using loopholes to reveal the marginal cost of regulation the case of fuel economy standards estimating the cost of regulation is difficult firms sometimes reveal costs indirectly however when they exploit loopholes to avoid regulation we apply this insight to fuel economy standards for automobiles these standards feature a loophole that gives automakers a bonus when they equip a vehicle with flexible fuel capacity profitmaximizing automakers will equate the marginal cost of compliance using the loophole which is observable with the unobservable costs of strategies that genuinely improve fuel economy based on this insight we estimate that tightening standards by one mile per gallon would have cost automakers just 9 27 per vehicle in recent years jel l51 l62 q48

vehicle scrappage and gasoline policy abstract we estimate the sensitivity of scrap decisions to changes in used car values and show how this scrap elasticity produces emissions leakage under fuel efficiency standards a process known as the gruenspecht effect we first estimate the effect of gasoline prices on used vehicle values and scrappage of vehicles with different fuel economies we then estimate the scrap elasticity itself which we find to be 0 7 when applied in a model of fuel economy standards 13 16 percent of the expected fuel savings leak away through the used vehicle market this effect rivals or exceeds the importance of the often cited mileage rebound effect jel h23 l62 l78 q35 q38 q48 q58

exploring the effects of energy consumption on output per worker a study of albania bulgaria hungary and romania in this article we explore the long run cointegration between output capital and energy consumption in per worker terms for albania bulgaria hungary and romania we use the augmented solow 1956 model and the ardl bounds procedure pesaran et al 2001 to examine the short run and long run effects of energy and capital on output in per worker terms we also conduct causality test using the toda and yamamoto 1995 non causality procedure our results show the existence of long run cointegration between output per worker and energy per worker for all the four countries we find that energy per worker have a dynamic short run positive effect in albania 0 37 bulgaria 0 25 hungary 0 36 and romania 0 68 and a long run positive effect in bulgaria 0 32 and romania 0 63 which duly indicate that energy consumption has a momentous long run effect in these two countries the causality results indicate a unidirectional causation from output per worker to energy per worker for all the four countries and from capital per worker to energy per worker for albania and romania consequently a balance between effective energy consumption and sound energy conservation policies are likely to support economic growth in the four countries

studying the relationship between economic growth co2 emissions and the environmental kuznets curve in venezuela 1980 2025 abstract this work tries to determine whether it is possible to stabilize co2 emissions under a rapid increase of gross domestic product in a medium term the paper is an effort to study in detail how changes in the driving forces of the economy affect co2 emissions we study the case of venezuela for the period 1980 2025 using the methodology proposed by robalino lopez et al 2014 2013 1 2 which is based on an extension of the kaya identity and on a gdp formation approach that includes the effect of renewable energies we test the environmental kuznets curve ekc 3 hypothesis in a coming future under different economic scenarios considering therefore not only past data but also projections for the coming years we use cointegration techniques 4 and the jaunky 2011 5 specification to test the fulfillment of the ekc hypothesis in venezuela our predictions show that venezuela does not fulfill the ekc hypothesis but however the country could be on the way to achieve environmental stabilization in the medium term this stabilization could be accomplished combining economic growth with increasing use of renewable energy appropriated changes in the energy matrix and in the productive sectoral structure

optimal taxation and cross price effects on labor supply estimates of the optimal gas tax abstract this study estimates parameters necessary to calculate the optimal second best gasoline tax most notably the cross price elasticity between gasoline and leisure prior theoretical work indicates the importance of this elasticity but despite this almost none of the prior studies of commodity taxation and none of the studies on second best environmental regulation actually estimate it using household data we find that gasoline is a relative complement to leisure and thus that the optimal gasoline tax is significantly higher than marginal damages the opposite of the result suggested by the bulk of the prior literature indeed even if there were no externalities at all associated with gasoline the optimal tax rate would still be almost equal to the average gas tax rate in the u s following this approach to estimate cross price elasticities with leisure could strongly influence estimates of optimal rates for other important commodity or pollution taxes

the causality relationship between energy consumption and gdp in g 11 countries revisited abstract this paper explores whether energy conservation policies can be implemented in countries with the same level of development that is is restraining energy consumption without compromising economic growth feasible in all industrialized countries a new granger non causality testing procedure developed by toda and yamamoto 1995 journal of econometrics 66 225 250 is applied to re investigate the relationship if any between energy consumption and income in 11 major industrialized countries the results clearly do not support the view that energy consumption and income are neutral with respect to each other except in the case of the united kingdom germany and sweden where a neutral relationship is found bi directional causality in the united states and uni directional running from energy consumption to gdp in canada belgium the netherlands and switzerland are found this indicates that energy conservation may hinder economic growth in the latter five countries further the causality relationship appears to be uni directional but reversed for france italy and japan which implies that in these three countries energy conservation may be viable without being detrimental to economic growth

fuel prices and new vehicle fuel economy comparing the united states and western europe abstract several recent papers have documented an effect of fuel prices on new vehicle fuel economy in the united states this paper estimates the effect of fuel prices on average new vehicle fuel economy for the eight largest european markets the analysis spans the years 2002 2007 and uses detailed vehicle registration and specification data to control for policies consumer preferences and other potentially confounding factors we find fuel prices to have a statistically significant effect on average new vehicle fuel economy in europe the effect estimated for europe is much smaller than comparable estimates for the united states

measuring the rebound effect with micro data a first difference approach abstract we provide estimates of the rebound effect for car transport in denmark using a rich data set with individual household data on car use fuel efficiency and car as well as household characteristics a demand model is estimated in first differences the availability of households in the sample that replaced their car during the period of observation combined with information on their driving behaviour before and after the car switch allows us to identify the rebound effect endogeneity is taken into account by using appropriate instruments results include the following first we reject the conventional formulation in which only fuel cost per kilometre matters second the selection equation confirms that higher fuel prices induce households to switch car third the results suggest the presence of a rebound effect that is on the lower end of the estimates available in the literature specifically our best estimate of the rebound effect is some 7 5 10 fourth the fuel price sensitivity of the demand for kilometres appears to be declining with household income but we do not find a significant impact of income on the rebound effect finally simulation results indicate that the small rebound effect and changes in car characteristics in response to higher fuel prices imply that compared to the reference scenario higher fuel prices lead to a substantial reduction in both the demand for kilometres and in demand for fuel

energy consumption and gdp causality relationship in g 7 countries and emerging markets abstract the causality relationship between energy consumption and income is a well studied topic in energy economics this paper studies the time series properties of energy consumption and gdp and reexamines the causality relationship between the two series in the top 10 emerging markets excluding china due to lack of data and g 7 countries we discover bi directional causality in argentina causality running from gdp to energy consumption in italy and korea and from energy consumption to gdp in turkey france germany and japan hence energy conservation may harm economic growth in the last four countries

impacts of fuel economy improvements on the distribution of income in the u s abstract we estimate the impacts of passenger car and light truck fuel economy improvements in the u s since 1975 on the real monetary incomes of u s households by income quintile over the period 1980 2014 we limit our analysis to the direct monetary impacts fuel savings minus increased vehicle costs and do not attempt a full welfare analysis we include all vehicle purchases new and used household fuel expenditures come from the u s consumer expenditures surveys ces costs of increased new passenger car and light truck fuel economy were obtained from four national research council nrc studies plus a literature review of earlier estimates the nrc cost functions provide a unique time series of technology supply functions constructed by balanced expert panels and comprised of specific technologies proven to increase fuel economy effects of fuel economy improvements on used vehicle prices are based on an analysis of the ces data retrospective analysis indicates that all income quintiles received net savings and that the effect on the distribution of income was progressive a prospective analysis of future fuel economy improvements produced similar results sensitivity analysis indicates that these findings are relatively robust

energy consumption real income and temporal causality results from a multi country study based on cointegration and error correction modelling techniques abstract unlike previous studies on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth this paper illustrates how the finding of cointegration i e long term equilibrium relationship between these variables may be used in testing granger causality based on the most recent johansen s multivariate cointegration tests preceded by various unit root or non stationarity tests we test for cointegration between total energy consumption and real income of six asian economies india pakistan malaysia singapore indonesia and the philippines non rejection of cointegration between variables rules out granger non causality and imples at least one way of granger causality either unidirectional or bidirectionial secondly by using a dynamic vector error correction model we then analyse the direction of granger causation and hence the within sample granger exogeneity or endogeneity of each of the variables thirdly the relative strength of the causality is gauged through the dynamic variance decomposition technique by decomposing the total impact of an unanticipated shock to each of the variables beyond the sample period into proportions attributable to shocks in the other variables including its own in the bivariate system results based on these tools of methodology indicate that while all pair wise relationships shared common univariate integrational properties only relationships for three countries india pakistan and indonesia were cointegrated for these countries temporal causality results were mixed with unidirectional causality from energy to income for india exactly the reverse for indonesia and mutual causality for pakistan the vdcs were not inconsistent with these results and provided us with an additional insight as to the relatively more dominant direction of causation in pakistan simple bivariate vector autoregressive models for the three non cointegrated systems did not indicate any direction of causality significantly in either direction

useful exergy is key in obtaining plausible aggregate production functions and recognizing the role of energy in economic growth portugal 1960 2009 abstract the role of energy in economic growth is controversial models based on aggregate production functions apf range from the neoclassical which downplay energy due to a cost share theorem but typically rely on exogenous total factor productivity tfp to the ecological economic which acknowledge energy s importance the validity of the apf concept itself is questioned here we apply cointegration analysis to identify apfs between output capital labor and possibly energy measured as primary energy or useful exergy we test for tfp growth by including a time trend we require that plausible apfs verify cointegration non negative output elasticities and granger causality linking inputs to output our method recognizes cases where a plausible apfs do not exist thereby addressing the apf critique b energy impacts growth directly c energy impacts growth indirectly through capital and labor we apply the method to portugal 1960 2009 considering standard and quality adjusted capital labor measures with a time trend or disregarding energy plausible apfs are never found without a trend plausible apfs are found only when considering capital energy labor combinations within these with quality adjusted capital and labor and useful exergy results are consistent with the cost share theorem but energy plays a central role through a constraint on all factors of production

the misuse of net present value in energy efficiency standards abstract consumers are often blamed for not making necessary investments in energy efficient durables despite that these investments have positive net present value npv several papers have argued that when investments have option like characteristics e g irreversibility uncertainty flexible timing and lumpiness the aphorism invest if the net present value of investing exceeds zero isn t the best advice yet curiously the department of energy doe in the united states proposes new regulations mandating higher energy efficiency standards for consumer durables on the basis of non negative npv over an investment s lifetime in this paper we provide a step by step deconstruction of doe s npv methodology and show that doe s method purges volatility volatility persistence and nonstationarity that are otherwise present in energy prices as a result doe s projections of future energy prices are artificially smooth and statistically biased casting serious doubt on the reliability of the magnitude of energy savings from energy efficient durables

assessing energy price induced improvements in efficiency of capital in oecd manufacturing industries to assess how capital stocks adapt to energy price changes it is necessary to account for the impacts on different vintages of capital and to account separately for price induced and autonomous improvements in the energy efficiency of capital stock the results of econometric analysis for five manufacturing industries in 19 oecd countries between 1990 and 2005 indicate that higher energy prices resulted in smaller energy use due to both improved energy efficiency of capital stock and reduced demand for the energy input the investment response to energy prices varied considerably across manufacturing industries being more significant in energy intensive sectors the results of policy simulations indicate that a carbon tax can deliver significant reductions in energy consumption in the medium run with modest declines in energy using capital stock

energy consumption prices and economic growth in three ssa countries a comparative study in this paper we examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in three sub saharan african countries namely south africa kenya and congo drc we incorporate prices as an intermittent variable in a bivariate setting between energy consumption and economic growth thereby creating a simple trivariate framework using the ardl bounds testing procedure we find that the causality between energy consumption and economic growth varies significantly across the countries under study the results show that for south africa and kenya there is a unidirectional causal flow from energy consumption to economic growth however for congo drc it is economic growth that drives energy consumption these findings have important policy implications insofar as energy conservation policies are concerned in the case of congo drc for example the implementation of energy conservation policies may not significantly affect economic growth because the country s economy is not entirely energy dependent however for south africa and kenya there is a need for more energy supply augmentations in order to cope with the long run energy demand in the short run however the two countries should explore more efficient and cost effective sources of energy in order to address the energy dependency problem

effects of financial development economic growth and trade on electricity consumption evidence from post fukushima japan abstract this study examines the long run and short run effects of financial development economic growth export imports and capital on the japanese energy predicaments as a result of the foregoing energy crisis in the country to ensure a robust outcome the study applied the extended cobb douglas production function and used time series data from 1970 to 2012 following to this structural break unit root test ardl bounds test approach to cointegration and the johansen cointegration test were applied in addition the vecm granger causality framework was used in determining the causal relationship between the variables the findings of the study establish that in the long run a 1 rise in financial development economic growth exports and imports in japan will exert a significant pressure on the japanese electricity consumption by 0 2429 0 5040 0 0921 and 0 2193 respectively however capital was found to decline energy consumption in all material respect in the short run the study discovered how a 1 rise in the dynamics of financial development economic growth exports and imports to add to the japanese electricity predicaments by 0 2210 0 5840 0 0521 and 0 2031 respectively the existence of the feedback relationship between most of the variables was discovered while economic growth exports imports and trade openness were found to granger cause electricity consumption the study advocates the adoption of massive but competitive renewable energy system in japan how it should be done and why it should be done are carefully set by this study

consumer myopia imperfect competition and the energy efficiency gap evidence from the uk refrigerator market abstract the empirical literature on the energy efficiency gap concentrates on demand inefficiencies in the energy using durables markets and finds evidence that consumers underestimate future energy costs when purchasing a new appliance we take a broader view and also consider the impact of imperfect competition using data on the uk refrigerator market 2002 2007 we find that the average energy consumption of appliances sold during this period was only 7 2 higher than what would have been observed under a scenario with a perfectly competitive market and non myopic consumers one reason for this small gap is that market power actually reduces energy use

the impact of energy consumption and economic development on ecological footprint and co2 emissions evidence from a markov switching equilibrium correction model abstract reducing the impact of air pollution and global environmental degradation on human health and quality of life for qatari citizens represents the most important objective of the qatar national vision 2030 with respect to this vision this study investigates the effects of economic growth energy consumption trade openness urbanization and financial development on environmental degradation by using the markov switching equilibrium correction model with shifts in both the intercept and income per capita slope for the period 1970 2015 unlike existing studies and in addition to the co 2 emissions pollutant this paper uses the total ecological footprint and ecological carbon footprint as new proxies of environmental degradation empirical results show strong evidence for cointegration with markov shifts in particular our results show that the non control for breaks can hide the true relationship among variables the results show also that when controlling for breaks the environment kuznets curve ekc hypothesis holds for the co 2 emissions and ecological carbon footprint pollutants and the u shaped behavior holds for the total ecological footprint moreover the results show that these two behaviors ekc and u shaped are regime dependent regarding the other explanatory variables the results show that trade openness and urbanization worsen ecological footprint however the electricity consumption and financial development are positively related to the ecological footprint and negatively related to ecological carbon footprint and co 2 emissions finally we found evidence for the growth hypothesis for both pollutants based on these results a detailed economic energy and environmental policy is proposed and discussed for the case of qatar

sticky prices inventories and market power in wholesale gasoline markets a model with costly adjustment of production and costly inventories implies that wholesale gasoline prices will respond with a lag to crude oil cost shocks unlike explanations that rely upon menu costs imperfect information or long term buyer seller relationships this model predicts that futures prices for gasoline will adjust incompletely to crude oil price shocks that occur close to the expiration date of the futures contract we test and confirm this implication examining wholesale price responses in 188 gasoline markets we also find that firms with market power adjust prices more slowly than do competitive firms consistent with the model

energy consumption and economic growth in the next 11 countries the bootstrapped autoregressive metric causality approach abstract departing from previous literature using bootstrapped autoregressive metric causality approach which is more robust against non stationarity and break problems than lag augmented tests this study analyzes causal relation between economic growth and energy consumption in the next 11 countries estimating a trivariate model consisting of gdp per capita energy consumption per capita and gross capital formation it was found that the neutrality hypothesis is valid for all of the countries except for turkey these findings imply that energy conservation oriented policies should be implemented in bangladesh egypt indonesia iran korea mexico pakistan and philippines in the case of turkey a unidirectional causal nexus was found from energy consumption to economic growth since the growth hypothesis is valid energy conservation policy poses an obstacle for economic growth in turkey

what do we learn from the price of crude oil futures summary despite their widespread use as predictors of the spot price of oil oil futures prices tend to be less accurate in the mean squared prediction error sense than no change forecasts this result is driven by the variability of the futures price about the spot price as captured by the oil futures spread this variability can be explained by the marginal convenience yield of oil inventories using a two country multi period general equilibrium model of the spot and futures markets for crude oil we show that increased uncertainty about future oil supply shortfalls under plausible assumptions causes the spread to decline increased uncertainty also causes precautionary demand for oil to increase resulting in an immediate increase in the real spot price thus the negative of the oil futures spread may be viewed as an indicator of fluctuations in the price of crude oil driven by precautionary demand an empirical analysis of this indicator provides evidence of how shifts in the uncertainty about future oil supply shortfalls affect the real spot price of crude oil copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

is there an energy paradox in fuel economy a note on the role of consumer heterogeneity and sorting bias abstract from the previous literature it can be found that consumers tend to undervalue discounted future energy costs in their purchase decisions for energy using durables we show that this finding could in part result from ignoring consumer heterogeneity in empirical analyses as opposed to true undervaluation

some inconvenient truths about climate change policy the distributional impacts of transportation policies abstract climate policy has favored costly measures that implicitly or explicitly subsidize lowcarbon fuels we simulate four transportation sector policies cap and trade cat ethanol subsidies a renewable fuel standard rfs and a lowcarbon fuel standard our simulations confirm that alternatives to cat are 2 5 to 4 times more costly but are amenable to adoption due to right skewed distributions of gains we analyze voting on the waxman markey wm cat bill conditional on a district s cat gains a district s rfs gains are negatively correlated with the likelihood of voting for wm our analysis supports campaign contributions as a partial mechanism

the electricity consumption versus economic growth of the polish economy abstract the aim of this contribution is an investigation of causal interdependences between electricity consumption and gdp in poland our research was conducted for total electricity consumption as well as for the industrial consumption of electricity in order to reflect the causality between gdp and electricity consumption properly we performed our investigations in a three dimensional framework with employment chosen as an additional variable we used reliable quarterly data from the period q1 2000 q4 2009 in order to check the stability of the causalities the investigations were performed on two samples a full sample and a pre crisis i e q1 2000 q3 2008 subsample we applied both traditional methods and some recently developed econometric tools we found feedback between total electricity consumption and gdp as well as between total electricity consumption and employment we also found unidirectional causality running from industrial electricity consumption to employment and no direct causal links between industrial electricity consumption and gdp in addition all these findings were in general not seriously affected by the financial and economic crises of 2008 a significant exception is the causal effect of industrial electricity consumption on employment which was more pronounced after the crisis of 2008

exploring the relationship between energy use and economic growth with bivariate models new evidence from g 7 countries abstract there is a rapidly growing literature on the interaction between energy use and economic development with many analysts drawing policy conclusions on the basis of granger causality tests that involve only an energy and an economic variable this paper attempts to demonstrate empirically that such studies although useful for certain applications may be of limited use for policy purposes after outlining theoretical and methodological issues associated with such approaches i apply bivariate energy economy causality tests for canada france germany italy japan the united kingdom and the united states using aggregate and sectoral data and three different modern econometric methods the results which are often contradictory or economically implausible illustrate explicitly that one should be cautious when drawing policy implications with the aid of bivariate causality tests on small samples i therefore underline the importance of utilizing as large sample sizes as possible and using multivariate models which are closer to economic theory accommodate several mechanisms and causality channels and provide a better representation of real world interactions between energy use and economic growth

gasoline prices and the used automobile market a rational expectations asset price approach this paper examines the impact of changes in gasoline price expectations on the market values of used automobiles an asset model of automobile valuation is used to relate year to year changes in market values to changes in the present discounted value of gasoline expenses econometric evidence from data covering the years 1972 through 1981 substantially confirms the hypothesis of the model that a gasoline price shock causes relative price changes across automobile types in proportion to the differences in their rates of fuel consumption

the relationship among natural gas energy consumption capital and economic growth bootstrap corrected causality tests from g 7 countries abstract this paper examines the relationship between natural gas consumption economic growth and capital by using g 7 countries data and a bootstrap corrected causality test for the period 1970 2008 it was found eight significant granger causality relationships for italy the granger causality is from natural gas consumption to growth and united kingdom adverse for pattern of france germany and united states there is two sided granger causality between natural gas and growth

do consumers recognize the value of fuel economy evidence from used car prices and gasoline price fluctuations abstract debate about the appropriate design of energy policy hinges critically on whether consumers might undervalue energy efficiency due to myopia or some other manifestation of limited rationality we contribute to this debate by measuring consumers willingness to pay for fuel economy using a novel identification strategy and high quality microdata from wholesale used car auctions we leverage differences in future fuel costs across otherwise identical vehicles that have different current mileage and therefore different remaining lifetimes by seeing how price differences across high and low mileage vehicles of different fuel economies change in response to shocks to the price of gasoline we estimate the relationship between vehicle prices and future fuel costs our data suggest that used automobile prices move one for one with changes in present discounted future fuel costs which implies that consumers fully value fuel economy

output and attribute based carbon regulation under uncertainty abstract output based carbon regulations such as fuel economy standards and the rate based standards in the clean power plan create well known incentives to inefficiently increase output similar distortions are created by attribute based regulations this paper demonstrates that despite these distortions output and attribute based standards can always yield strictly greater expected welfare than flat emission standards given uncertainty in demand for output or attributes assuming locally constant marginal damages for fuel economy standards the welfare maximizing amount of attribute or mileage basing is likely small relative to current policy for the electricity sector however an intensity standard may yield greater expected welfare than a flat standard

asymmetric information in residential rental markets implications for the energy efficiency gap abstract this paper explores whether energy cost information asymmetries exist between landlords and tenants by exploiting variation in which party pays for energy because tenants are always fully informed about their total housing costs in the landlord pay regime the effect of energy cost changes on tenant turnover rents and efficiency investment should differ between the two payment regimes under asymmetric information but not symmetric information using energy cost variation in the form of changes in relative heating fuel prices i find evidence that tenants are uninformed about energy costs this results in higher energy expenditures for tenants and implies that information campaigns or efficiency standards may improve market outcomes

energy growth conundrum in energy exporting and importing countries evidence from heterogeneous panel methods robust to cross sectional dependence abstract this article uses the panel methods for energy exporting and importing countries that discuss the heterogeneity and cross sectional dependence in investigating the linkages between energy consumption and economic growth the findings of the study suggest that the energy consumption is an important input not only in the energy importing but also in energy exporting countries furthermore the results of the present paper suggest that the policy options should be different for the different countries in the back drop of heterogeneous slope coefficients

the nexus between carbon emissions energy consumption and economic growth in middle east countries a panel data analysis abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis assumes that there is an inverted u shaped relationship between environmental degradation and income per capita in other words as a country grows it is assumed that its environmental quality improves in this study we aim to test the ekc hypothesis for 12 middle east countries during the period 1990 2008 by employing recently developed panel data methods our results provide evidence contrary to the ekc hypothesis we found evidence favorable to the u shaped ekc for 5 middle east countries whereas an inverted u shaped curve was identified for only 3 middle east countries furthermore there appear to be no causal links between income and co 2 emissions for the other 4 countries regarding the direction of causality there appears to be a unidirectional causality from economic growth to energy consumption in the short run in the long run however the unidirectional causality chain runs from energy consumption and economic growth to co 2 emissions we also suggest some crucial policy implications depending on these results

new vehicle characteristics and the cost of the corporate average fuel economy standard by 2016 the corporate average fuel economy cafe standard will increase by 40 this article focuses on the medium run effects of fuel economy regulation we estimate consumers willingness to pay for vehicle characteristics we employ a novel empirical strategy that accounts for the characteristics endogeneity by using variation of engine models used in vehicle models the results imply that consumers value an increase in power more than an increase in fuel economy simulations of the effects of an increase in the cafe standard suggest that regulatory costs are significantly smaller in the medium run than in the short run

when do consumers search this paper provides empirical evidence relating search to price movements we measure consumer search directly from traffic statistics for web sites that report gasoline prices we show empirically that consumers search more as prices rise than they do when prices fall asymmetric search patterns have consequences for price behavior our findings indicate that retail margins are squeezed by increased search in addition we show that there is more price dispersion when prices are falling than when prices are either stable or rising our results provide a search based explanation for the rockets and feathers phenomenon of asymmetric price adjustment

energy consumption and economic growth the case of oil exporting countries this paper examines the causal relationship between the per capita energy consumption and the per capita gdp in a panel of 11 selected oil exporting countries by using panel unit root tests and panel cointegration analysis the results show a unidirectional strong causality from economic growth to energy consumption for the oil exporting countries the findings have practical policy implications for decision makers in the area of macroeconomic planning in most major oil exporting countries government policies keep domestic prices bellow free market level resulting in high levels of domestic energy consumption the results imply that the energy conservation through reforming energy price policies has no damaging repercussions on economic growth for this group of countries

gasoline price uncertainty and the design of fuel economy standards abstract what are the implications of gasoline price volatility for the design of fuel economy policies i show that this problem has a strong parallel to weitzman s 1974 classic model of using price or quantity controls to regulate an externality changes in fuel prices act as shocks to the marginal cost of complying with the standard assuming constant marginal damages from fuel consumption an application of weitzman 1974 implies that a fixed fuel economy standard reduces expected welfare relative to a price policy such as a feebate or equivalently a fuel economy standard that is indexed to the price of gasoline when the regulator is constrained to use a fixed standard i show that the usual approach to setting the standard equate expected marginal compliance cost to marginal damage is likely to be sub optimal because the standard may not bind if the realized gasoline price is sufficiently high instead the optimal fixed standard will be relatively relaxed and may be non binding even at the expected gasoline price finally i show that although an attribute based standard allows vehicle choices to flexibly respond to gasoline price shocks the resulting distortions imply that the optimal fuel economy standard is not attribute based

causal relationship between energy consumption and gdp growth revisited a dynamic panel data approach abstract this paper uses the panel data of energy consumption and gdp for 82 countries from 1972 to 2002 based on the income levels defined by the world bank the data are divided into four categories low income group lower middle income group upper middle income group and high income group we employ the gmm sys approach for the estimation of the panel var model in each of the four groups afterwards the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is tested and ascertained we discover a in the low income group there exists no causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth b in the middle income groups lower and upper middle income groups economic growth leads energy consumption positively c in the high income group countries economic growth leads energy consumption negatively after further in depth analysis of energy related data the results indicate that in the high income group there is a great environmental improvement as a result of more efficient energy use and reduction in the release of co2 however in the upper middle income group countries after the energy crisis the energy efficiency declines and the release of co2 rises since there is no evidence indicating that energy consumption leads economic growth in any of the four income groups a stronger energy conservation policy should be pursued in all countries

environmental kuznets curve and financial development in pakistan abstract in this study we analyzed the effects of financial development per capita real income the square of per capita real income per capita energy consumption and openness on per capita co 2 emissions for pakistan during 1972 2013 the bound f test for cointegration yielded evidence of a long term relationship among these variables the results confirm the existence of an environmental kuznets curve in pakistan for both the short and long term this finding indicates that at the initial stage of development the level of co 2 increases with income and after some threshold level of income this relationship may change from positive to negative as more efficient infrastructure and energy efficient technology are implemented during the development process of the country the findings of this study also reveal a significantly positive sign for the coefficient of financial development suggesting that financial development has occurred at the expense of environmental quality the results further indicate that the key contributing factors to carbon emissions in pakistan are income energy consumption and financial development in addition the openness variable has no significant influence on carbon emission in either the short or long term

extended divisia index decomposition of changes in energy intensity a case of korean manufacturing industry abstract this study aims to examine the energy efficiency of the manufacturing industry of korea by using the extended divisia index decomposition of choi and ang 2012 first we applied the sato vartia index decomposition to the energy intensity of the manufacturing industry in korea second we attributed the growth rate of aggregate energy intensity to 10 sub manufacturing industries through two channels real energy intensity and structural change the result of the decomposition illustrates that the aggregate energy intensity index decreased in the period 1981 2010 the index decomposition analysis demonstrates that real energy intensity decreased by 85 85 whereas structural change increased energy intensity by 69 37 over the same period of time the negative effect of structural change is partly a result of the increasing portion of energy intensive industry in manufacturing the result reflects that industrial structure in korea can be an important aspect for improving energy efficiency

the effects of the corporate average fuel efficiency standards in the us this paper examines the effects of the corporate average fuel economy standards cafe on automobile sales prices and fuel consumption first a discrete choice model of automobile demand and a continuous model of vehicle utilization are estimated using micro data from the consumer expenditure survey for 1984 1990 next the demand side model is combined with a model of oligopoly and product differentiation on the supply side with these elements in place the effects of the cafe regulation are assessed through simulations and compared to the effects of alternative policy instruments such as an increase in gasoline tax

does renewable and or non renewable energy consumption matter for total factor productivity tfp growth evidence from the brics abstract studies proved that output growth is mainly associated with the total factor productivity tfp growth and variables that affect the tfp have an important explanatory power on output in this regards the aim of this study is to examine the causal relationship between different types of energy consumption and tfp growth in the brics from 1992 to 2012 a panel bootstrap granger causality test by konya 2006 68 was employed to investigate the direction of possible connection between energy consumption and tfp growth results show that no remarkable causal link exists between renewable energy consumption and tfp growth in the brics however in the case of non renewables energy consumption creates a positive externality that contributes economic development in brazil and south africa by the growth of tfp as well as energy use itself in this respect policies that promote coal and non renewable electricity consumption in south africa and natural gas consumption in brazil may be beneficial for their economic development

what do consumers believe about future gasoline prices a full understanding of how gasoline prices affect consumer behavior frequently requires information on how consumers forecast future gasoline prices we provide the first evidence on the nature of these forecasts by analyzing two decades of data on gasoline price expectations from the michigan survey of consumers we find that average consumer beliefs are typically indistinguishable from a no change forecast justifying an assumption commonly made in the literature on consumer valuation of energy efficiency we also provide evidence on circumstances in which consumer forecasts are likely to deviate from no change and on significant cross consumer forecast heterogeneity

energy consumption economic growth and prices a reassessment using panel vecm for developed and developing countries this paper reinvestigates the energy consumption gdp growth nexus in a panel error correction model using data on 20 net energy importers and exporters from 1971 to 2002 among the energy exporters there was bidirectional causality between economic growth and energy consumption in the developed countries in both the short and long run while in the developing countries energy consumption stimulates growth only in the short run the former result is also found for energy importers and the latter result exists only for the developed countries within this category in addition compared to the developing countries the developed countries elasticity response in terms of economic growth from an increase in energy consumption is larger although its income elasticity is lower and less than unitary lastly the implications for energy policy calling for a more holistic approach are discussed c 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

energy consumption and economic growth in the light of meeting the targets of energy policy in the eu the bootstrap panel granger causality approach abstract the aim of the paper is to assess linkages between energy consumption and economic growth in the light of compliance with the eu energy policy targets stated in the climate and energy package for 2020 in the european union member states in the period 1993 2011 the study is divided into two main stages during the first one using cluster analysis methods four groups of countries which met three energy policy targets stated in the package at similar levels were identified during the second stage the bootstrap granger panel causality approach proposed by konya 2006 was used to verify the hypothesis of causality between energy consumption and economic growth in the countries from four groups created in the previous step the global financial crisis was also taken into account the results obtained reveal that the level of compliance with energy policy targets influences linkages between energy consumption and economic growth the results indicate causal relations in the group of countries with the greatest reduction of greenhouse gas emissions the highest reduction of energy intensity and the highest share of renewable energy consumption in total energy consumption in the remaining groups the results mostly confirm the neutrality hypothesis

energy consumption and economic growth in vietnam abstract this study attempts to analyse the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in vietnam using the neoclassical solow growth framework for the 1971 2011 period the concept and methods of cointegration and granger causality are used to establish the relationship between the variables of interest our results confirm the existence of cointegration among the variables in particular energy consumption fdi and capital stock were found positively influence economic growth in vietnam the granger causality test revealed unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to economic growth hence vietnam is an energy dependent economy and any energy or environment policy drawn up in an attempt to conserve energy will jeopardise the process of economic development in vietnam for this reason the renewable energy policy should be given attention to provide sufficient supplies of energy to speed up economic expansion investment in r d may be required to incentivise private public institutions to engage in this innovation while the awareness for energy saving policy among public could be integrated to meet social economic development

do energy prices influence investment in energy efficiency evidence from energy star appliances abstract i examine whether electricity prices influence the likelihood that consumers purchase high efficiency appliances by using state year panel data on electricity prices and the proportion of sales of new appliances that involve high efficiency energy star models i find no evidence that electricity prices affect the propensity for consumers to choose high efficiency appliances point estimates are extremely small and precisely estimated the findings suggest that price based energy policies may be limited in the extent to which they increase investment in residential energy efficiency which has been considered one of the lowest cost opportunities for reducing carbon emissions

energy consumption and gdp revisited a panel analysis of developed and developing countries this paper applies a new panel data stationarity testing procedure first developed by carrion i silvestre et al 2005 econometrics journal 8 159 175 with panel vars that employ the generalized method of moment techniques in order to re investigate the dynamic interactions between energy consumption per capita lec and real gdp per capita lry in 22 developed and 18 developing countries when multiple breaks in the series are taken into account there is convincing evidence of panel stationarity for lec and lry in both groups the energy crises evidently had a substantive impact on both lec and lry in all sample countries furthermore our panel vars attest to bidirectional causality between lec and lry in developed countries but there is uni directional causality from lry to lec in developing countries finally from the orthogonalized impulse response functions all of the variables in the panel vars have a positive effect on each other but their impact is greater and more persistent in developing countries some important policy implications do emerge

rational inattention and energy efficiency abstractthis paper argues that it will often be rational for consumers to pay limited attention to energy efficiency when choosing among energy consuming durable goods like automobiles or home appliances the reason is that the proper valuation of energy efficiency requires time and effort but differences in efficiency across products will rarely be pivotal to choice when consumers have strong preferences regarding other product attributes the paper first explains why proper valuation of efficiency is difficult even in the presence of government energy labels it next develops a model that shows how to value additional information about energy efficiency in a discrete choice context it then uses data on automobiles to show that consumers experience only small welfare losses when forced to choose a car without detailed information about fuel costs finally the paper discusses the implications of rational inattention for both economic research and public policy

forecasting gasoline prices using consumer surveys this paper analyzes the predictive power of a new data set of consumer gasoline price forecasts taken from the michigan survey of consumers msc msc data generally perform as well as a no change forecast in predicting future gasoline prices and they substantially out perform the no change forecast during the recent economic crisis during which time they track futures market prices finally the cross respondent dispersion of the msc forecasts increases substantially during the economic crisis paralleling the large increase in price volatility at this time

when the carrot goes bad the effect of solar rebate uncertainty abstract although meant to encourage investment in solar photovoltaic pv systems some incentive policies may themselves become a barrier in instances where policy related uncertainty is present as potential solar adopters delay their investment until uncertainty is resolved this study utilizes a quasi experimental setting to quantify the effect of solar policy uncertainty focusing on the california solar initiative s residential rebate program i exploit the temporary exhaustion of funds within one of the utility territories as an exogenous source of increased uncertainty and estimate that it leads to a 67 drop in rebate applications in an average zip code week there is considerable heterogeneity in this effect depending on household income and pv system size among households that are least likely to invest in pv without a rebate incentive program participation drops by up to 69 this suggests potentially significant loss in program effectiveness due to lower pv adoption and underscores the importance of accounting for uncertainty in policy evaluations

fuel consumption and gasoline prices the role of assortative matching between households and automobiles abstract analyses of policies to reduce gasoline consumption have focused on two effects a compositional effect on the fuel economy of the automotive fleet and a utilization effect on how much people drive however the literature has missed a third effect a matching effect in which policies change how high utilization households are matched to fuel efficient vehicles in equilibrium we show that higher gas prices should lead to stronger assortative matching empirical estimates using us micro level data are consistent with this hypothesis we find a 0 50 increase in the gas tax would reduce us gas consumption by 0 8 through the matching effect alone bringing annual environmental benefits of about 1 7 billion

the rebound effect for automobile travel asymmetric response to price changes and novel features of the 2000s abstract previous research suggests that the elasticity of light duty motor vehicle travel with respect to fuel cost known as the rebound effect is modest in size and probably declined in magnitude between the 1960s and the late 1990s however turmoil in energy markets during the early 2000s has raised new questions about the stability of this elasticity using panel data on u s states we revisit the simultaneous equations methodology of small and van dender 2007 and hymel et al 2010 to see whether structural parameters have changed using data through 2009 we confirm the earlier finding of a rebound effect that declines in magnitude with income but we also find an upward shift in its magnitude of about 0 025 during the years 2003 2009 in addition we find that the rebound effect is much greater in magnitude in years when gasoline prices are rising than when they are falling it is also greater during times of media attention and price volatility which explains about half the upward shift just mentioned

a multilevel factor model identification asymptotic theory and applications this paper studies a multilevel factor model with global and country factors the global factors affect all individuals while the country factors affect only those within each specific country a sequential procedure to identify the global and country factors separately is proposed in the initial step the global factors are estimated by canonical correlation analysis using this initial estimator the principal component estimators pces of the global and country factors are constructed it is shown that the pces estimate the spaces of the global and country factors consistently and are normally distributed in the limit several information criteria that can estimate the numbers of the country factors are proposed the number of the global factors is assumed to be known extensive simulation results demonstrate that the sequential procedure and the information criteria work well in finite samples the method of this paper is applied to 25 oecd countries to identify international business cycle it is reported that the method extracts a global factor reasonably well

interpreting pre trends as anticipation impact on estimated treatment effects from tort reform abstract while conducting empirical work researchers sometimes observe changes in outcomes before adoption of a new policy the conventional diagnosis is that treatment is endogenous this observation is also consistent however with anticipation effects that arise naturally out of many theoretical models this paper illustrates that distinguishing endogeneity from anticipation matters greatly when estimating treatment effects it provides a framework for comparing different methods for estimating anticipation effects and proposes a new set of instrumental variables to address the problem that subjects expectations are unobservable finally this paper examines a specific set of tort reforms that was not targeted at physicians but was likely anticipated by them interpreting pre trends as evidence of anticipation increases the estimated effect of these reforms by a factor of two compared to a model that ignores anticipation

why are prices sticky the dynamics of wholesale gasoline prices the menu cost interpretation of sticky prices implies that the probability of a price change should depend on the past history of prices and fundamentals only through the gap between the current price and the frictionless price we find that this prediction is broadly consistent with the behavior of nine philadelphia gasoline wholesalers nevertheless we reject the menu cost model as a literal description of these firms behavior arguing instead that price stickiness arises from strategic considerations of how customers and competitors will react to price changes

energy conservation and sustainable economic growth the case of latin america and the caribbean this study examines the causal relationships among energy consumption economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in twenty countries from latin america and the caribbean region the methodology includes the use of phillips and perron pp tests a cointegration model with vector error correction modeling vecm and vector autoregression var with granger causality the study concludes that of the twenty countries analyzed only in four of them will it be possible to implement energy conservation polices without affecting their economic growth four others are not able to consider an energy conservation policy with economic growth and the other twelve should focus on their economic growth before adopting any conservation policies energy efficiency was found in this region especially in the countries which have both cointegration and short term equilibrium

are consumers myopic evidence from new and used car purchases abstract we investigate whether car buyers are myopic about future fuel costs we estimate the effect of gasoline prices on short run equilibrium prices of cars of different fuel economies we then compare the implied changes in willingness to pay to the associated changes in expected future gasoline costs for cars of different fuel economies in order to calculate implicit discount rates using different assumptions about annual mileage survival rates and demand elasticities we calculate a range of implicit discount rates similar to the range of interest rates paid by car buyers who borrow we interpret this as showing little evidence of consumer myopia jel d12 h25 l11 l62 l71 l81

consumers perceptions and misperceptions of energy costs this paper presents three initial stylized facts from the vehicle ownership and alternatives survey voas a nationally representative survey that elicits consumers beliefs about gasoline prices and the relative energy costs of autos with different fuel economy ratings first american consumers devote little attention to fuel costs when purchasing autos second consistent with a cognitive bias called mpg illusion consumers underestimate the fuel cost differences between low mpg vehicles and overestimate the differences between high mpg vehicles third americans mean and median expected future gas prices were above current prices and predictions of the futures market at the time of the survey although it is often argued that misperceived energy costs justify policies to encourage the sale of energy efficient durable goods these results show that misperceptions and expectations that differ from market information could either increase or decrease energy efficiency