inequality of opportunity in energy consumption in china abstract this paper proposes an empirical implementation of the concept of inequality of opportunity in energy consumption expenditure and applies this to data from chinese general social survey cgss we examine the role played by circumstances beyond the control of individuals for instance gender hukou status family background and region of birth in generating inequality in energy consumption expenditure in china this study shows that the relative share of inequality of opportunity ior in energy consumption expenditure in china is 10 02 for the entire sample ior turns out to be larger for the older cohort peaking at 14 40 for the 1955 64 cohort a shapley value decomposition presents that hukou status and region of birth are the two largest contributors to inequality of opportunity across birth cohorts a heterogeneity analysis further shows that more disadvantaged groups for instance female individuals born in the west of rural china with worse family backgrounds are facing more unequal opportunities in energy consumption in china these results suggest that energy policies focused on zero discrimination in opportunities should be encouraged

rogoff s conservative central banker restored we show that delegation of monetary policy to a weight conservative central banker can be desirable although the government can also use an inflation contract an employment target an inflation target or any combination of these to control the central banker the key feature of our model is a stochastic inflation bias arising when wage setters receive some information about a supply shock prior to signing nominal wage contracts weight conservatism is found to be desirable if fully state contingent delegation is not possible and the stochastic inflation bias cannot be eliminated by optimal choice of the delegation parameters

competitor see competitor do incumbent entry in new market niches the ability to keep up with changing technology is critical for a company s long term survival however companies have to balance the risk of rushing into new areas and potentially cannibalizing their existing business against the risk of missing the emerging market this paper investigates when incumbents enter into new market niches created by technological innovation we argue that market conditions and company specific characteristics do not suffice to explain incumbents entry timing but that entry is a contagious process our results demonstrate that incumbents are more likely to respond to innovations in their industry when their counterparts do so in particular we show that incumbents are affected by the entry of firms that are similar in size and resources when a highly similar company enters the new market it raises the probability that the company enters itself beyond levels based solely on the attractiveness of the market

china s carbon emissions trading overview challenges and future because china has emerged as the largest greenhouse gas ghg emitter in total annual emissions to accelerate the pace of ghg emission reduction in china is important to the success of global efforts in addressing climate change carbon trading is a market mechanism and key instrument in the mitigation of climate change this paper explores the policy process and development state to date of china s carbon trade market to understand the emergence and development of that market and to understand what barriers are hampering china s carbon trade market development to achieve this goal this paper introduces and analyzes china s status in the international market examines the factors driving carbon market launching by the chinese government and traces the development of mandatory carbon emission trading and voluntary emission trading it is argued that china s carbon trading market is confronted with challenges such as the absence of a functional carbon trading market inaccuracy of the quota allocation an imperfect trading mechanism and lagging legislation at the present stage shortcomings such as having no real time carbon price and dominated spot transactions differentiate china s trade market substantially from a functional system a quick market integration of china s carbon market appears remote it is suggested that specific measures be taken to promote the development of the chinese carbon trading market

regional allocation of carbon emission quotas in china evidence from the shapley value method abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions so as to realize its carbon reduction targets and establish the national cap and trade carbon market meanwhile it is supposed to be cost effective to jointly reduce china s carbon emissions through some collaborative activities among regions then a natural question is how to allocate the quotas among regions in light of the collaboration for this purpose the shapley value method is adopted and the results show that first the regions with higher gdp higher carbon outflow and higher carbon reduction connection should be allocated more carbon quotas moreover when the collaboration is considered the optimal allocation of carbon quotas among regions will change significantly compared to the basic quotas by the entropy method and the central region is allocated the largest proportion of carbon quota among regions which indicates its largest radiation effect besides the collaboration between the central region and northern coast region and that between the central region and the eastern region should be paid close attention these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in china

supply chain integration and national collectivism abstract integration at an intra organizational and supply chain sc level has been well studied to determine its benefits and drawbacks the foundation of these studies is their assumption that managers choose integration based on economic considerations following the behavioral theory of the firm btf strategic decisions are not always based on economics but are subject to the usual phenomena associated with aspirational levels in this respect the potential influence and consequences of national culture building aspiration levels on the integration choice of decisionmakers remain unrecognized this study researches the relationship between national collectivism values and the observed internal and external sc integration sci of companies we postulate that national collectivism values generate an aspirational need that moves integration as a potential choice to satisfy this need more into decisionmakers focus we explore the influence of two dimensions of a national culture of collectivism values in group and institutional on decisionmakers choice of higher or lower degrees of plant level integration in addition we explore the operational performance efficacy of firms integration practices we combine data from two multi country datasets using mixed effect models to analyze data from seven countries the results indicate national collectivism values are positively related with plant level use of internal but not of external sci furthermore sci is positively related to operational performance the study supports and extends btf it supports the assumption of behavioral forces in modern firms decision making and adds national culture as an external force to the theory

supply shocks private sector information and monetary policy is there inevitably a stabilization trade off we assume that while the central bank has an information advantage in respect of aggregate productivity shocks the private sector has superior knowledge of local disturbances it is shown that there is no policy trade off between inflation and employment stability moreover macroeconomic outcomes are independent of the weight assigned to inflation by the central bank

analysis of rural residential energy consumption and corresponding carbon emissions in china the analysis of rural residential energy consumption in china from 2001 to 2008 and corresponding impacts on climate change is presented in the paper it is found that rural residential energy consumption has shown obvious transition from non commercial energy to commercial energy the percentage of biomass energy consumption dropped from 81 5 in 2001 to 70 9 in 2008 while the percentage of commercial energy increased from 17 1 to 25 1 besides other renewable energy increased very fast with annual growth rate of 19 8 correspondingly total co2 emissions from rural residential energy consumption had significant increase from 152 2 million tons in 2001 to 283 6 million tons in 2008 the annual growth rate of per capita co2 emissions was nearly 2 times faster than that of urban area the major driving force for the consumption of commercial energy was the income of rural farmers while strong rural energy policies supported the development of renewable energy to satisfy the goals of energy supply and co2 emissions reduction in rural areas it is advised to change the energy structure and improve the energy efficiency such as to generate electricity using renewable technologies and to replace coal with modern biomass energy for cooking and heating

central bank inflation contracts and strategic wage setting in a multiunion economy abstract a shared feature of models used to investigate the welfare enhancing potential of a central bank inflation contract is their stochastic nature central to the benefits conferred by such a contract is the presence of supply shocks in constructing a framework where wages are set strategically by a number of nonatomistic inflation averse unions this note identifies circumstances in which an inflation contract improves macroeconomic outcomes even in the absence of supply shocks

young and no money never mind the material impact of social resources on new venture growth although growth is a desirable outcome for new ventures due to the many advantages of large size most new firms fail to grow largely because of their limited resources and adaptability this paper addresses the question of how new ventures grow despite their limited financial resources i explore the effect of two specific nonfinancial social resources legitimacy and status on new venture growth i propose that new firms can acquire legitimacy by mimicking the structures and ceremonial activities of established firms in their industry and can acquire status by affiliating with high status entities using a unique panel data set on a cohort of advertising agencies founded in new york and chicago between 1977 and 1985 i show that legitimacy and status have favorable impacts on new firms growth in revenues and number of employees the paper makes important contributions to social embeddedness and institutional research by examining the strategic implications of firm level social resources and to the literature on entrepreneurship in general and new venture growth in particular

the demand for energy using assets among the world s rising middle classes we study household decisions to acquire energy using assets in the presence of rising incomes we develop a theoretical framework to characterize the effect of income growth on asset purchases when consumers face credit constraints we use large and plausibly exogenous shocks to household income generated by the conditional cash transfer program in mexico oportunidades to show that asset acquisition is nonlinear depends as predicted in the presence of credit constraints on the pace of income growth and both effects are economically large among beneficiaries our results may help explain important worldwide trends in the relationship between energy use and income growth

divestment response to host country terrorist attacks inter firm influence and the role of temporal consistency abstract host country terrorism poses extreme uncertainty to mnes foreign operations however little is known about how mnes respond to host country terrorist attacks and how they make the related decisions drawing on the research on mnes responses to exogenous shocks and the inter firm imitation literature we argue that mnes obtain relevant information from peers actions under terrorist attacks to inform their own responses thus mnes are more likely to divest under host country terrorist attacks when peers also divest furthermore the impact of peers divestments on focal mnes divestments is magnified by the temporal consistency in peers behavioral pattern under terrorist attacks as temporal consistency reduces inferential difficulties empirical evidence based on 93 fortune us companies and their 8698 foreign subsidiaries over 2005 2015 support our hypotheses our study extends the literature on mnes responses to host country exogenous shocks and on inter firm imitation by demonstrating the social amplification of terrorism threat and the role of temporal consistency in inter firm imitation under extreme uncertainty practically we stress that mne executives should always consider their firms idiosyncratic situations when modeling peer mnes actions and be mindful that they are especially likely to imitate peers temporally consistent behaviors under extreme uncertainty

effects of local legitimacy on certification decisions to global and national csr standards by multinational subsidiaries and domestic firms we explore the impact of local legitimacy on the imitation of certification by subsidiaries of foreign multinational enterprises and domestic firms we propose that mne multinational enterprise subsidiaries and domestic firms differ in their propensity to imitate geographically proximate firms when deciding whether to adopt national vs global csr corporate social responsibility certifications for two reasons first there are differences in the legitimacy they can expect to gain in different communities from adopting these certifications second there are differences in their knowledge about the local legitimacy of these certifications we test our hypotheses by studying the decisions of automotive suppliers in mexico to certify either to iso 14001 a global certification or to clean industry a national certification we find that geography matters mne subsidiaries imitate national certifications by geographically proximate firms to overcome a liability of foreignness while domestic firms imitate global certifications by proximate firms to overcome the disadvantages of localness we explore the implications of our findings for institutional theory and future research

monetary institutions monopolistic competition unionized labor markets and economic performance recent literature on the interactions between labor unions and monetary institutions features either a supply or a demand channel of monetary policy but not both this leads to two opposing views about the effects of central bank conservativeness we evaluate the relative merits of those conflicting views by developing a unified framework we find that i the effect of conservativeness on employment depends on unions relative aversion to unemployment versus inflation and ii for plausible values of this relative aversion and more than one union social welfare is maximized under a highly conservative central bank we also evaluate the effects of centralization of wage bargaining and product market competition on unemployment and inflation

farmers perceptions of developing forest based bioenergy in china abstract farmers awareness of forest based bioenergy developments will greatly determine the direction and succession of forestry projects to obtain a better understanding of this awareness a logistic regression model was applied to analyze the factors influencing farmers willingness to participate in the construction of bioenergy bases the model was developed based on a survey of 573 household farmers in eight chinese provinces this study found that a majority of households have increased their daily use of commercial fuel moreover a significant number of farmers are either uncertain about or unfamiliar with the concept of forest based bioenergy the model found that households with young and educated individuals a higher forestland endowment and a higher cognition and understanding of fossil fuels have a higher willingness to learn about and participate in forest based bioenergy issues the findings of this study will be useful for bioenergy forest cultivators extension foresters forest landowners and policy makers

aggregate demand shocks private signals and employment variability can better information be harmful abstract the consequences of private information concerning the realization of aggregate demand shocks are investigated in the context of a standard macroeconomic model it is found that an improvement in information quality can be damaging in the sense of amplifying employment fluctuations the source of this result is an externality arising from individual firm wage decisions which leads to a collective over reaction to private information

managerial cognition and the mimetic adoption of market positions what you see is what you do managers planning to abandon a market position need to find a promising alternative and face a choice of inventing a new market position or entering an existing one the great uncertainty on the consequences of different actions leads them to rely on other organizations for information on how to compete making adoption of existing market positions likely their wish to avoid direct rivalry and maximize growth leads them to seek out information on new market positions with few incumbents as a result recently innovated market positions are mimetically adopted by organizations that can easily observe previous adoptions and see them as relevant to their market situations increasing the market differentiation this theory is tested and supported by analysis of the spread of new radio formats in the united states 1998 john wiley sons ltd

stabilisation policy targets and unemployment in imperfectly competitive economies this paper argues that the rate of equilibrium unemployment depends on the objectives of the central bank in a model where the central bank uses monetary policy to stabilise the economy we show that unemployment and inflation will be lower with an inflation target than with targets for output money or nominal gdp the intuition for this is that the elasticities of demand in both the product and the labour markets are greater when there is an inflation target we show that this leads to a lower mark up of price over marginal cost and makes wages more sensitive to unemployment

energy consumption practices of rural households in north china basic characteristics and potential for low carbon development reducing the climate impact of rural household energy consumption in china is complicated since it is bound up with deeply routinized daily practices and dependent from existing infrastructural systems of energy supply to assess the potential for low carbon development we first estimate the overall co2 emissions of rural households followed by a more in depth description and characterization of the different energy use practices within the households space heating turns out to be the largest emission source among domestic energy practices in north china we present lifestyle and context related factors that help to explain existing differences in domestic energy use practices of households the potential for low carbon development is discussed both at the demand side and the supply side at the demand side the use of more efficient technologies and cleaner energy sources for space heating seems to be a high potential measure for achieving low carbon households at the supply side the reduction of rural domestic co2 emissions could be effectively supported by making available to householders renewable and cleaner energy sources and technologies in order to be effective such low carbon energy options should take into account the income characteristics and lifestyles of rural householders

refraining from imitation professional resistance and limited diffusion in a financial market why do some practices not spread although this is an important question for both diffusion theorists and those interested in institutional change we know surprisingly little about the limitations on diffusion because most diffusion studies sample on successful diffusion i address the question of why some practices fail to spread by introducing the concept of a deviance discount a deviance discount is a systematic downgrading of the observed adoption performance of controversial practices which limits the contagion of such practices i test and find qualitative and quantitative support for my thesis in the product introduction behavior of swedish mutual fund firms my findings hold implications for diffusion theory and theories of endogenous institutional change

energy policies for managing china s carbon emission abstract the well documented close relationship between economic growth and energy use indicates that the emergence of a country as an economic power cannot occur without increased in energy use but just as the scale of china s rise as an economic power has no clear parallel in history its conflict between economic growth and energy use has also shattered all precedents this planet s future energy scenario hinges on the ability of this decoupling the question this policy forum addressed is how to find the optimum way to accomplish this decoupling through government directive government centered command and control approaches or cac or market forces market based instruments or mbi it concludes that market rather than government can decide the optimum way to decouple china s economic growth from energy use facilitating this decoupling driven by market force requires getting the prices right for energy

household fuel use in developing countries review of theory and evidence because of recent concerns about the negative externalities of traditional fuel use on the environment and health the issue of the household fuel transition in developing countries from dirty fuels towards clean fuels has received growing research attention this paper provides an up to date survey of the economic literature on household fuel use in these countries first we present the conceptual and theoretical frameworks then we discuss the empirical results that show how a wide range of factors drive the household fuel transition finally we suggest priorities for policy initiatives and highlight areas of future research

policy as myth and ceremony the global spread of stock exchanges 1980 2005 we examine the antecedents and consequences in developing countries of creating a national stock exchange a core technology of financial globalization we study local conditions and global institutional pressures in the rapid spread of exchanges since the 1980s and examine how conditions at the point of adoption affected exchanges subsequent vibrancy little prior research connects the process of diffusion with the operational performance of adopted policies we find that international coercion was associated with more ceremonial adoption but that contrary to expectations common in institutional research contagion processes via peer groups and normative emulation of prestigious actors enhanced vibrancy economic globalization provides a generative context in which to consider the policy implications of organizational theory and research globalization creates both opportunities and challenges for countries on the periphery of the world economy the central question for policy makers is what structures and institutions they should adopt to promote economic and social vibrancy notably waves of alternative theories and associated packages of reforms have swept over the globe in recent decades observing this process of global diffusion and often abandonment of policies and practices meyer boli thomas and raminrez 1997 extended analyses of myth and ceremony at the organization level to the nation state in their world society approach a core idea in this work is that coercion and mimicry of peers or competitors typically based in a substrate of network ties often

sector decomposition of china s national economic carbon emissions and its policy implication for national ets development abstract uncovering the contributions of each sector s driving factors to the growth of national economic carbon emissions has great significance for china in developing its nationwide emission trading scheme ets the paper applies the index decomposition analysis ida and logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model to discuss the underlying drivers behind china s national economic carbon emissions during the period 1996 2012 from both sector and factor decomposition perspectives and accordingly offers policy proposals for china s national ets development major conclusions include 1 six heavy industry sectors the transport storage post sector and the construction sector are the largest contributors and hence proposed for incorporation into the ets s coverage 2 the rapid expansion of economic output dominantly increases carbon emissions the design of cap on emissions should allow for a proper increment and establish a new entrant reserve to coordinate economic development 3 as the dynamics of carbon emissions vary markedly across sectors allowance allocation needs to consider the changing sectoral structure of emissions 4 the combined effects of sectoral energy intensity and structure changes largely offset carbon emissions benchmarking is suggested as an ideal allocation mechanism and the setup of sectoral carbon intensity benchmark should synthetically evaluate the potential impacts of related factors 5 manufacturer based manner and carbon offset mechanism are respectively recommended for the initial implementation of carbon trading in the transport storage post sector and the construction sector

international new ventures revisiting the influences behind the born global firm there is a small but theoretically important literature on born globals or international new venture firms that positions itself in contrast to the more established sequential international entry literature in this paper we examine the pattern of entry into international markets for a set of international new ventures and show that they need not be a distinct breed of firms as previous research has portrayed absent a specific technological advantage the decision for a new venture to internationalize at inception is influenced by the size of its home market and by its production capacity as well as by cultural and economic forces that also influence other more traditional firms that stage their entry into international markets most importantly we demonstrate that the decision to internationalize or not should be considered jointly with the capacity allocation decision to specific international markets as analysing these separately may lead to biased results

biofuels adoption in nigeria attaining a balance in the food fuel feed and fibre objectives abstract the drive towards economic development in nigeria brings about the pursuit of many competing objectives whose attainments depend on limited resources biofuels adoption has been set as an important path among other options for pursuing economic growth and development for the country the federal government of nigeria fgn is currently promoting the production processing and utilization of biofuels in the transport and energy sectors the article examines biofuels adoption in nigeria vis a vis the attainment of a balance in the food fuel feed and fibre objectives crops already profiled as preferred sources of feedstock for the primary biofuels production are also crucial for food feed and fibre the resources needed for producing these crops are limited hence the need for a balance this paper derived data from secondary sources including the food and agriculture organization fao the paper explores some aspects of biofuels sustainability and present recommendations for attaining a balance in the multiple objectives for attaining socioeconomic development

positive and negative feedback effects in competition for dominance of network business systems this paper extends the existing research on the interplay of positive and negative feedback dynamics in the competition for business system dominance by building on an analysis of the digital television launch in the united kingdom we find that the expectation of network externalities intensifies competition causing strong negative feedback effects to emerge actions aimed at improving one s position are systematically imitated and pre emptied pressure builds up in the business system and only when the weakest firms exit the positive feedback effects are unleashed in their full magnitude our findings contribute to an improved understanding of institutional dynamics in new technology introduction

identifying electricity saving potential in rural china empirical evidence from a household survey in recent years there has been a fast growing body of literature examining energy saving potential in relation to electricity however empirical studies focusing on non western nations are limited to fill this gap this study intends to examine the electricity saving potential of rural households in china using a unique data set from the china residential electricity consumption survey crecs in collaboration with the china general social survey cgss conducted nationwide at the household level in rural china we use a stochastic frontier model which allows us to decompose residential electricity consumption into the minimum necessary amount of consumption based on physical characteristics e g house size house age number of televisions or refrigerators and estimate the consumption slack i e the amount of electricity consumption that could be saved which depends on various factors we find that rural households in china are generally efficient in electricity saving and the saving potential is affected by fast information feedback and social demographic characteristics instead of by the averaged electricity price or energy efficiency labelling signals in addition we find no evidence of regional heterogeneity on electricity saving potential for rural households policy implications are derived

powering up china income distributions and residential electricity consumption current forecasts suggest that the vast majority of growth in energy demand will come from the developing world and that china will play a major part in that growth this paper presents evidence suggesting that the shape of the income distribution which is typically omitted from forecasting models plays a major role in driving household acquisition of energy using durable goods in rural china we use province level data for rural households to show that the share of the population living above the poverty line is an important determinant of household appliance holdings even controlling for average household income

impacts of urbanization and industrialization on energy consumption co2 emissions does the level of development matter urbanization and industrialization have significant impacts on energy consumption and co2 emissions but their relationship varies at different stages of economic development taking cognizance of heterogeneity and the ratchet effect this paper adopts the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat framework as a starting point and re estimates the relationship using different panel date models the main results are obtained by dynamic panel threshold regression models which divide a balanced panel dataset of 73 countries over the period of 1971 2010 into four groups according to their annual income levels the key results are 1 in the low income group urbanization decreases energy consumption but increases co2 emissions 2 in the middle low income and high income groups industrialization decreases energy consumption but increases co2 emissions while urbanization significantly increases both energy consumption and co2 emissions 3 for the middle high income group urbanization does not significantly affect energy consumption but does hinder the growth of emissions while industrialization was found to have an insignificant impact on energy consumption and co2 emissions 4 from the population perspective it produces positive effects on energy consumption and also increases emissions except for the high income group these novel methodology and findings reveal that different development strategies of urbanization and industrialization should be pursued depending on the levels of income in a bid to conserve energy and reduce emissions

household energy consumption in rural china historical development present pattern and policy implication abstract household energy consumption in rural areas is strongly related to living standards poverty alleviation air pollution and health but lacks solid analysis due to limited data this paper first presents a systematical overview of rural household energy consumption in china from 1985 to 2013 to quantify and illustrate the pattern of rural household energy consumption we use a comprehensive household survey the chinese residential energy consumption survey crecs 2013 to illustrate the energy consumption by seven types of energy and five types of end use demand moreover we compare the rural household energy consumption in terms of quantity fuel mix and demand structure by north south regions east middle west areas and various countries we identify the biomass still dominate chinese rural household energy supply while cooking and space heating are the most energy intensive demand the overall energy efficiency for a rural household is 33 mainly attributed to the massive use of biomass policy implications are summarized and discussed

central bank independence and macroeconomic performance some comparative evidence this note uses information on a sample of sixteen oecd countries to assess the relationship between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance as previous work suggests politically controlled central banks are more likely to pursue policies that lead to high and variable inflation however the authors find little evidence that political control of central bank policy has any impact on measures of the level or variability of growth unemployment or the ex ante real interest rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

mimetic and experiential effects in international marketing alliance formations of us pharmaceuticals firms an event history analysis alliances are recognized as an indispensable tool for managers operating in a global business environment and as a fundamental stage of the internationalization process of the firm drawing on a co evolutionary framework this article investigates the mimetic and experiential effects in international alliance formation we focus on a critical unresolved issue in the literature what is the role of mimetic behavior and previous alliance experience in mitigating the uncertainty associated with engaging in cross border operations an event history analysis of 792 international marketing alliance formations initiated by 317 firms in the us pharmaceutical industry is employed to test the hypotheses the findings of two different hazard rate models reveal significant complex effects of density and cross border alliance experience on the propensity to engage in new international marketing alliances

two fallacies concerning central bank independence this paper takes issue with two basic conclusions prevalent in the literature on central bank behavior first the paper argues that it is inappropriate to presume that central banks will in the absence of any precommitment technology necessarily behave in a discretionary fashion that implies an inflationary bias since there is no functional connection between average rates of money creation or inflation and policy responsiveness to cyclical disturbances it is entirely feasible for the bias to be avoided in other words there is no necessary tradeoff between flexibility and commitment second to the extent that the absence of any absolute precommitment technology is nevertheless a problem it will apply to a consolidated central bank plus government entity as well as to the central bank alone thus contracts between governments and central banks do not overcome the motivation for dynamic inconsistency they merely relocate it this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

global changes in residential energy consumption abstract the residential energy sector is crucial to achieving co2 emission reductions as it has an important energy saving potential and its environmental controls are difficult to displace to other countries using the latest available data this short paper provides a concise analysis of residential energy consumption trends for the period 1993 2013 in a double perspective by main world regions and by per capita gross national income levels in 2013 residential energy has been divided into three types non renewable direct renewable and indirect renewable annual rates of change energy intensity energy in per capita terms and some ratios have been analyzed notable regional differences and trends were observed in the studied variables therefore different energy policies are recommended for the regions eastern and southern asian countries the eu15 and other developed countries are the regions which should make the greatest effort to reduce residential energy consumption the promotion of direct and indirect renewable energies is recommended

identifying a sustained pathway to multidimensional poverty reduction evidence from two chinese provinces poor rural households in developing countries often endure many faceted burdens including monetary poverty nutrition deficiency and energy shortage due to reliance on limited local natural resourc

residential energy consumption in urban china a decomposition analysis abstract residential energy consumption rec is the second largest energy use category 10 in china and urban residents account for 63 of the rec understanding the underlying drivers of variations of urban rec thus helps to identify challenges and opportunities and provide advices for future policy measures this paper applies the lmdi method to a decomposition of china s urban rec during the period of 1998 2007 at disaggregated product activity level using data collected from a wide range of sources our results have shown an extensive structure change towards a more energy intensive household consumption structure as well as an intensive structure change towards high quality and cleaner energy such as electricity oil and natural gas which reflects a changing lifestyle and consumption mode in pursuit of a higher level of comfort convenience and environmental protection we have also found that china s price reforms in the energy sector have contributed to a reduction of rec while scale factors including increased urban population and income levels have played a key role in the rapid growth of rec we suggest that further deregulation in energy prices and regulatory as well as voluntary energy efficiency and conservation policies in the residential sector should be promoted

centralised wage setting inflation contracts and the optimal choice of central banker the paper examines the appropriate design of central banking institutions in an economy in which the nominal wage is set by an inflation averse monopoly union as a positive mark up over its market clearing value the analysis considers both the optimal choice of central banker and the potential role for a linear inflation contract the optimal set of arrangements is a central banker who attaches less significance to inflation than does society combined with an inflation contract where the value of the contract parameter is related to the union s degree of inflationaversion following the important contribution of rogoff 1985 the appointment of a conservative central banker has been widely accepted as a potential albeit partial solution to the time inconsistency problem associated with discretionary policy making in placing a greater weight on inflation than does the government and society as a whole in the setting of monetary policy the central bank s temptation to create inflation surprises is reduced this then leads to a lower inflation rate in equilibrium than would otherwise prevail whilst in rogoff s stochastic framework this reduction in the inflationary bias has to be weighed against an increase in output variability the appropriate choice of central banker ensures a net improvement in welfare an important feature of rogoff s model is the assumption of an atomistic labour market in which nominal wages embodied in single period contracts reflect interaction between agents who hold no market power such a representation of the labour market also characterises most subsequent extensions of rogoff s analysis e g lohmann 1992 and waller 1992 however a number of recent papers in considering the time inconsistency issue have employed the assumption of unionised wage setting assuming either an allencompassing monopoly union or alternatively a number of individual unions each of which has a non negligible impact on macroeconomic variables examples include agell and ysander 1993 bleaney 1996 cubitt 1992 1995 horn and persson 1988 hutchison and walsh 1998 and skott 1997 these contributions have examined the implications of the assumed labour market imperfection from a variety of perspectives but only those of bleaney and skott directly consider its consequences for the appropriate specification of central bank objectives in what follows we explore the significance of unionised wage setting for

china s foreign trade and climate change a case study of co2 emissions abstract the globalization of trade has numerous environmental implications trade creates a mechanism for consumers to shift environmental pollution associated with their consumption to other countries carbon leakage exerts great influences on international trade and economy applying an input output approach the paper estimates the amount of carbon dioxide co2 embodied in china s foreign trade during 1997 2007 it is found that 10 03 26 54 of china s annual co2 emissions are produced during the manufacture of export goods destined for foreign consumers while the co2 emissions embodied in china s imports accounted for only 4 40 1997 and 9 05 2007 of that we also estimate that the rest of world avoided emitting 150 18 mt co2 in 1997 increasing to 593 mt in 2007 as a result of importing goods from china rather than manufacturing the same type and quantity of goods domestically during 1997 2007 the net additional global co2 emissions resulting from china s exports were 4894 mt then the paper divides the trade embodied emissions into scale composition and technical effect it was found that scale and composition effect increased the co2 emissions embodied in trade while the technical effect offset a small part of them finally its mechanism and policy implications are presented

energy conservation and co2 emission reduction in china s 11th five year plan a performance evaluation in the 11th five year plan fyp 2005 2010 the chinese government initiated a series of energy saving and emission reduction policies in many key fields in response to environmental pollution and climate change this paper quantitatively evaluates the performance of energy conservation and co2 emission reduction in this period the impact of these policies and potentials by integrating the contributions of energy conversion efficiency and energy utilization efficiency improvement industrial restructuring fuel mix shift and renewable energy development in a unified framework as a first attempt to introduce energy conversion efficiency improvement into a decomposition approach comprehensive and specific policies are summarized as a policy list to be investigated the results show that energy intensity and conversion efficiency effects were mainly responsible for driving down energy consumption by 637 4 mtce and 85 4 mtce respectively and they reduced co2 emissions by 1345 3 mt and 243 8 mt respectively due to a significant improvement in the 11th fyp period most of the contributions made by the conversion efficiency effect 94 come from thermal power generation and the emission coefficient effect reduced co2 emissions by 17 4 mt through developing renewable energy economic growth is still the biggest driver of energy consumption and increasing emissions while industrial restructuring and fuel mix shift effects contributed relatively little developing renewable energy and promoting economic restructuring to limit the increase of energy intensive sectors are still the main challenges and the next policy focus to achieve the targets for energy saving and carbon emission reduction in the 12th five year plan

charting the territory recombination as a source of uncertainty for potential entrants in this paper we conceptualize categories as regions of a cognitive map that structure the market and guide the investment decisions of potential entrants i e of new and established organizations we advance that as a category appears altered via incumbents acts of recombination potential entrants face market specific uncertainty and are discouraged to invest in that category these negative effects of recombination on market entries are however mitigated at increasing values of category status we test our arguments in the market for electronic music the analyses of product and organizational entries in music styles between 1978 and 2011 lend support to our arguments

income elasticity of cooking fuel substitution in rural china evidence from population census data abstract solid fuels are still widely used as primary cooking fuel in rural china which brings severe health environmental and socio economic consequences a sound understanding of the energy transition pattern of rural households will provide valuable insights for policy makers aiming to facilitate transition towards cleaner fuels the most relevant questions include whether measure of improving income could help facilitate transition and how quickly the transition would happen as household income grows using national population census data 2000 2010 for over two thousand chinese counties we estimated the income elasticities of primary cooking fuel substitution between traditional biomass coal gaseous fuels electric power and others it is found that the income effect is positive for the cleaner fuels gases and electric power but negative for dirty solid fuels like coal and biomass however our estimated elasticities show that the adoption of cleaner fuels gases and electric power as primary cooking fuel is income elastic elasticity 1 for rural village households but income inelastic elasticity

carbon markets 15 years after kyoto lessons learned new challenges abstract carbon markets are substantial and they are expanding there are many lessons from market experiences over the past eight years there should be fewer free allowances better management of market sensitive information and a recognition that trading systems require adjustments that have consequences for market participants and market confidence moreover the emerging market architecture features separate emissions trading systems serving distinct jurisdictions and a variety of other types of policies exist alongside the carbon markets this situation is in sharp contrast to the top down integrated global trading architecture envisioned 15 years ago by the designers of the kyoto protocol and raises a suite of new questions in this new architecture jurisdictions with emissions trading have to decide how whether and when to link with one another stakeholders and policymakers must confront how to measure the comparability of efforts among markets as well as relative to a variety of other polic

energy consumption in rural china a household model for three villages in jiangxi province abstract in china fuelwood and coal are the most important energy sources for rural households in poor areas along with population and economic growth excessive fuelwood collection is a major cause of deforestation burning coal contributes to environmental problems such as air pollution acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions the purpose of this article is to analyze factors determining choice of energy source and labor input into fuelwood collection in poor forest rich regions and to provide policy recommendations on ways to affect these choices to this end a nonseparable household model reflecting choices in labor allocation and energy demand of rural households is estimated from available data for three villages in a poor forest rich region in jiangxi province southeast china innovative aspects of this article are the analyses of factors driving household substitution between forest and non forest fuels and of dissimilarities in household responses under different market access conditions

rural household energy consumption with the economic development in china stages and characteristic indices abstract this paper discusses history variance and general features on rural household energy consumption with the economic development in china energy shortage has been a long standing problem in rural areas of china the average effective energy consumption was 0 46 0 54 kgce per day per household in the 1960s and 1970s the reason for this is that the rural household energy supply mainly relies on the available amounts of local natural energy resources the problem of cooking fuel shortage was basically solved in the early 1980s since more straw and stalks were produced due to the rapid development of agriculture the process of energy commercialization also started from the early 1980s due to the availability of coal fuel oil and other energy sources in the market and the reconstruction of rural power supply network energy consumption was 369 8 kgce per capita with 30 of commercial energy consumption and the effective heat per capita per day was 0 64 kgce in 1995 a closer relationship was found between household energy consumption level structure and family income along with the economic development this paper analyzed the rural household energy consumption of three typical regions i e out of poverty well off and rich regions in terms of effective heat per capita per day percentage of commercial energy consumption in total effective heat electricity consumption per capita and room temperature of northern areas in winter

the structure of competition how competition between one s rivals influences imitative market entry this paper investigates how the pattern of encounters between a firm s competitors affects the firm s inclination to follow its competitors into a new market we theorize that direct encounters between a firm s rivals lead to a herding effect making imitative market entry more likely past mutual forbearance between a firm s competitors resulting from asymmetric multimarket competition further strengthens this herding effect by enhancing the firm s expectations of market attractiveness in contrast aggressive past rivalry between the competitors resulting from symmetric multimarket contact dampens these expectations producing a competition effect that makes herding less probable we test our idea in two distinct contexts the chinese pharmaceutical industry and the taiwanese computer hardware industry and find consistent support in both settings we discuss how our analysis of what we call the structure of competition can be extended to research on other forms of firm behavior

household demand for electricity the role of market distortions and prices in competition policy abstract this paper examines residential demand for electricity in sri lanka using survey data collected over a five year period between 2011 and 2015 the study finds that the major determinants of demand for residential electricity are the result of price or market distortions i e subsidies socioeconomic variables and energy saving technology the effects of these variables are particularly relevant to competition policy estimated elasticities with respect to average price subsidies under marginal cost pricing subsidies under average cost pricing and income are found to be 0 015 0 021 0 036 and 0 046 respectively we find that demand for electricity is inelastic and is categorised as a normal good however elasticities with respect to subsidy variables are found to be higher than the price variable this implies that under an increasing block rate system any price change used as a policy measure to control electricity consumption will not be effective this is because price changes could alter the subsidy received by the consumer and therefore reverse the objective of the price change further results of this study find that price and elasticities with respect to subsidy variables are relatively higher for low income groups while income elasticity is relatively larger for high income groups

the indirect energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption in china an analysis based on the input output method in recent decades china s rapid economy development has been coupling with the steadily increasing household consumption which in turn leads to ever growing energy consumption and co2 emission with a focus on the decade of 2000 2010 this study examines the energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption using the input output method as well as the influencing factors of the indirect co2 emission the results show that first the indirect energy consumption and co2 emission appear the main parts of total energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption accounting for 69 77 and 77 84 respectively second the indirect co2 emission indicates an increasing trend mainly driven by per capita household consumption and energy intensity finally the five sectors with relatively higher direct or total co2 emission intensity are the key sectors for reducing co2 emission in china i e 1 production and distribution of electric power and heat power pdeh 2 smelting and pressing of metals spm 3 processing of petroleum coking processing of nuclear fuel ppcpn 4 manufacture of non metallic mineral products mnm and 5 manufacture of chemical materials mcm

running for the exit community cohesion and bank panics bank panics attract scholarly interest because they reflect distrust of each bank that experiences a run as a result of diffusion of information rumors about such bank runs trigger additional runs elsewhere however the contagion of bank runs is highly selective for reasons that are unrelated to the financial strength of the individual banks this presents a puzzle that extant theories on institutions and reputations cannot fully explain to solve this puzzle we turn to the characteristics of the community in which the banks operate we develop theory on how communities with diverse affiliation structures and economic inequality have weaker community cohesion and communication making such communities less likely to experience widespread distrust and hence bank runs we test hypotheses on the effects of community ethnic diversity national origin diversity religious diversity and wealth inequality using data from the great bank panic of 1893 and we find strong community effects on bank runs these f

driving forces of residential co2 emissions in urban and rural china an index decomposition analysis abstract there exist many differences between urban and rural china among which residential co 2 emissions arising from energy consumption is a major one in this paper we estimate and compare the energy related co 2 emissions from urban and rural residential energy consumption from 1991 to 2004 the logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition analysis is then applied to investigate the factors that may affect the changes of the co 2 emissions it is found that energy intensity and the income effects respectively contributed most to the decline and the increase of residential co 2 emissions for both urban and rural china in urban china the population effect was found to contribute to the increase of residential co 2 emissions with a rising tendency however in rural china the population effect for residential co 2 emissions kept decreasing since 1998

monetary regimes and the co ordination of wage setting abstract a recent literature argues that a strict monetary regime may reduce equilibrium unemployment by disciplining wage setters as wage setters abstain from raising wages to avoid a monetary contraction however in this literature the wage setters are assumed not to co ordinate their wage setting the present paper argues that precisely because a strict monetary regime may discipline the unco ordinated wage setting thus lowering unemployment in the unco ordinated outcome it also reduces wage setters incentives to co ordinate it is shown that an accommodating monetary regime may reduce equilibrium unemployment via the strengthening of the wage setters incentives to co ordinate

residential electricity demand in taiwan this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in taiwan as a function of household disposable income population growth the price of electricity and the degree of urbanization short and long term effects are separated through the use of an error correction model in the long run the income elasticity is unit elastic the own price effect is negative and inelastic in an error correction framework the short run income and price effects are small and less than the long run effects cooling degree day effects have a positive impact on short run consumption we have used a proxy variable urbanization to capture economic development characteristics and changes in electricity using capital stocks not explained by income the variable provides significant explanatory power to the model both in the short and long run we interpret it as controlling for economic development factors not captured by the pure income effect and we think it holds promise for explaining residential electricity consumption in other developing countries

forest based bioenergy in china status opportunities and challenges forest based bioenergy is gaining global popularity due to its multiple benefits and increased global energy needs in this study the current status of forest based bioenergy in china was reviewed and the opportunities and challenges were analyzed the latest national development plan for forest based bioenergy was also discussed it can be concluded from the study that forest based bioenergy is still in the beginning stage in china but will grow rapidly in the next decade due to abundant resources and strong government support however there are major constraints that need to be addressed including unstable feedstock supply low market interest and investments inadequate r d and competition from other forest products the national development plan sets up a mid term goal for developing forest based bioenergy but more supporting policies are required to guarantee its successful implementation

confidence in imitation niche width strategy in the uk automobile industry our study examines the imitation behavior of uk automobile manufacturers from 1894 to 1981 and supports previous studies on interorganizational imitation by showing that manufacturers tend to imitate other manufacturers that are similar we also find that the degree of confidence manufacturers have in their imitating behavior affects the intensity of that behavior where an organizations confidence is determined by the variance of the routines used by its reference group and the number of firms in the reference group our results show that 1 manufacturers whose reference groups showed large variance in niche width changes during the previous year are less likely to imitate the mean of those changes 2 manufacturers who have large reference groups are more likely to imitate the changes and 3 the negative effect of variance on the imitating behavior is strengthened as the number of reference organizations increases

might a conservative central banker reduce employment variability abstract this note identifies circumstances under which increased inflation aversion by the central bank can contrary to the conventional wisdom reduce employment variability this result reflects three key features of the model developed a monopolistically competitive goods market strategic wage setting by non atomistic unions partial anticipation of shocks by unions

decomposing uncertainty and its effects on imitation in firm exit decisions this study examines the effects of different uncertainty types on interorganizational imitation in firm exit decisions we draw on herding models to conceptualize exit decisions as being based on a firm s private information which the firm updates with information inferred from observing the actions of others we posit that different types of uncertainty differentially affect this observational learning process in particular we propose that certain uncertainty types attenuate rather than foster observational learning and subsequent imitation we test this theory using a 29 year panel data set on the exit of private venture capital firms our results indicate that observational learning does influence imitation in firm exit decisions and they also suggest that a common belief that uncertainty enhances imitation does not apply to all types of uncertainty specifically we find that uncertainty fosters imitation only when it is idiosyncratic to the firm uncertainties that are common to all firms in contrast actually reduce reliance on observational learning by decomposing uncertainty into different types and explicating their effects on imitation we demonstrate that this relationship is more nuanced than previously assumed and in addition highlight the role of deliberate information processing in imitation

bioenergy consumption in rural china evidence from a survey in three provinces abstract biomass in the form of crop residues and firewood is a major energy source for rural households in china a survey conducted in the provinces of shanxi zhejiang and guizhou shows that 37 percent of rural households use bioenergy for heating and cooking and that bioenergy accounts for 18 percent of their total energy consumption most of the biomass used for energy is burned in traditional stoves contributing to indoor air pollution in rural homes crop residues also are commonly burned in the fields contributing to the high level of outdoor air pollution in china our econometric analysis of the key determinants of bioenergy use shows that bioenergy consumption falls modestly with income growth increased time required for biomass collection and less farmland hence open burning of some biomass is an optimal choice and is likely to become more of a problem without policy intervention these findings suggest that a more sustainable use of biomass requires policies that promote cleaner more efficient bioenergy combustion technologies and increase the economic value of biomass such that local households can benefit from biomass collection

estimating short and long term residential demand for electricity new evidence from sri lanka this study investigates the short run dynamics and long run equilibrium relationship between residential electricity demand and factors influencing demand per capita income price of electricity price of kerosene oil and price of liquefied petroleum gas using annual data for sri lanka for the period 1960 2007 the study uses unit root cointegration and error correction models the long run demand elasticities of income own price and price of kerosene oil substitute were estimated to be 0 78 0 62 and 0 14 respectively the short run elasticities for the same variables were estimated to be 032 0 16 and 0 10 respectively liquefied petroleum lp gas is a substitute for electricity only in the short run with an elasticity 0 09 the main findings of the paper support the following 1 increasing the price of electricity is not the most effective tool to reduce electricity consumption 2 existing subsidies on electricity consumption can be removed without reducing government revenue 3 the long run income elasticity of demand shows that any future increase in household incomes is likely to significantly increase the demand for electricity and 4 any power generation plans which consider only current per capita consumption and population growth should be revised taking into account the potential future income increases in order to avoid power shortages ill the country

firm and country level trade offs and contingencies in the evaluation of foreign investment the semiconductor industry 1994 2002 this paper examines the joint impact of firm and country level factors on the international plant location decisions of semiconductor firms from 1994 2002 we find that these factors interact to influence the location decisions of firms investing abroad in a given host country firms with more advanced technological capabilities are more likely to make investments in countries with greater technological sophistication but not in politically hazardous countries where they face greater expropriation hazards firms with less advanced technology are more willing to accept a trade off between country level political hazards and technological sophistication firms also trade off own versus other firm experience as sources of critical knowledge regarding the foreign investment environment

household biogas use in rural china a study of opportunities and constraints as a renewable energy biogas is not only an important part of the development of rural new energy but also an important aspect of sustainable development in china the development process and present status of household biogas specifically the opportunities and constraints of household biogas in rural china are discussed in this paper only about 19 of the biogas potential has been utilized in rural china there are several opportunities for household biogas development in rural china including the problem of rural household energy consumption the availability of biogas fermentation materials national financial subsidies legal and international clean development mechanisms also more research needs to be done in straw fermentation and cold fermentation technology training should be conducted to raise the level of biogas customers in comprehensive biogas utilization measures should be taken to improve the follow up services and management of biogas plants the information presented in this paper will be helpful not only to the sustainable development of household biogas in rural china but also to the development of biogas in similar countries around the world

central bank independence centralization of wage bargaining inflation and unemployment theory and some evidence abstract this paper proposes a conceptual framework to investigate the effects of central bank independence of the degree of centralization of wage bargaining and of the interaction between those institutional variables on real wages unemployment and inflation in a framework in which unions are averse to inflation this aversion moderates union s wage demands as they attempt to induce the central bank to inflate at a lower rate an increase in the degree of centralization of wage bargaining a decrease in the number of unions triggers two opposite effects on real wages unemployment and inflation it reduces the substitutability between the labor of different unions and therefore the degree of effective competition between them this reduced competition effect raises real wages unemployment and inflation but the decrease in the number of unions also strengthens the moderating effect of inflationary fears on the real wage demands of each union this strategic effect lowers real wages unemployment and inflation for sufficiently inflation averse unions the interaction between those two effects produces a calmfors driffill type relation between real wages and centralization the paper analyzes the effects of central bank independence on the position and the shape of this relation as well as on inflation and unemployment the paper features two mechanisms one of which is novel through which monetary institutions have real effects the model implies that if there is a single union social welfare is maximized when the central bank attaches a zero weight to inflation but when the number of unions is larger than one this result is no longer true in general empirical evaluation of some of the theoretical implications using data from 19 developed economies is for the most part supportive of those implications

rural household energy use and its determinants in china how important are influences of payment for ecosystem services vs other factors abstract fuelwood is an essential environmental good for livelihood in rural china heavy reliance on fuelwood is associated with numerous negative externalities due to decades of rapid economic growth in china we hypothesize that the increase in rural household income would reduce reliance on fuelwood using data from a survey of 481 households conducted in 2014 we examined the effects of two payments for ecosystem services programs the conversion of cropland to forest program ccfp and the ecological welfare forest program ewfp on energy use along with other factors we found that the ccfp did not significantly affect fuel choice nor the quantity of fuelwood used but households with more forestland in ewfp were less likely to adopt modern fuels and likely to use more fuelwood household per capita annual income was the main factor promoting adoption of modern fuels while household size was the most important factor determining the quantity of fuelwood used per capita overall the gradually increasing adoption of modern fuels has thus far not resulted in any significant abandonment of fuelwood fuelwood remains the dominant fuel across all income groups suggesting that households in the study area are in the early stages of the energy transition

factors determining household use of clean and renewable energy sources for lighting in sub saharan africa abstract the purpose of the current research is to examine the factors that influence household use of determinants of renewable and clean energy sources used for lighting purposes in africa using the data from the living standard measurement study lsms from three african countries ethiopia tanzania and malawi for this purpose the paper uses multinomial logit and ordered probit econometrics models the descriptive analysis reveals that rural households are dependent largely on kerosene and batteries for lighting their houses while electricity and batteries form a major source of energy for lighting urban households a small fraction of households uses solid fuels and solar as their source of energy for lighting econometric results show that female headed households are likely to adopt clean and renewable sources of energy compared to male headed households wealthier and more educated households are found to use electricity and solar energy for lighting while poorer households tend to use kerosene batteries and solid fuels empirical results indicated that the ethiopian households followed by malawian households are more likely to use clean sources of energy compared to tanzanian households