressive state participation in oilfield cash flows specifically this work advances the low oil price paradigm of prior oil and gas asset valuation studies and provides evidence that emerging market state participation terms limit the corporate value of globalization for the sector

a real options based model and its application to china s overseas oil investment decisions abstract this paper applies real options theory to overseas oil investment by adding an investment environment factor to oil resource valuation a real options model is developed to illustrate how an investor country or oil company can evaluate and compare the critical value of oil resource investment in different countries under oil price exchange rate and investment environment uncertainties the aim is to establish a broad model that can be used by every oil investor country to value overseas oil resources the model developed here can match three key elements 1 deal with overseas investment the effects of investment environment and exchange rates 2 deal with oil investment oil price production decline rate and development cost etc 3 the comparability of the results from different countries different countries oil investment situation can be compared by using the option value index ovi china s overseas oil investment is taken as an example to explain the model by calculating each oil investee country s critical value per unit of oil reserves and examining the effect of different factors on the critical value the results show that the model developed here can provide useful advice for china s overseas oil investment program the research would probably also be helpful to other investor countries looking to invest in overseas oil resources

provincial responsibility for carbon emissions in china under different principles abstract by applying a multi regional input output model the study compares the provincial responsibility for carbon emissions and provincial carbon multipliers in china under seven responsibility allocating principles including three basic principles the production income and consumption principles and four shared responsibility principles the income weighted consumption weighted comprehensive and weighted comprehensive principles empirical results indicate that carbon multipliers of provinces under these principles are significantly different from one another the carbon multipliers of provinces with higher ratios of carbon intensive sectors in their outputs are also larger at the same time the carbon multipliers of the same sector in the provinces are significantly different from one another changing the principle causes significant changes in the responsibility for carbon emissions of some provinces but only slight changes in the responsibilities of some other provinces however the responsibilities of provinces with large economic sizes output are always the largest whereas provinces with the smallest economic sizes are always the smallest regardless of the principles further this study proposes a series of regional policies for carbon mitigation according to provincial carbon multipliers and responsibility allocation features under the different principles

do larger health insurance subsidies benefit patients or producers evidence from medicare advantage a central question in the debate over privatized medicare is whether increased government payments to private medicare advantage ma plans generate lower premiums for consumers or higher profits for producers using difference in differences variation brought about by a sharp legislative change we find that ma insurers pass through 45 percent of increased payments in lower premiums and an additional 9 percent in more generous benefits we show that advantageous selection into ma cannot explain this incomplete pass through instead our evidence suggests that market power is important with premium pass through rates of 13 percent in the least competitive markets and 74 percent in the most competitive

mean reversion in equilibrium asset prices evidence from the futures term structure we use the term structure of futures prices to test whether investors anticipate mean reversion in spot asset prices the empirical results indicate mean reversion in each market we examine for agricultural commodities and crude oil the magnitude of the estimated mean reversion is large for example point estimates indicate that 44 percent of a typical spot oil price shock is expected to be reversed over the subsequent eight months for metals the degree of mean reversion is substantially less but still statistically significant we detect only weak evidence of mean reversion in financial asset prices in this study we provide evidence of mean reversion in the prices of several real and financial assets rather than examining evidence of ex post reversion using time series of asset prices we use price data from futures contracts with varying delivery horizons to test whether investors expect asset prices to revert this approach offers two advantages first since futures prices are readily available for many markets our procedure can be implemented for many assets including those for which reliable spot price data is elusive second there is little ambiguity as to the source of any mean reversion detected using our method subject only to the maintained assumption that the no arbitrage cost of carry condition holds our test detects mean reversion that is expected to occur in equilibrium but has no power to detect mean reversion resulting from noise or inefficiencies our methodology focuses on relations between price levels and the slope of the futures term structure defined as the change across delivery dates in the futures prices observed on a given trading date an inverse relation between prices and the futures term slope constitutes evidence that investors expect mean reversion in spot prices to illustrate initially assume there are no

the effect of medicaid premiums on enrollment a regression discontinuity approach abstract this paper estimates the effect that premiums in medicaid have on the length of enrollment of program beneficiaries whether and how low income families will participate in the exchanges and in states medicaid programs depends crucially on the structure and amounts of the premiums they will face i take advantage of discontinuities in the structure of wisconsin s medicaid program to identify the effects of premiums on enrollment for low income families i use a 3 year administrative panel of enrollment data to estimate these effects i find an increase in the premium from 0 to 10 dollars per month results in 1 4 fewer months enrolled and reduces the probability of remaining enrolled for a full year by 12 percentage points but other discrete changes in premium amounts do not affect enrollment or have a much smaller effect i find no evidence of program enrollees intentionally decreasing labor supply in order to avoid the premiums

china s regional co2 emissions characteristics inter regional transfer and emission reduction policies abstract this paper analyzes the characteristics of china s regional co 2 emissions and effects of economic growth and energy intensity using panel data from 1997 to 2009 the results show that there are remarkable regional disparities among eastern central and western areas regional elasticities of per capita gdp and energy intensity on co 2 emissions which reflect the regional differences in economic development economy structure and restraining function of energy intensity decrease on the emission energy intensity reducing is more effective to emission abatement for provinces with higher elasticity of energy intensity but may not be significant for provinces with lower elasticity the inverse distribution of energy production and consumption regional unfairness caused by institutional factors like energy price and tax system result in inter regional co 2 emission transfer embodied in the power transmission the calculation indicates that the embodied emission transfer was gradually significant after 2003 from eastern area to the central and western areas especially energy production provinces in central area which leads to distortion on the emission and emission intensity the regional emission reduction targets and supporting policies should be customized and consistent with the actual situations rather than setting the same target for all the provinces

economic overview of the use and production of photovoltaic solar energy in brazil abstract the technology of photovoltaic power generation has been increasingly regarded in many countries as an alternative to reduce the environmental impacts associated with climate changes and dependence on fossil fuels countries such as germany and other european countries have been developed specific regulatory mechanisms to encourage its use either by government programs or by financial and or tax incentives in brazil despite the large existing solar potential the encouragement to technology is still incipient this paper aims to demonstrate the key aspects of the evolution of regulatory incentives to use photovoltaic solar energy in brazil and present the technologies and characteristics of photovoltaic power generation

irreversible investment uncertainty and ambiguity the case of bioenergy sector we analyze production and investment decisions of an agent in industrial activities that are characterized by two forms of uncertainty demand uncertainty in terms of number of buyers and competitive effect uncertainty in terms of other energy resource we apply our model on the bioenergy industries we compare the case of an ambiguity neutral agent with that of an ambiguity averse agent we show that the investment decision of an agent depends on the effects of both the capital investment and the level of production on the cost and the uncertainty the agent is confronted with moreover we find that ambiguity aversion tends to decrease the agent s optimal levels of production and investment our numerical analysis of the french case illustrates the different effects associated with demand uncertainty and competitive effect uncertainty

embodied environmental damage in interregional trade a mrio based assessment within china abstract a new lifelong accountability system for ecological and environmental damage will be established for local officials in china however if this new production based accountability system does not consider the responsibilities of consumers it is likely to aggravate the imbalance of regional development using a multi regional input output model this paper tracked the environmental damage transfers in interprovincial trade trade related damage from four major pollutants was quantified for each province in 2007 the results show that nearly 45 of the environmental damage that occurs at home to meet consumption in other regions can be ascribed to the interprovincial trade flows in china in 2007 the north municipalities the east coast and the south coast where the share of production based environmental damage in relation to the local gdp is lower transferred environmental damage to the developing northwest and central regions to make the local gdp greener via interregional trade leading to inequality in regional development it is suggested that the importance of environmental damage from a consumer perspective should be integrated into the future implementation of the new lifelong accountability system

going green trade specialisation dynamics in the solar photovoltaic sector abstract the present study aims at providing a comprehensive analysis of trade flows and the domestic value creation of the major solar photovoltaic industry at the world level solar technologies convert light and heat from the sun into useful energy the use of the sun s energy can not only reduce the consumption of conventional fuels thus reducing the emission of detrimental greenhouse gases but it can also enable a gain in enhanced fuel and energy security along with lessening costs in addition green technologies and industries can promote economic growth and international competitiveness and can offer new business and employment opportunities it becomes therefore extremely important to deeply explore the dynamics of the solar photovoltaic sector specifically the present work analyses the main global trends of this sector and sketches the key players on the world market including producers installers and top traders based on an analysis of trade flows at the 6 digit level the international specialisation patterns are investigated and the role of various market and trade drivers including subsidies in the uptake of solar technologies is identified and examined

carbon emissions embodied in demand supply chains in china abstract using the multi regional input output model mrio the paper distinguishes the carbon emissions embodied in commodities for domestic final consumption cbes consumption based emissions and those for export ebes export based emissions and then calculates carbon emissions embodied in the demand supply chains for consumption and export based on technical coefficients matrix of the mrio for one country taking china as an example we provide a dynamic analysis of cbes ebes and carbon emissions embodied in consumption and export demand supply chains at the sub national level based on the mrio tables for 1997 and 2007 the results show that in china the transferred carbon emissions embodied in demand supply chains driven by consumption and export both showed rapid growth during 1997 2007 and the net transferred carbon emissions embodied in the demand supply chains showed an increasing trend as well less developed regions with abundant fossil fuels tend to net flow out carbon emissions

valuing chinese feed in tariffs program for solar power generation a real options analysis newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1305 18257 national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013

the rise of us anti dumping activity in historical perspective empirical studies of anti dumping activity focus almost exclusively on the period since 1980 this paper puts recent us anti dumping experience in historical context by studying the determinants of annual case filings over the past half century the conventional view that few anti dumping cases existed prior to 1980 is not correct although most did not result in the imposition of duties the increased number of cases in recent decades largely reflects petitions that target multiple source countries the number of imported products involved has actually fallen since the mid 1980s the annual number of anti dumping cases is influenced by the unemployment rate the exchange rate import penetration closely related to the decline in average tariffs and changes in the anti dumping law and its enforcement in the early 1980s

valuing oil properties integrating option pricing and decision analysis approaches there are two major competing procedures for evaluating risky projects where managerial flexibility plays an important role one is decision analytic based on stochastic dynamic programming and the other is option pricing theory or contingent claims analysis based on the no arbitrage theory of financial markets in this paper we show how these two approaches can be profitably integrated to evaluate oil properties we develop and analyze a model of an oil property either a developed property or a proven but undeveloped reserve where production rates and oil prices both vary stochastically over time and at any time the decision maker may terminate production or accelerate production by drilling additional wells the decision maker is assumed to be risk averse and can hedge price risks by trading oil futures contracts we also describe extensions of this model that incorporate additional uncertainties and options discuss its use in exploration decisions and in evaluating a portfolio of properties rather than a single property and briefly describe other potential applications of this integrated methodology

sources of geographic variation in health care evidence from patient migration we study the drivers of geographic variation in us health care utilization using an empirical strategy that exploits migration of medicare patients to separate the role of demand and supply factors our approach allows us to account for demand differences driven by both observable and unobservable patient characteristics within our sample of over 65 medicare beneficiaries we find that 40 50 percent of geographic variation in utilization is attributable to demand side factors including health and preferences with the remainder due to place specific supply factors jel h51 i1 i11