the j curve effect and the u s agricultural trade balance according to the j curve theory following a currency depreciation there will be an initial deterioration of the trade balance before an improvement is realized this paper finds empirical evidence indicating the first segment of the j curve does exist for the u s agricultural trade balance a 10 depreciation of the u s dollar is estimated to lead a deterioration of the agricultural trade balance that will last for about nine months

are labour productivity and residential living standards drivers of the energy consumption changes abstract the aim of this paper is to analyse the effects that explain the final energy consumption changes in spain in the period 2000 2013 using the lmdi i method distinguishing between the final energy consumption by the productive sectors and households residential and private transport the consumption changes in the productive sectors and households have been decomposed into five effects these are the intensity the inverse of labour productivity the structural the standard of living and the activity effects the energy intensity effect has been defined from a physical perspective in order to eliminate the possible effects brought about by causes unconnected with the energy process the evolution of the market the variation of productivity etc that usually affect the energy intensity indicator when measured from a macroeconomic perspective the results show that the activity the living standard of private transport and sectoral intensity effect are those that contribute most to the increase of energy consumption in this period whereas the inverse of labour productivity the structural and the intensity effects in private transport contribute to reducing the final energy consumption the results obtained for the sectoral intensity except for non private transport and the residential intensity effects lead us to recommend that it is necessary to focus on a more effective and intensive policy in the matter of energy efficiency in spain than that developed in the period of analysis

exchange rate sensitivity of u s trade flows evidence from industry data 1 introductionin an effort to boost employment a country could stimulate its exports and discourage its imports and thereby improve its trade balance one policy that has received a great deal of attention in the literature is currency devaluation by making exports cheaper and imports expensive devaluation is said to improve the trade balance the only condition required is that the sum of import and export demand price elasticities exceed unity that condition known as the marshall lerner condition is derived under the assumption of perfectly elastic supply of trade most previous studies that attempted to assess the marshall lerner condition relied on price elasticities that were obtained by estimating aggregate import and export demand functions these studies provided mixed conclusions as far as the effectiveness of devaluation or depreciation is concerned examples include houthakker and magee 1969 khan 1974 goldstein and khan 1976 1978 wilson and takacs 1979 haynes and stone 1983a 1983b warner and krienin 1983 bahmani oskooee 1986 1998 and bahmani oskooee and niroomand 1998 the mixed conclusion could be related to aggregation bias when aggregate trade data are employed in import and export demand functions significant price elasticity with one trading partner could be more than offset by an insignificant price elasticity with another trading partner yielding an insignificant price elasticity because of aggregation bias another body of the literature has emerged in recent years that concentrates on using trade data at the bilateral level examples in this latter group include rose and yellen 1989 cushman 1987 1990 summary 1989 marquez 1990 haynes hutchison and mikesell 1986 eaton 1994 bahmani oskooee and brooks 1999 nadenichek 2000 and bahmani oskooee and goswami 2004 except bahmani oskooee and goswami 2004 all other studies in this second group have estimated bilateral trade elasticities between the united states and her major trading partners and concluded that the real bilateral exchange rate is a significant determinant of bilateral trade balance at least in some cases bahmani oskooee and goswami 2004 who considered the bilateral trade flows between japan and her nine major trading partners found that in most cases japanese exports are not sensitive to the real bilateral exchange rate but her imports are these studies as well as those in the first group estimate price elasticities in demand under the assumption that supply is perfectly elastic and then evaluate the marshall lerner condition involving own price coefficients in demand thus evidence in these studies is limited because it assumes perfectly elastic supply of trade for both exports and imports although there is additional room to expand the literature in the second group by considering the experiences of countries other than the united states and japan in this paper we would like to open another avenue of research by investigating the impact of real depreciation of the dollar on imports and exports of 66 american industries a disaggregation by industry rather than by country disaggregation by industry will avoid problems associated with petroleum imports as does disaggregation by country rose and yellen 1989 1 for this purpose in section 2 we outline the import and export demand functions for each commodity group along with the estimation method in section 3 we present the empirical results section 4 provides our summary and conclusion data definitions and sources are cited in an appendix 2 the models and the methodin formulating any import and export demand function it is a common practice to relate the volume of imports and exports to a measure of income and relative prices the main purpose is to obtain estimates of import and export demand elasticities so that we can better judge the effectiveness of currency devaluation in increasing a country s inpayments and reducing outpayments

oil price volatility and the asymmetric response of gasoline prices to oil price increases and decreases this paper analyzes the effect of volatility in oil prices on the degree of asymmetry in the response of gasoline prices to oil price increases and decreases several time series measures of the asymmetry between the responses of gasoline prices to oil price increases and decreases and several measures of the oil price volatility are constructed in all models the degree of asymmetry in gasoline prices declines with an increase in oil price volatility the results support the oligopolistic coordination theory as a likely explanation of the observed asymmetry and are not consistent with the standard search theory and the search theory with bayesian updating

exchange rate volatility and foreign trade evidence from thirteen ldc s this article investigates empirically the impact of real exchange rate volatility on the export flows of 13 less developed countries ldc s over the quarterly period 1973 1996 estimates of the cointegrating relations are obtained using johansen s multivariate procedure estimates of the short run dynamics are obtained for each country using the error correction technique the major results show that increases in the volatility of the real effective exchange rate approximating exchange rate uncertainty exert a significant negative effect on export demand in both the short run and the long run in each of the 13 ldc s these effects may result in significant reallocation of resources by market participants

the dynamics pattern of price dispersion in retail fuel markets abstract this paper empirically investigates the dynamics of price dispersion in retail fuel markets as a response to the corresponding wholesale price changes for this purpose we take advantage of a daily dataset of prices fixed by gas stations in two spanish regions it is consistently found that retail price dispersion is temporarily enlarged as a consequence of wholesale price increases while it is reduced due to decreases the presence of asymmetries in the short run dynamics is also revealed the impact of positive changes in the wholesale price is in the first days of adjustment clearly greater the dynamics pattern could be explained at least in part by the faster response of prices in the stations associated with the two vertically integrated companies that have the largest market share i e repsol and cepsa

rockets and feathers the asymmetric speed of adjustment of uk retail gasoline prices to cost changes abstract the paper develops a quadratic quantity adjustment model to test the hypothesis put forward in the recent monopolies and mergers commission report that the speed of adjustment of uk retail gasoline prices to cost changes is more rapid when costs rise than when they fall and that the adjustment path is more concentrated around the mean value on the upswing using data from 1982 to 1989 evidence of faster and more concentrated responses to cost increases were found

do rockets rise faster and feathers fall slower in an atmosphere of local market power evidence from the retail gasoline market this study explores the possibility that local market power influences the observed asymmetric relationship between changes in wholesale gasoline costs and changes in retail gasoline prices i exploit an original data set of weekly gas station prices in southern california from september 2002 to may 2003 and take advantage of detailed station and local market level characteristics to determine the extent to which geographic and product differentiation influence price response asymmetry i find that brand identity proximity to rival stations and local market features and demographics each influence a station s predicted price response asymmetry

the effects of exchange rate volatility on commodity trade between the united states and mexico author affiliation mohsen bahmani oskooee department of economics p o box 413 bolton hall 822 university of wisconsin milwaukee milwaukee wi 53201 usa bahmani uwm edu corresponding authorscott w hegerty department of economics p o box 413 university of wisconsin milwaukee milwaukee wi 53201 usa hegertys beloit edu acknowledgment we would like to thank our anonymous referees for their valuable comments any error however is ours 1 introductionwith the breakdown of the bretton woods system in 1973 real exchange rates began to fluctuate greatly as volatility increased exporters and importers could no longer be as certain of the real prices of their goods this increased risk would affect their expected profits and thus influence their decision to trade exchange rate uncertainty has been shown to have affected trade flows between countries and across sectors but it has had both positive and negative effects in different studies increased volatility has had important implications in assessing the costs and benefits of various exchange rate regimes as well as of exchange rate controls in this study we assess the effect of this volatility on trade between the united states and mexico based on the exports and imports of 102 industries from 1962 to 2004 and we find that it plays a role only for a small number of individual industries 1intuitively one might surmise that uncertainty toward the real price of traded goods may reduce trade flows as risk averse buyers and sellers face possible losses due to exchange rate fluctuations and thus choose not to partake in risky dealings on the other hand it has been hypothesized that exchange rate risk can actually increase trade flows as importers and exporters opt to increase the volume of trade to attain a certain income making up for a decrease in the per unit value of a good by increasing the number of units bought or sold the bulk of the literature points to the former conclusion as reviewed by mckenzie 1999 and more recently by bahmani oskooee and hegerty 2007 the trading relationship between mexico and the united states is an important one more than 70 of mexico s exports go to the united states likewise mexico is still the second largest market for u s exports after canada mexico has taken advantage of its relatively inexpensive labor to attract u s manufacturing firms and expand its exports mexico imports automobile parts from the united states for example and then exports completed automobiles assembly line factories known as maquiladoras have attracted much attention but with the growth of china and competition from its even less expensive labor this sector has actually declined in addition the united states is mexico s main trading partner for agricultural products thus the two countries share important trade flows across a wide variety of sectors table 1 shows a breakdown of mexico s top 15 export and import industries in order of largest to smallest dollar value or trade share of the 102 industries that we analyze in our study the rankings are given for the year 1980 in order to capture the preliberalization trade structure and for the year 2004 to capture flows in the years after mexico joined the general agreement on tarifs and trade gatt and the north american free trade agreement nafta 2table 1 top 15 industries by dollar value of trade table omitted see article image the most striking observation in table 1 is that the same manufacturing industries occupy top spots for both exports and imports road motor vehicles exports of which have grown in importance since 1980 were also the top mexican import in both 1980 and 2004 likewise such manufacturing industry categories as telecommunications apparatus other electrical machinery machinery and appliances non electrical and office machines make up a large part of both export and import flows

bilateral j curve between india and her trading partners india a land of over one billion people and one of the newly emerging industrial powers in the world is going through a slow but steady metamorphism for centuries india has played a major role in the international trade it was not uncommon to see her ships carrying silk and spices across the arabian seas and bringing back machine made textile invasions of india first by mughals and latter by the british through the east india company were all trade oriented india s presence in the world trade is relatively small at this time but is gaining momentum after independence in 1947 india for a brief period experimented with socialism the five year plans were mainly focused towards building infrastructure and development of small scale agriculture based industries the industrial development even though extremely important for growth played a secondary role the foreign investment was encouraged but only in the selected sectors of the economy however threat of nationalization a large bureaucracy corruption lack of understanding of the indian business practices and the requirement that a major share holder must be an indian national discouraged foreign capital investment in india during 1991 1992 india adopted a policy of trade liberalization to attract foreign capital and to encourage non resident indians to invest in their home country government of india established a separate unit within the home ministry whose main function was to expedite processing of applications india also relaxed the requirement that a major partner be an indian national india provided export subsidies to the exporters in terms of cash as well as foreign exchange so that they could import machines and raw materials exports responded to the trade liberalization and increased from 44 041 crores of rupees in 1991 1992 to 141 603 crores in 1998 1999 where one crore is equivalent to ten million in us dollar terms at a current exchange rate of 42 48 rupees per dollar this translates to an increase from 10 37 billion to 33 34 billion over eight years india also anticipates that through a major increase in the information technology mainly software industry her exports will increase to 90 billion by 2005 the trade liberalization has been accompanied by changes in the monetary policies the inflation rate has been reduced from about 12 to 9 per year the interest rates have declined from 14 to 10 and the exchange rate has been allowed to respond to market forces as a result from 1991 1992 to 1998 1999 the rupee has declined from 19 62 rupees per dollar to 42 48 rupees per dollar by december 2000 rupee had further devalued to 46 25 per dollar with a hope that it will further boost india s exports and improve her trade balance however the impact of currency depreciation on the trade balance is not instantaneous indeed there is ample evidence in the literature that after currency depreciation the trade balance worsens in the short run before improving in the long run since this pattern of movement of the trade balance over time resembles the letter j magee 1973 labelled it the j curve phenomenon magee argued that after devaluation contracts that are in transit at old exchange rates dominate the short run response of the trade balance over time new contracts at new prices begin to exert their favourable impact at this stage elasticities may increase leading to an eventual improvement in the trade balance of course the delayed response could also be due to lags in the process of increasing the production of exportables junz and rhomberg 1973 have identified five lags namely recognition lags decision lags delivery lags replacement lags and production lags only after the realization of these lags the trade balance could improve early studies that tried to investigate the impact of currency depreciation on the trade balance relied upon estimating the marshall lerner condition the condition

european gasoline markets price transmission asymmetries in mean and variance the main objective of this article is to analyse the different sources of asymmetric price transmissions in the fuel market for france germany and spain during the last decades the eu has carrie

the energy efficiency situation in ghana abstract ghana s electricity sector has long been saddled with challenges regarding supply security and power quality the existing power plants are not able to attain full generation capacity due to fuel supply constraints as well as the uncertainty of rainfall and water inflows into the hydroelectric power plants there has been an imbalance between demand and supply in the country with a shortage of 25 of peak power reported in year 2014 2015 in dealing with the energy crises the focus of the country s energy sector has been on the installation of additional thermal power plants however capacity additions face a number of obstacles such as the requirement for high capital investments timely approvals to build new power plants and there has been increasing inflation problem therefore securing adequate supplies to meet rapidly growing demand remains a challenge at least in the short term coupled with this is the country s electrical appliance market which has been flooded with imports of used low efficiency appliances from overseas as the country achieves middle income status the number of households that can afford major household appliances is expected to increase with the prospect of many consumers buying inefficient appliances thereby unnecessarily burdening the national grid while energy efficiency ee is internationally recognised as a low cost readily available resource that could help improve electricity supply security its implementation in ghana has only recently been given serious attention this paper provides a review of energy efficiency initiatives undertaken by the regulating agencies responsible for energy issues it provides a comprehensive overview of the current energy efficiency status of three household appliances namely refrigerators air conditioners and lighting systems the review indicates that ee measures carried out especially in the replacement of incandescent lamp with compact fluorescent light cfl made significant savings that offset the national electricity peak demand by 200 240 mw

cointegration and threshold adjustment this article proposes an extension to the engle granger testing strategy by permitting asymmetry in the adjustment toward equilibrium in two different ways we demonstrate that our test has good power and size properties over the engle granger test when there are asymmetric departures from equilibrium we consider an application namely whether there exists cointegration among interest rates for instruments with different maturities this issue has been widely tested with mixed results we argue that either cautious policy or possibly opportunistic behavior on the part of the federal reserve implies that an equilibrium relationship between short and long term interest rates exists but that adjustments from disequilibrium are asymmetric in nature empirical tests using u s yields confirm the asymmetric nature of error correction among interest rates of different maturities

analysis of energy end use efficiency policy in spain abstract the implementation of saving measures and energy efficiency entails the need to evaluate achievements in terms of energy saving and spending this paper aims at analysing the effectiveness and economic efficiency of energy saving measures implemented in the energy savings and efficiency action plan 2008 2012 eap4 in spain for 2010 the lack of assessment related to energy savings achieved and public spending allocated by the eap4 justifies the need of this analysis the results show that the transport and building sectors seem to be the most important from the energy efficiency perspective although they did not reach the direct energy savings that were expected there is scope for reduction with the appropriate energy measures for the effectiveness indicator the best performance are achieved by public service agricultural and fisheries and building sectors while in terms of energy efficiency per monetary unit the best results are achieved by transport industry and agriculture sectors authors conclude that it is necessary that central regional and local administrations will get involved in order to get better estimates of the energy savings achieved and thus to affect the design of future energy efficiency measures at the lowest possible cost to the citizens

designing incentive schemes for promoting energy efficient appliances a new methodology and a case study for spain the energy efficiency gap has been high on research and policy agendas for several decades incentive schemes such as subsidies taxes and bonus malus schemes are widely used to promote energy efficient appliances most research however considers instruments in isolation and only rarely in the context of political constraints on instrument use or for alternative policy goals this paper presents a methodology for the optimal design of incentive schemes based on the minimisation of dead weight loss for different policy goals and policy restrictions the use of the methodology is illustrated by designing optimal combinations of taxes and subsidies in spain for three types of appliance dishwashers refrigerators and washing machines the optimal policies are designed subject to different policy goals such as achieving a fixed reduction in emissions or a certain increased market share for efficient appliances and for policy constraints such as budget neutrality the methodology developed here can also be used to evaluate past and current incentive schemes

trade liberalisation the peso and mexico s commodity trade flows with the united states abstract we assess the effects of real peso devaluations as well as the effects of gatt and nafta on mexico s in payments and out payments with the united states for 102 industries we find that relatively few trade flows are sensitive to changes in the real exchange rate probably due to production sharing and intra industry trade but devaluations affect mexican imports more than exports trade liberalisation has had a larger impact particularly on imports of intermediate goods and exports of certain manufactures many affected export industries are ones that have previously been shown to have economies of scale

efficiency effectiveness and implementation feasibility of energy efficiency rebates the renove plan in spain abstract state sponsored incentive policies frequently include subsidies or rebates for the purchase of more efficient appliances however more research is required into the effects of this tool in isolation a case in point is the so called renove plan in spain first the inefficiency losses dead weight losses associated with energy efficiency rebates must be taken into account such a policy may also encourage the large scale purchasing of energy efficient appliances which may finally result in an increase in electricity consumption rebound effect furthermore although a subsidy is more widely accepted than other tools from social and political viewpoints especially than taxes the fiscal consolidation challenge faced by many countries reduces the scope for environmental policy measures on the expenditure side of the budget and strengthens the need to use taxes to meet the agreed policy objectives this paper shows that the current application of the spanish renove plan with rebates on the dishwasher market for energy efficient appliances generates some welfare losses a rebound effect and a considerable deficit in public budgets the paper examines and assesses the effect of different combinations of taxes and rebates in the case of dishwashers in spain based on their performance in terms of economic efficiency environmental effectiveness and implementation feasibility

the j curve effect and us agricultural and industrial trade this paper examines the j curve hypothesis for us agricultural and manufactured goods using the shiller lag model the results support the j curve effect for agricultural goods but not for manufactured goods these findings explain why many studies in the literature fail to support the j curve phenomenon there are two explanations for these findings 1 the aggregation bias of data that combine both agricultural and manufactured goods and 2 the country under study is often an industrial nation like the us or japan with a high proportion of manufactured goods in both exports and imports

competition regulation and pricing behaviour in the spanish retail gasoline market abstract the restructuring of the spanish oil industry produced a highly concentrated oligopoly in the retail gasoline market in june 1990 the spanish government introduced a system of ceiling price regulation in order to ensure that liberalization was accompanied by adequate consumer protection by 1998 prices were left to the free market this paper examines the pricing behaviour of the retail gasoline market using multivariate error correction models over the period january 1993 abolishment of the state monopoly december 2004 the results suggest that gasoline retail prices respond symmetrically to increases as well as to decreases in the spot price of gasoline both over the period of price regulation january 1993 september 1998 and over the period of free market october 1998 december 2004 however once the ceiling price regulation was abolished cooperation emerged between the government and the major operators repsol ypf and cepsa elf to control the inflation rate this resulted in a slower rate of adjustment of gasoline retail prices when gasoline spot prices went up as compared with the european pattern finally the spanish retail margin was by the end of our timing period of analysis as in the starting years after the abolishment of the state monopoly above the european average this pattern confirms our political economic hypothesis which suggests that the spanish government and the oil companies were working together in reducing the inflation in periods of rising oil and gasoline prices it is also inferred that explaining the pricing pattern in energy markets may require different hypothesis than the classical perspective involving just firms taking advantage of market power

estimating retail gasoline price dynamics the effects of sample characteristics and research design the study shows that much of the variation in the findings of the literature on retail gasoline price dynamics is systematic rather than sample variation from using different data estimates of pass through rates depend systematically on research design and features of the data such as the sampling frequency the choice of upstream price whether taxes are included or not the sample length and the postulated lag structure in addition there are systematic differences between time periods and countries using a 20 year long dataset of 28 european union countries we quantify the extent of estimate variation that arises from the choice of data structure from that arising from temporal and country heterogeneity and sampling variation we also show that country heterogeneity itself has systematic components with wealthier countries experiencing slower adjustments our results inform the interpretation of results on pass through rates derived from error correction models they are also of relevance for the broader literature estimating the transmission of price shocks in the economy

petrol prices and subjective wellbeing abstract we examine the effect of petrol prices on subjective wellbeing swb using household panel data to do so we use 17 waves of the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey based on our preferred instrumental variable estimates we find that a standard deviation increase in petrol prices leads to a decline of 0 0157 0 0245 standard deviations in swb the finding that increases in petrol prices significantly lower swb is robust to alternative measures of wellbeing and alternative ways of addressing endogeneity as well as employing different sources of fuel price data measured at a range of frequencies we also examine the channels through which petrol prices influence swb and find that maintaining social networks is an important way through which petrol prices influence swb

an analysis of spain s global and environmental efficiency from a european union perspective abstract sustainable economic growth from the environmental point of view is one of the commitments of the eu 28 different measures have been implemented to deal with this issue this work analyses spain s natural efficiency and management efficiency in their static and dynamic sense for the years 2005 2012 in comparison eu 28 the analysis has been carried out using the malmquist index and natural and managerial efficiency three variables have been considered as inputs work gross fixed capital formation and final energy consumption two variables are the outputs the gdp as a desirable output and greenhouse effect gas emissions as an undesirable output the result is that spain s managerial efficiency and natural efficiency are though their values are lower evolving in a similar manner to those of the countries which have been at the heart of the eu longer these levels of efficiency are higher than those of the block of countries which have joined the eu 28 more recently the natural malmquist index results indicate that these are the countries which have had a greater growth in productivity above spain s and the average of the more veteran countries

energy efficiency economics and policy energy efficiency and conservation are major factors in the reduction of the environmental impact of the energy sector particularly with regard to climate change energy efficiency also contributes to reducing external dependence and vulnerabilities in the energy domain in this paper we discuss the factors that influence energy efficiency and conservation decisions and the most appropriate policies for their promotion although not all public policies seem justified we argue that specific policies for promoting energy conservation may be required preferably based on economic instruments or on the provision of information to consumers

is there an asymmetry in the response of diesel and petrol prices to crude oil price changes evidence from new zealand this paper examines how pre tax petrol and diesel prices in new zealand respond to changes in crude oil prices using an asymmetric error correction model our results show that oil companies adjust diesel prices upwards faster than they adjust them downwards and the difference is statistically significant however we find no statistical evidence for an asymmetry in the adjustment of petrol prices even though the magnitude of estimated coefficients suggests a faster response to rising prices as diesel pricing is not as competitive as petrol pricing calls for further government actions and monitoring of the oil market may be justified our findings also have important implications for the conduct of monetary policy as the pass through of crude oil price changes can affect cost push inflation

does black market exchange rate volatility deter the trade flows iranian experience previous studies that investigated the impact of exchange rate volatility on the trade flows employed official exchange rate data to construct a measure of exchange rate uncertainty in this paper we show that in countries that there is a black market for foreign exchange the black market exchange rate volatility could have adverse effect on the trade flows we show this by using data from iran and cointegration analysis

measuring and analysing the effects of short term volatility in real exchange rates this paper examines short term volatility in the real effective exchange rates of industrial countries and its impact on their imports it yields three conclusions first volatility has not diminished as markets have gained experience with floating exchange rates the trend appears to be in the opposite direction for some countries second exposure to short term volatility has differed among countries japan and sweden have experienced much more than most other industrial countries third volatility appears to depress the volume of international trade this third finding is consistent with results reported by cushman and by akhtar and hilton and challenges earlier findings by hooper and kohlhagen

us bilateral trade equations forecasts and structural stability in this paper actual recent us trade values are compared with out of sample forecasts using a standard specification for real bilateral trade value equations though fairly accurate on average there are large bilateral errors a battery of coefficient stability tests indicates significant instability more often for imports over the forecast period and more often for exports over the latter part of the estimation period thus standard bilateral trade equations appear to violate the basic regression assumption of stability and may be of little use for forecasting

energy intensity in road freight transport of heavy goods vehicles in spain abstract this paper examines the factors that have influenced the energy intensity trend of the spanish road freight transport of heavy goods vehicles over the period 1996 2012 this article aims to contribute to a better understanding of these factors and to inform the design of measures to improve energy efficiency in road freight transport the paper uses both annual single period and chained multi period multiplicative lmdi ii decomposition analysis the results suggest that the decrease in the energy intensity of spanish road freight in the period is explained by the change in the real energy intensity index lower energy consumption per tonne kilometre transported which is partially offset by the behaviour of the structural index greater share in freight transport of those commodities the transportation of which is more energy intensive the change in energy intensity is analysed in more depth by quantifying the contribution of each commodity through the attribution of changes in divisia indices

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

comparative assessment of policies targeting energy use efficiency in lithuania abstract energy efficiency is an important issue of european climate policy energy efficiency is measured by the energy intensity of an economy showing how much energy expressed in kilograms of oil equivalent kgoe is used for the production of one unit 1000 eur of gdp there are huge differences between eu old and new member states though there are some trends of energy intensity convergence between eu member states however the achieved decrease in energy intensity is attributable mostly to a loss of energy intensive industrial capacities in the transformation process there is a crucial difference between whether the energy intensity of a given economy decreases as a result of downscaling energy intensive activities or because of increased energy efficiency in activities that are maintained it is important to make sure that this distinction is made within the policy framework which at present is not the case the aim of the paper is to assess policies targeting energy intensity decrease in lithuania in terms of efficiency effectiveness and efficacy and to select the best policies able to increase energy efficiency in activities that are maintained

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

forecasting crude oil market volatility further evidence using garch class models abstract this paper extends the work of kang et al 2009 we use a greater number of linear and nonlinear generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch class models to capture the volatility features of two crude oil markets brent and west texas intermediate wti the one five and twenty day out of sample volatility forecasts of the garch class models are evaluated using the superior predictive ability test and with more loss functions unlike kang et al 2009 we find that no model can outperform all of the other models for either the brent or the wti market across different loss functions however in general the nonlinear garch class models which are capable of capturing long memory and or asymmetric volatility exhibit greater forecasting accuracy than the linear ones especially in volatility forecasting over longer time horizons such as five or twenty days

asymmetric responses in the timing and magnitude of changes in australian monthly petrol prices to daily oil price changes abstract this article investigates whether uncompetitive pricing tactics are being employed in the retail petrol market in australia through examining the effect of a change in daily oil prices on monthly petrol prices to do so we incorporate asymmetry into the coefficients of a normalised beta weighting function within an asymmetric mixed data sampling amidas framework this enables us to examine both the timing and the lagged marginal effects of a change in retail petrol prices in response to a change in the oil price we find evidence of asymmetries in both the timing and magnitude of retail petrol prices to a change in the oil price specifically we find that while price falls are slowly and symmetrically passed onto consumers price increases are more delayed but higher in intensity over time depending on the capital city when retailers eventually do increase petrol prices in response to an oil price rise with delay the price rise is between 2 1 and 3 4 times more than when retailers reduce petrol prices in response to a fall in the price of oil this finding is consistent with retailers delaying substantial petrol price rises in order to mask the existence of uncompetitive practices

testing for price response asymmetries in the spanish fuel market new evidence from daily data abstract in this work we use daily data to examine pattern asymmetries in the speed of transmission of international wholesale oil prices to spanish retail fuel prices results are robust to two alternative specifications of an asymmetric error correction model for which the presence of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity for disturbances is modeled by a garch 1 1 process evidence indicates that the short term transmission of wholesale prices to retail prices is quite symmetric for both gasoline and diesel fuel nevertheless in contrast to some of the results provided for an earlier period we did not find asymmetries in the speed of retail price responses toward long run equilibrium our evidence also suggests that the use of weekly or lower frequency data is one of the possible explanations for some of the seemingly contradictory results concerning this issue

new evidence on asymmetric gasoline price responses in a 1997 paper borenstein cameron and gilbert bcg claim that gasoline prices rise quickly following an increase in the price of crude oil but fall slowly following a decrease this note estimates an error correction model with daily spot gasoline and crude oil price data over the period 1985 1998 and finds no evidence of asymmetry in wholesale gasoline prices the sources of the difference in results are twofold first we use the standard engle granger two step estimation procedure whereas bcg used a nonstandard estimation methodology second even using bcg s nonstandard specification the use of daily rather than weekly data yields little evidence of price asymmetry

uncovering the multiple objectives behind national energy efficiency planning this work seeks to identify the fundamental objectives behind the development of energy efficiency ee plans for countries it also presents a method to quantify the degree of achievement of each objective through the identification and operationalization of attributes this was achieved by applying keeney s value focused thinking approach for that purpose three key decision makers in ee planning were interviewed along with a bibliographic review on the subject from this process six fundamental objectives were identified formalizing the problem as a multi objective one i to minimize the influence of energy use on climate change ii to minimize the financial risk from the investment iii to maximize the security of energy supply iv to minimize investment costs v to minimize the impacts of building new power plants and transmission infrastructures and vi to maximize the local air quality the respective attributes were i co2 emissions savings ii payback iii imported energy savings iv investment cost v electricity savings and vi total suspended particles savings to show the usefulness of the work the objectives and attributes identified were used to show the possible outcomes from five hypothetical ee plans for portugal

the impact of the economic crisis and policy actions on ghg emissions from road transport in spain abstract road traffic is the greatest contributor to the carbon footprint of the transport sector and reducing it has become one of the main targets of sustainable transport policies an analysis of the main factors influencing greenhouse gas ghg emissions is essential for designing new energy and environmentally efficient strategies for the road transport this paper addresses this need by i identifying factors which influence the carbon footprint including traffic activity fuel economy and socioeconomic development and ii proposing a methodological framework which uses modified laspeyres index decomposition to analyze the effect of important drivers on the changes in emissions of road transport in spain during the period from 1990 to 2010 the results demonstrate that the country s economic growth has been closely linked to the rise in ghg emissions the innovative contribution of this paper is the special analysis of the changes in mobility patterns and ghg emissions during the economic crisis when for the first time spanish road traffic emissions decreased the reduction of road transport and improved energy efficiency has been powerful contributors to this decrease demonstrating the effectiveness of energy saving measures on the basis of this analysis several tailored policy recommendations have been suggested for future implementation

u s bilateral trade balances and the dollar abstract u s bilateral export and import values with seven large trading partners are tested for real exchange rate effects over 1975 1985 the results suggest that dollar devaluation would have the most favorable impact on the u s trade balance in the case of japan and the least favorable in the case of canada

how sensitive is u s agricultural trade to the bilateral exchange rate evidence from bulk intermediate and consumer oriented products this article examines the dynamic effects of changes in bilateral exchange rates on changes in bilateral trade of bulk intermediate and consumer oriented agricultural products between the united states and its 10 major trading partners we find that for consumer oriented products u s exports are highly sensitive to bilateral exchange rates in both the short and long run while u s imports are mostly responsive only in the short run for bulk products on the other hand u s exports and imports are relatively insensitive to exchange rate changes in both the short and long run for intermediate products exports and imports are responsive to exchange rate changes in the short run but not in the long run it is also found that income of the united states and its trading partners has a significant effect on u s exports and imports of the three types of agricultural products in both the short and long run

impact of energy policy instruments on the estimated level of underlying energy efficiency in the eu residential sector the promotion of energy efficiency is seen as one of the top priorities of eu energy policy ec 2010 in order to design and implement effective energy policy instruments it is necessary to have information on energy demand price and income elasticities in addition to sound indicators of energy efficiency this research combines the approaches taken in energy demand modelling and frontier analysis in order to econometrically estimate the level of energy efficiency for the residential sector in the eu 27 member states for the period 1996 to 2009 the estimates for the energy efficiency confirm that the eu residential sector indeed holds a relatively high potential for energy savings from reduced inefficiency therefore despite the common objective to decrease wasteful energy consumption considerable variation in energy efficiency between the eu member states is established furthermore an attempt is made to evaluate the impact of energy efficiency measures undertaken in the eu residential sector by introducing an additional set of variables into the model and the results suggest that financial incentives and energy performance standards play an important role in promoting energy efficiency improvements whereas informative measures do not have a significant impact

do gasoline prices respond asymmetrically in the euro zone area evidence from cointegrated panel data analysis this paper uses the generalized method of moments gmm estimation to a panel data error correction model ecm in order to measure the asymmetries in the transmission of shocks to input prices and exchange rate onto the wholesale and retail gasoline price respectively for this purpose we use an updated data set of 6369 weekly observations january 2000 to february 2011 for 11 euro zone countries the results indicate the existence of asymmetric responses in the retail and wholesale segment due to possible reasons oligopolistic structure of the refining industry existence of consumers search costs regulatory and legal barriers

do petrol prices rise faster than they fall when the market shows significant disequilibria abstract this paper examines if the long run relationship between retail and wholesale petrol prices is subject to adjustment asymmetric behaviour using weekly australian data 2007 2012 across 111 locations a short run dynamic model is specified in which three feedback coefficients capture three different types of disequilibria large and positive large and negative small positive negative significant evidence of asymmetric behaviour is found in 28 locations which are mainly in tasmania queensland and new south wales in these locations when prices are conspicuously above the equilibrium path retailers sluggishly lower their prices but when prices are substantially below the equilibrium values the adjustment speed is significantly faster

do petrol prices increase faster than they fall in market disequilibria abstract this paper tests the idea that petrol prices respond more quickly to price increases than to decreases we show that the results previously documented in the literature for australia are spurious due to failure to establish the stationarity property of the price series and the co integration relationship between retail and wholesale prices when neglecting to account for a regime shift in the data using a robust approach involving a threshold error correction model we find little evidence to support the contention that retail petrol price reverts asymmetrically to long run equilibrium asymmetric adjustments in retail prices are found only in four of the twenty eight retail gas stations in queensland these results cast doubt on the previously reported pervasiveness of this asymmetric price response phenomenon in australia we further caution on erroneous inference with the use of weekly rather than daily data and when failing to account for a regime shift in the data

rockets and feathers revisited an international comparison on european gasoline markets this paper re examines the issue of asymmetries in the transmission of shocks to crude oil prices onto the retail price of gasoline relative to the previous literature the distinguishing features of the present paper are i use of updated and comparable data to carry out an international comparison of gasoline markets ii two stage modeling of the transmission of oil price shocks to gasoline prices first refinery stage and second distribution stage in order to assess possible asymmetries at either one or both stages iii use of asymmetric error correction models to distinguish between asymmetries that arise from short run deviations in input prices and from the speed at which the gasoline price reverts to its long run level iv explicit possibly asymmetric role of the exchange rate as crude oil is paid for in dollars whereas gasoline sells for different sums of national currencies v bootstrapping of f tests of asymmetries in order to overcome the lowpower problem of conventional testing procedures in contrast to several previous findings the results generally point to widespread differences in both adjustment speeds and short run responses when input prices rise or fall

the economic significance of gasoline wholesale price volatility to retailers abstract we show that gasoline retailer profits heavily depend on the direction of wholesale cost movements using a unique firm level proprietary sample of 121 u s gasoline retailers collectively operating over 4500 stores we find that it tends to be only in months when wholesale prices are declining that retailers make meaningfully positive profits and that in spite of the low profits earned when wholesale prices are increasing over the entire wholesale price cycle volatility is preferred by retailers to relatively stable wholesale prices we are the first to our knowledge to link asymmetric price responses directly to firm profits and characterize the economic significance of asymmetric pricing in the retail gasoline industry our findings may have important implications for the scores of other industries where asymmetric retail to wholesale price responses are found

the impacts of energy efficiency policies meta analysis abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively summarize the existing empirical evidence on the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy demand and on the price of associated durable goods as well as to identify the main factors that systematically affect the estimated impacts to this end a meta regression analysis of the effects of energy efficiency policies is carried out on the basis of an extensive review of the existing literature selecting those studies that analyze the impact of energy efficiency policies with respect to a business as usual setting taking into account the econometric problems associated with this type of analysis intra class correlation cross sectional dependence publication bias in pursuit of robust outcomes the results show that the studies analyzing the effects of energy efficiency policies estimate a significant impact of these policies on energy demand 10 5 8 8 and the price of related durable goods 7 9 6 the main factors that influence results are the policy instrument the targeted sector the type of country the analyzed period the consideration of free riders and the type of analysis data and publication energy demand and the sector and analyzed period price of durables

do gasoline prices respond asymmetrically to crude oil price changes the authors test and confirm that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases than to decreases in crude oil prices among the possible sources of this asymmetry are production inventory adjustment lags and market power of some sellers by analyzing price transmission at different points in the distribution chain the authors attempt to shed light on these theories spot prices for generic gasoline show asymmetry in responding to crude oil price changes which may reflect inventory adjustment effects asymmetry also appears in the response of retail prices to wholesale price changes possibly indicating short run market power among retailers