renewable and non renewable energy growth emissions linkages review of emerging trends with policy implications abstract this study is an extension of the previous studies which focused mainly on energy growth nexus but fails to consider the carbon emission implication of this relationship the methodology of the study permits a comprehensive and comparative analysis of existing studies on renewable and non renewable energy growth emission nexus in order to draw some implications for policy and research the survey revealed the extent of the spread of studies across issues time and geographical space countries and regions it also disclosed the range of methodological approaches adopted to analyse the issues over time and the frequency of their use it unravelled the varied findings across countries and regions given the diverse methods employed and specific features of the economies analysed arising from the literature survey this study highlights the existing gaps in the literature and new direction for policy and research the general policy implication of the findings of this study is that pollution effect of energy growth nexus should be taken into consideration in policy formulation for sustainable development further the design of regional and global policies should recognise the fact that energy growth emission linkages varied across countries even in the same region some new direction for research on renewable and non renewable energy growth emission linkages pointed out in this survey includes the following future research on energy growth nexus without considering the pollution impact may not contribute so much to the literature studies should investigate the substitution complementary effects of the energy varieties on growth emission nexus while new methodological contributions are imperative

does foreign direct investment impede environmental quality in high middle and low income countries abstract under a multivariate framework this paper aims to investigate the nonlinear correlation between foreign direct investment and environmental degradation for high middle and low income countries with economic growth and energy consumption as additional determinants of environmental degradation all variables were found to be nonstationary and cointegrated based on recent panel data unit root tests and cointegration techniques on applying fully modified ordinary least squares fmols the long run results suggest the presence of an environmental kuznets curve in turn foreign direct investment increases environmental degradation thus confirming the pollution haven hypothesis phh moreover the bidirectional causality between co2 emissions and foreign direct investment is observed globally the findings are sensitive to different income groups and regional analyses in particular these empirical findings aid sound economic policymaking for improving environmental quality and sustainable economic development

operating flexibility global manufacturing and the option value of a multinational network the multinational corporation is a network of activities located in different countries the value of this network derives from the opportunity to benefit from uncertainty through the coordination of subsidiaries which are geographically dispersed we model this coordination as the operating flexibility to shift production between two manufacturing plants located in different countries a stochastic dynamic programming model treats explicitly this flexibility as equivalent to owning an option the value of which is dependent upon the real exchange rate the model is extended to analyze hysteresis effects and within country growth options we show that the management of across border coordination has led to changes in the heuristic rules used for performance evaluation and transfer pricing

health care evaluation utilitarianism and distortionary taxes cost utility analysis cua and cost benefit analysis cba are methods to evaluate allocations of health care resources problems are raised for both methods when income taxes do not meet the first best optimum this paper explores the implications of three ways that taxes may fall short of this ideal first taxes may be distortionary second they may be designed and administered without reference to information that is used by providers of health care finally the share of tax revenue that is devoted to health care may be suboptimal the two methods are amended to account for these factors

natural gas consumption and economic growth the role of foreign direct investment capital formation and trade openness in malaysia the objective of this paper is to reinvestigate the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth by including foreign direct investment capital and trade openness in malaysia for the period of 1971 2012 the structural break unit root test is employed to investigate the stationary properties of the series we have applied combined cointegration test to examine the relationship between the variables in the long run for robustness sake the ardl bounds testing method is also employed to test for a possible long run relationship in the presence of structural breaks we note the validity of cointegration between the variables natural gas consumption foreign direct investment capital formation and trade openness have positive influence on economic growth in malaysia the results support the presence of feedback hypothesis between natural gas consumption and economic growth foreign direct investment and economic growth and natural gas consumption and foreign direct investment the policy implications of these results are provided

future costs in economic evaluation a comment on lee in a recent article in this journal lee argued that indirect medical costs should be ignored in economic evaluations to reach this conclusion lee uses an unrealistic and uncommon budget constraint this comment highlights a number of methodological problems in lee s analysis moreover it highlights that looking at current practice of economic evaluation lee s model implies the inclusion rather than the exclusion of indirect medical costs

supply contracts profit sharing switching and reaction options a common theme in the studies of flexible supply contracts has been the producer s profit maximization problem without regard to the suppliers reactions however suppliers do react and protect their downside against producer s operating policies by revising their strategies in a manner consistent with their profitmaximization objectives this fact motivates our work using a real options contingent claims approach we analyze and value supply contracts in a setting characterized by exchange rate uncertainty supplier switching options order quantity flexibility profit sharing and supplier reaction options we also use basic diversification concepts from portfolio theory to analyze risk reduction in a unique framework given this setup we explicitly model how flexibility can be mutually beneficial to both the producer and the suppliers using this model we concurrently solve and examine the dual optimization problem for the suppliers and the producer our approach also endogenizes the extent and degree of profit sharing through the resulting optimal policies we also analyze what induces the producer and the suppliers to accept flexibility in their contracts

pricing and the news vendor problem a review with extensions in the newsvendor problem a decision maker facing random demand for a perishable product decides how much of it to stock for a single selling period this simple problem with its intuitively appealing solution is a crucial building block of stochastic inventory theory which comprises a vast literature focusing on operational efficiency typically in this literature market parameters such as demand and selling price are exogenous however incorporating these factors into the mode l can provide an excellent vehicle for examining how operational problems interact with marketing issues to influence decision making at the firm level in this paper we examine an extension of the newsvendor problem in which stocking quantity and selling price are set simultaneously we provide a comprehensive review that synthesizes existing results for the single period problem and develop additional results to enrich the existing knowledge base we also review and develop insight into a dynamic inventory extension of this problem and motivate the applicability of such models

disaggregated energy consumption and gdp in taiwan a threshold co integration analysis abstract energy consumption growth is much higher than economic growth for taiwan in recent years worsening its energy efficiency this paper provides a solid explanation by examining the equilibrium relationship between gdp and disaggregated energy consumption under a non linear framework the threshold co integration test developed with asymmetric dynamic adjusting processes proposed by hansen and seo hansen b e seo b 2002 testing for two regime threshold cointegration in vector error correction models journal of econometrics 110 293 318 is applied non linear co integrations between gdp and disaggregated energy consumptions are confirmed except for oil consumption the two regime vector error correction models vecm show that the adjustment process of energy consumption toward equilibrium is highly persistent when an appropriately threshold is reached there is mean reverting behavior when the threshold is reached making aggregate and disaggregated energy consumptions grow faster than gdp in taiwan

is foreign direct investment beneficial for mexico an empirical analysis 1960 2001 summary this paper examines the impact of foreign direct investment fdi on labor productivity growth in mexico using cointegration analysis a dynamic labor productivity function for the 1960 2001 period is estimated that includes inter alia the impact of changes in the stock of private and foreign capital per worker the error correction model ecm estimates suggest that increases in both private lagged and foreign lagged investment per worker have a positive and economically significant effect on the rate of labor productivity growth however after taking into account the growing remittances of profits and dividends there is a marked decrease in the economic effect of foreign capital per worker on the rate of labor productivity growth the paper assesses the short term interactions of the relevant variables via impulse response functions irfs and variance decompositions vdcs based on a decomposition process that does not depend on the ordering of the variables

natural gas trade and sustainable growth empirical evidence from the top gas consumers of the developing world abstractnatural gas is the key non renewable source of energy for a low carbon economy the research applies heterogeneous panel techniques to investigate the impact of natural gas consumption on economic growth across a panel of top 15 natural gas consumers of the developing world we establish long run dynamics with cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity across the sample countries the long run output elasticities suggest that the natural gas consumption and trade variables have significant positive effect on the output in a panel of developing economies further we establish feedback relationship among gas consumption output and trade in the short run given the significance of natural gas as the low emission source of energy we suggest governments and policy advisers of these major natural gas consumers to focus on developing pipeline infrastructure for adequate supply reforming natural gas sector with a competitive price structure to combat excess demand in individual natural gas market w

the dynamics of natural gas consumption and gdp in bangladesh abstract reserves of natural gas in bangladesh are very large and total demand has increased secularly in recent years this paper examines the causal relationship between the consumption of natural gas and gdp in bangladesh over the period 1980 to 2010 we find that there is a positive unidirectional causality running from gdp to natural gas consumption movements in gdp affect the consumption of natural gas but not vice versa while our results rest on several statistical assumptions they support the pursuit of policies that are in line with energy conservation implementing these policies will be of particular significance in light of the fact that bangladesh s current reserves of natural gas will not meet its current level of consumption demand beyond the next two decades

global production planning under exchange rate uncertainty motivated by an aggregate production planning problem in an actual global manufacturing network we examine the impact of exchange rate uncertainty on the choice of optimal production policies when the allocation decision can be deferred until the realization of exchange rates this leads to the formulation of the problem as a two stage recourse program whose optimal policy structure features two forms of flexibility denoted as operational hedging 1 production hedging where the firm deliberately produces less than the total demand and 2 allocation hedging where due to unfavorable exchange rates some markets are not served despite having unused production our characterization of the optimal policy structure leads to an economic valuation of production and allocation hedging we show that the prevalence of production hedging is moderated by the degree of correlation between exchange rates a comprehensive examination under the following four generalized settings provides the depth scope and relevancy that our proposed operational hedges play to facilitate aggregate planning 1 multiple periods 2 demand uncertainty 3 price setting or monopolistic pricing and 4 price setting under demand uncertainty we show that production and allocation hedging are robust for these generalizations and should be integrated into the overall aggregate planning strategy of a global manufacturing firm

environmental degradation economic growth and energy consumption evidence of the environmental kuznets curve in malaysia this paper tests for the short and long run relationship between economic growth carbon dioxide co2 emissions and energy consumption using the environmental kuznets curve ekc by employing both the aggregated and disaggregated energy consumption data in malaysia for the period 1980 2009 the autoregressive distributed lag ardl methodology and johansen juselius maximum likelihood approach were used to test the cointegration relationship and the granger causality test based on the vector error correction model vecm to test for causality the study does not support an inverted u shaped relationship ekc when aggregated energy consumption data was used when data was disaggregated based on different energy sources such as oil coal gas and electricity the study does show evidences of the ekc hypothesis the long run granger causality test shows that there is bi directional causality between economic growth and co2 emissions with coal gas electricity and oil consumption this suggests that decreasing energy consumption such as coal gas electricity and oil appears to be an effective way to control co2 emissions but simultaneously will hinder economic growth thus suitable policies related to the efficient consumption of energy resources and consumption of renewable sources are required

future costs in cost effectiveness analysis this paper resolves several controversies in cea generalizing garber a m phelps c e 1997 economic foundations of cost effectiveness analysis journal of health economics 16 1 1 31 the paper shows accounting for unrelated future costs distorts decision making after replicating meltzer d 1997 accounting for future costs in medical cost effectiveness analysis journal of health economics 16 1 33 64 quite different conclusion that unrelated future costs should be included in cea the paper shows that meltzer s findings result from modeling the budget constraint as an annuity which is problematic the paper also shows that related costs should be included in cea this holds for a variety of models including a health maximization model cea should treat costs in the manner recommended by garber and phelps

the role of natural gas consumption and trade in tunisia s output this paper examines the impact of natural gas consumption real gross fixed capital formation and trade on the real gdp in case of tunisia over the period of 1980 2010 we used auto regressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach to test the existence of long run relationship between the variables the vector error correction method vecm granger approach is applied to test the direction of causal relation between the series our findings indicate the existence of long run relationship among the variables natural gas consumption real gross fixed capital formation and trade add in economic growth natural gas consumption real gross fixed capital formation and real trade granger cause real gdp these findings open up new insights for policy makers to formulate a comprehensive energy policy to sustain economic growth for long run

natural gas consumption and economic growth in pakistan abstract natural gas is a dominant fuel in pakistan it offers the cheapest and a cleaner alternative source of energy this paper examines the relationship of natural gas consumption and economic growth in pakistan we include capital labor and exports in the model with multivariate framework the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration and innovative accounting approach are employed to investigate the dynamic causality relationships among the variables we find the existence of long run relationship among the variables natural gas consumption capital labor and exports are positively affecting economic growth in pakistan furthermore we support the natural gas consumption led growth hypothesis and suggest that natural gas conservation policies may retard economic growth

endogenous cost effectiveness analysis and health care technology adoption abstract increased health care spending has placed pressure on public and private payers to prioritize spending cost effectiveness ce analysis is the main tool used by payers to prioritize coverage of new therapies we argue that reimbursement based on ce is subject to a form of the lucas critique the goals of ce policies may not materialize when firms affected by the policies respond optimally to them for instance because costs in ce analysis reflect prices set optimally by firms rather than production costs observed ce levels will depend on how firm pricing responds to ce policies observed ce is therefore endogenous when ce is endogenously determined policies aimed at lowering spending and improving overall ce may paradoxically raise spending and lead to the adoption of more resource costly treatments we empirically illustrate whether this may occur using data on public coverage decisions in the united kingdom

a welfare theoretic model consistent with the practice of cost effectiveness analysis and its implications abstract i look at three debates in the health economics literature in the context of cost effectiveness analysis cea 1 inclusion of future costs 2 discounting and 3 consistency with a welfare economic perspective these debates thus far have been studied in isolation leading to confusion and lingering questions i look at these three debates holistically and present a welfare theoretic model that is consistent with the practice of cea and can help inform all of these three debates it shows rationales for the recommendations of the second panel and clarifies some nuanced implications for the practice of cea when taking a societal perspective in the context of distributional cea and multi sectorial budgets

implications of spillover effects within the family for medical cost effectiveness analysis medical cost effectiveness analyses traditionally treat patients as isolated individuals and neglect the effects of improvement in patients health on the welfare of their family members we use a model based on a family utility function with altruistic linkages to show that there can be direct and indirect effects on the welfare of all family members we focus specially on a model of how the spillover effects to the spouse in a two person family might affect choice of treatments for prostate cancer we then test the predictions of this model by analyzing treatment choices of prostate cancer patients using the linked seer medicare database we find that our results are consistent with the model s predictions we conclude that cost effectiveness analyses may better reflect the full costs and benefits of medical interventions if they incorporate these family effects however concerns about equity present a dilemma for the practice of cea from the societal perspective

on the causal dynamics between hydroelectricity consumption and economic growth in latin america countries abstract the aim of this study is to examine the relationship between hydroelectricity consumption and economic growth in seven latin america countries including argentina brazil chile colombia ecuador peru and venezuela the analysis is conducted within a neoclassical model involving capital and labour force for the period of 1970 2012 we utilize a recently developed cointegration test to investigate the long run relationship in the variables having established that the variables are cointegrated the results indicate long run bidirectional causality between hydroelectricity consumption and economic growth in argentina and venezuela there is evidence for long run unidirectional causality from hydroelectricity consumption to economic growth in brazil chile colombia ecuador and peru the long run coefficients from the regression analyses suggest that hydroelectricity consumption positively affect the economies of these latin american countries however limited evidence of causality between the two variables is found in the short run the ensuing policy implications of the findings are discussed

screening location strategies to reduce exchange rate risk abstract a firm that markets its products and services world wide may face significant financial risk due to exchange rate fluctuations unless it maintains an international sourcing production network thus the firm must evaluate various sourcing production network designs the selection of the appropriate design is not straight forward since decisions are made in an environment of uncertainty and involve multiple time periods we propose a two phase approach to screen various alternative designs configurations utilizing a number of criteria and illustrate it using a popular harvard business school case as by products we introduce a new criterion for making a pairwise stochastic comparison of alternatives and demonstrate the value of maintaining excess geographically dispersed production capacity

technical note financial market approaches to facility location under uncertainty this paper examines financial market approaches for facility location models incorporating uncertainty and risk aversion as an example it compares a model based on the capital asset pricing model with one using a mean variance objective function there are dramatically different computational implications the financial market approach yields simpler procedures and is able to handle more complex problems however as discussed in the concluding observations there are situations where the financial market perspective is less appropriate consequently the mean variance model still has a role in analyzing facility location decisions

economic evaluation of nutrition policy abstract the good news from prevention research is that it appears possible to dramatically improve health in the us by changing identified risk factors the goal of this paper is to discuss how to evaluate the economic consequences of improvements in nutrition and exercise related health cost benefit analysis and the related tools of cost effectiveness analysis and cost utility analysis are proposed as preferred methods the decision rule is simply if the sum of the potential gains to all those affected by a policy intervention exceed the sum of costs there is a potential gain in societal welfare by this standard preventive interventions can be worthwhile even when they do not reduce lifetime medical expenditures or increase lifetime earnings that is even when the intervention is not a free lunch the distinction between the internal costs for an individual patient versus the external costs an individual s illness imposes on others is an important conceptual issue practical issues include determining whether a poor health habit causes the costs and other results being attributed to it and the completeness of the analysis in principle the analysis should examine all of the effects and resource costs of the intervention including changes in morbidity mortality the quality of life allocations of patient time and caregiving by others as well as traditional health sector costs and changes in productivity improvements in nutrition and exercise related health may also have important implications for public sector finances of programs including medicare and social security

the newsvendor problem in a global market optimal centralized and decentralized control policies for a two market stochastic inventory system the global markets of today offer to the style goods producer more selling opportunities and pose new challenges in production planning and coordination from a production management standpoint the opportunity to exploit the difference in timing of the selling season of geographically dispersed markets for style goods is important for improving the firm s profitability in this paper we examine the above issue with an insightful model of a producer of style goods selling the goods to two markets a primary and a secondary market with nonoverlapping selling seasons we refer to this problem as the global newsvendor problem for the above two market stochastic inventory systems we first develop optimal centralized control policies then we demonstrate the suboptimality of decentralized production control policies with the production centers at each market treated as independent profit centers and a constant transfer price being used to coordinate their production we propose as an effective alternative a decentralized production control structure with a nonlinear pricing scheme for production coordination among centers administered through an intermediate organizational unit in our modeling we explicitly consider the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on the production planning decisions

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

indivisible labor and the business cycle abstract a growth model with shocks to technology is studied labor is indivisible so all variability in hours worked is due to fluctuations in the number employed we find that unlike previous equilibrium models of the business cycle this economy displays large fluctuations in hours worked and relatively small fluctuations in productivity this finding is independent of individuals willingness to substitute leisure across time this and other findings are the result of studying and comparing summary statistics describing this economy an economy with divisible labor and post war u s time series

energy and economic growth in the usa a multivariate approach abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between gdp and energy use for the period 1947 90 in the usa the relationship between energy use and economic growth has been examined by both biophysical and neoclassical economists in particular several studies have tested for the presence of a causal relationship in the granger sense between energy use and economic growth however these tests do not allow a direct test of the relative explanatory powers of the neoclassical and biophysical models a multivariate adaptation of the test vector autoregression var does allow such a test a var of gdp energy use capital stock and employment is estimated and granger tests for causal relationships between the variables are carried out although there is no evidence that gross energy use granger causes gdp a measure of final energy use adjusted for changing fuel composition does granger cause gdp

welfare implications of learning through solicitation versus diversification in health care using roy s model of sorting behavior i study welfare implications of learning about medical care quality through the current health care data production infrastructure that relies on solicitation of research subjects due to severe adverse selection issues i show that such learning could be biased and welfare decreasing direct diversification of treatment receipt may solve these issues but is infeasible unifying manski s work on diversified treatment choice under ambiguity and heckman s work on estimating heterogeneous treatment effects i propose a new infrastructure based on temporary diversification of access that resolves the prior issues and can identify nuanced effect heterogeneity

a note on the causal relationship between energy and gdp in taiwan abstract this paper re examines the causality between energy consumption and gdp by using updated taiwan data for the period 1954 1997 as a secondary contribution we investigate the causal relationship between gdp and the aggregate as well as several disaggregate categories of energy consumption including coal oil natural gas and electricity applying granger s technique we find bidirectional causality between total energy consumption and gdp we find further that different directions of cause exist between gdp and various kinds of energy consumption

medical care costs how much welfare loss hardly a week goes by without a front page newspaper article on rising health care costs and the uninsured in this article i focus mainly on costs arguing that the issue has been somewhat misconceived while the level of medical care spending in the u s is a cause for concern the welfare losses associated with rises in that level of spending may not be as large as the public rhetoric can make them seem in fact cost containment may not be as urgent as is widely supposed and some proposed cost containment policies may result in welfare losses for the insured and even increase the number of uninsured

the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth in opec members the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth in 12 opec member countries for the period of 1980 2012 the paper adopts the panel granger causality test of dumitrescu and hurlin 2012 21 to assess the causal relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth the findings show the evidence of feedback relation between natural gas consumption and economic growth in opec members as a panel however diverse results are obtained when the member countries are individually examined the results provide evidence for growth hypothesis in iraq kuwait libya nigeria and saudi arabia but conservation hypothesis in algeria iran united arab emirates and venezuela further evidence suggests the existence of neutrality hypothesis in angola and qatar and feedback hypothesis in ecuador

autoregressive modelling and money income causality detection abstract a step wise procedure based on granger s concept of causality and abaike s final prediction error criterion is suggested as a practical means to identify the order of lags of each variable in a multivariate autoregressive process the model seems useful because it can serve as a reduced form formulation to avoid imposing often spurious or false restrictions of the model it also provides a reasonably powerful test of causality the idea is applied to u s postwar money and income data it is found that between m1 and gnp a bivariate feedback model fits the data best between m2 and gnp a one way causal model from money to income performs better diagnostic checks applied to our model seem to indicate the adequacy of our approach

natural gas consumption and economic development in china and japan an empirical examination of the asian context abstract this paper examined the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic development in two largest natural gas consumers in asia namely china and japan for the period of 1980 2012 it used the autoregressive distributed lags ardl method for the empirical analysis the findings revealed some similarities in the natural gas consumption and economic development nexus in china and japan thus a cointegration relationship between natural gas consumption and economic development was found to exist both in china and japan however there was an important difference in the findings in the case of china the findings indicated the existence of a unidirectional causality from natural gas consumption to economic development which was in line with the growth hypothesis in japan there was a bidirectional causality between natural gas consumption and economic development which supported the feedback hypothesis

natural gas consumption and economic growth nexus is the 10th malaysian plan attainable within the limits of its resource abstract the 10th malaysia plan 10mp is a strategic plan focused on attaining a level of economic growth that will enable the country to attain a developed nation status by 2020 as a result of this ambitious plan this paper aims to investigate empirically if the nexus between natural gas consumption exports capital and labour could provide a clue to the possibilities of reaching this target the study applied time series data from 1971 to 2012 and used dual structural break tests to ensure robust result the bayer hanck cointegration johansen cointegration and the ardl bounds tests were applied the findings of the study reveal that economic growth does not granger cause natural gas consumption in malaysia however the results show that capital and export contribute 29 18 and 41 46 to the country s gdp after 20 04 and 42 29 of natural gas consumption respectively also it suggests that natural gas consumption has an indirect effect to the malaysian economic growth wherewithal labour was on the other hand found to have a minimal contribution to gdp the study proposes the efficient exploitation of natural gas reserves of the country a concerted effort to develop the labour force and ensure a realistic time for the plan among others

are medical prices declining evidence from heart attack treatments we address long standing problems in measuring medical inflation by estimating two types of price indices the first a service price index prices specific medical services as does the current cpi the second a cost of living index measures a quality adjusted cost of treating a health problem we apply these indices to heart attack treatment between 1983 and 1994 more frequent reweighting and accounting for price discounts lowers the measured price change for heart attacks by three percentage points annually accounting for quality change lowers it further we estimate that the real cost of living index fell about 1 percent annually

on the economic foundations of cea ladies and gentlemen take your positions abstract there are still many ongoing debates about several aspects of the methodology of economic evaluations of health care interventions some of the disparities in recommendations on methodological issues may be traced back to different viewpoints on cost effectiveness analysis cea in general two important views are the welfarist approach which aims at embedding cea into traditional welfare economics and the decision maker s approach which takes a broader and more pragmatic view on cea the focus in welfarism may be on utility while that of the decision maker s approach may be considered to be on health in this paper it is examined how these two views differ and how these differences may subsequently lead to debates in methodological areas it is indicated that embedding the practical operationalisation of cea in welfare economics seems impossible in a strict welfarist approach it is necessary to view qalys as being utilities although one may question whether such an approach to qalys is appropriate also equity considerations may play an important role in cost effectiveness analysis and these should preferably be taken into account in a way that reflects societal attitudes towards an equitable distribution of health care these equity considerations may not always be directly related to utility or efficiency furthermore both camps may prefer different methods for cost measurement in areas such as productivity costs and informal care a better recognition of the contents and origins of controversies and disputes may enhance the clarity of discussions

wtp and qaly based approaches to valuing health for policy common ground and disputed territory this paper discusses links between two approaches to the value of health the willingness to pay approach of environmental economics and the quality adjusted life year approach of health economics the approaches are used in cost benefit and cost effectiveness analyses of health interventions despite fundamental differences in the decision contexts and conceptual foundations of the two approaches in current practice they are likely to lead to similar policy decisions the paper also shows how research on the quality adjusted life year qaly can be used to fill in gaps in the willingness to pay literature the paper sketches a simple model that shows how to qaly fy the value of a statistical life i e how to combine qaly estimates with estimates of the value of a statistical life to estimate willingness to pay for morbidity risks

energy consumption and economic activities in iran abstract the causal relationship between overall gdp industrial and agricultural value added and consumption of different kinds of energy are investigated using vector error correction model for the case of iran within 1967 2003 a long run unidirectional relationship from gdp to total energy and bidirectional relationship between gdp and gas as well as gdp and petroleum products consumption for the whole economy was discovered causality is running from value added to total energy electricity gas and petroleum products consumption and from gas consumption to value added in industrial sector the long run bidirectional relations hold between value added and total energy electricity and petroleum products consumption in the agricultural sector the short run causality runs from gdp to total energy and petroleum products consumption and also industrial value added to total energy and petroleum products consumption in this sector

qalys and the equity efficiency trade off as the volume of research on quality adjusted life years qalys has increased concern has begun to be expressed about the equity aspects of resource allocation decisions based on the results of this research this paper suggests that a common theme running through the criticisms of the qaly approach is a concern about inequality it also suggests that the method for incorporating distributional concerns which is currently being pursued by advocates of the qaly approach will only ever capture concerns other than a concern about inequality the paper suggests a method for incorporating both sets of concerns into resource allocation decisions

impact of natural gas consumption on co 2 emissions panel data evidence from china s provinces abstract this study utilizes 1995 2014 panel data of the 30 provinces in china to investigate the existence of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for carbon dioxide co 2 emissions in china the potential impact of natural gas consumption on co 2 emissions is also analyzed according to the panel fully modified ordinary least squares fmols and panel dynamic ols dols estimation results in the long run an inverted u shaped ekc link exists between per capita co 2 emissions and per capita gross domestic product gdp in the panel fmols model and panel dols model with 99 261 yuan and 59 159 yuan for per capita gdp the ekc of china will reach its peak by around 2029 or 2019 respectively furthermore natural gas consumption has a significant negative impact on co 2 emissions which indicates that 1 increase in natural gas consumption for the panel fmols model and panel dols model will decrease co 2 emissions by 0 033627 or 0 054914 respectively at the provincial level provinces in which the ekc hypothesis holds are predominantly concentrated in central and eastern china and the energy consumption structure share of natural gas in total energy consumption may affect the occurrence of a significant negative impact of natural gas consumption on co 2 emissions another finding of this study is that both the existence of ekc and the occurrence of a positive negative impact of natural gas consumption on co 2 emissions are independent of the individual provincial per capita gdp

addressing uncertainty in medical cost effectiveness analysis implications of expected utility maximization for methods to perform sensitivity analysis and the use of cost effectiveness analysis to set priorities for medical research this paper examines the objectives for performing sensitivity analysis in medical cost effectiveness analysis and the implications of expected utility maximization for methods to perform such analyses the analysis suggests specific approaches for optimal decision making under uncertainty and specifying such decisions for subgroups based on the ratio of expected costs to expected benefits and for valuing research using value of information calculations though ideal value of information calculations may be difficult certain approaches with less stringent data requirements may bound the value of information these approaches suggest methods by which the vast cost effectiveness literature may help inform priorities for medical research

life cycle preferences over consumption and health when is cost effectiveness analysis equivalent to cost benefit analysis this paper studies life cycle preferences over consumption and health status we show that cost effectiveness analysis is consistent with cost benefit analysis if the lifetime utility function is additive over time multiplicative in the utility of consumption and the utility of health status and if the utility of consumption is constant over time we derive the conditions under which the lifetime utility function takes this form both under expected utility theory and under rank dependent utility theory which is currently the most important nonexpected utility theory if cost effectiveness analysis is consistent with cost benefit analysis it is possible to derive tractable expressions for the willingness to pay for quality adjusted life years qalys the willingness to pay for qalys depends on wealth remaining life expectancy health status and the possibilities for intertemporal substitution of consumption

the role of natural gas consumption in saudi arabia s output and its implication for trade and environmental quality abstract in this paper we examines the contribution of natural gas consumption in the real gdp of saudi arabia using long span and recent time series data over the period 1968 2016 in a multivariate framework which incorporates total trade as additional variable by using the autoregressive distributed lag method of cointegration we find long run a cointegration equilibrium relationship between ngc total trade and real gdp with a positive significant relationship among the variables by applying the toda and yamamoto method to granger causality testing we find a one sided causality running from ngc to real gdp while between real gdp and trade ngc and total trade total trade and real gdp are without a feedback from our empirical results we suggest that natural gas conservation policy would hurt the demand for natural gas hinder total trade and thus retard domestic output however in the near future it is possible for the saudi arabian government to meet energy needs and enhance total trade by adopting renewable energy alternatives to natural gas results however upon which the policy implications are inferred should be applied with caution as they may not be feasible enough to justify the adoption of unappealing energy policy choice for saudi arabia

cost effectiveness analysis and innovation while cost effectiveness ce analysis has provided a guide to allocating often scarce resources spent on medical technologies less emphasis has been placed on the effect of such criteria on the behavior of innovators who make health care technologies available in the first place a better understanding of the link between innovation and cost effectiveness analysis is particularly important given the large role of technological change in the growth in health care spending and the growing interest of explicit use of ce thresholds in leading technology adoption in several westernized countries we analyze ce analysis in a standard market context and stress that a technology s cost effectiveness is closely related to the consumer surplus it generates improved ce therefore often clashes with interventions to stimulate producer surplus such as patents we derive the inconsistency between technology adoption based on ce analysis and economic efficiency indeed static efficiency dynamic efficiency and improved patient health may all be induced by the cost effectiveness of the technology being at its worst level as producer appropriation of the social surplus of an innovation is central to the dynamic efficiency that should guide ce adoption criteria we exemplify how appropriation can be inferred from existing ce estimates for an illustrative sample of technologies considered we find that the median technology has an appropriation of about 15 to the extent that such incentives are deemed either too low or too high compared to dynamically efficient levels ce thresholds may be appropriately raised or lowered to improve dynamic efficiency

the pragmatist s guide to comparative effectiveness research following an acrimonious health care reform debate involving charges of death panels in 2010 congress explicitly forbade the use of cost effectiveness analysis in government programs of the patient protection and affordable care act in this context comparative effectiveness research emerged as an alternative strategy to understand better what works in health care put simply comparative effectiveness research compares the efficacy of two or more diagnostic tests treatments or health care delivery methods without any explicit consideration of costs to economists the omission of costs from an assessment might seem nonsensical but we argue that comparative effectiveness research still holds promise first it sidesteps one problem facing cost effectiveness analysis the widespread political resistance to the idea of using prices in health care second there is little or no evidence on comparative effectiveness for a vast array of treatments for example we don t know whether proton beam therapy a very expensive treatment for prostate cancer which requires building a cyclotron and a facility the size of a football field offers any advantage over conventional approaches most drug studies compare new drugs to placebos rather than head to head with other drugs on the market leaving a vacuum as to which drug works best finally the comparative effectiveness research can prove a useful first step even in the absence of cost information if it provides key estimates of treatment effects after all such effects are typically expensive to determine and require years or even decades of data costs are much easier to measure and can be appended at a later date as financial armageddon draws closer

accounting for future costs in medical cost effectiveness analysis most medical cost effectiveness analyses include future costs only for related illnesses but this approach is controversial this paper demonstrates that cost effectiveness analysis is consistent with lifetime utility maximization only if it includes all future medical and non medical expenditures estimates of the magnitude of these future costs suggest that they may substantially alter both the absolute and relative cost effectiveness of medical interventions particularly when an intervention increases length of life more than quality of life in older populations current methods overstate the cost effectiveness of interventions which extend life compared to interventions which improve the quality of life

electricity consumption growth nexus the case of malaysia abstract the goal of this paper is to model the relationship between electricity consumption and real gross domestic product gdp for malaysia in a bivariate and multivariate framework we use time series data for the period 1971 2003 and apply the bounds testing approach to search for a long run relationship our results reveal that electricity consumption real gdp and price share a long run relationship the results of the autoregressive distributed lag ardl estimates of long run elasticity of electricity consumption on gdp are found to be around 0 7 and statistically significant finally in the short run the results of the causality test show that there is a unidirectional causal flow from electricity consumption to economic growth in malaysia from these findings we conclude that malaysia is an energy dependent country leading us to draw some policy implications this paper adds support and validity thus reducing the policy makers concern on the ambiguity of the electricity and growth nexus in malaysia

economic evaluation of health care programmes is cea better than cba it has been noted earlier that during the same period that the contingent valuation cv method evolved and became the most commonly used method of valuing environmental projects the development in health economics was instead been towards cost effectiveness analysis cea recently there has been a growing interest in the use of cea where qalys quality adjusted life years are used as a measure of effectiveness as the method of evaluation for environmental projects the purpose of this paper is to answer the question is cea a superior method to cba both theoretically and empirically to provide information to decision makers for use in decisions on resource allocation in health the paper deals with the following topics the underlying theoretical foundation for cea is cea free of income distribution considerations is qaly a superior measure to wtp the usefulness of incremental ce ratio icer to determine resource allocation the paper concludes that there is neither theoretical nor practical support for the claim about the superiority of cea

exchange rates and the choice of ownership structure of production facilities the aim of this research is to study the effects of real exchange rates on the long term ownership strategies of production facilities of firms entering foreign markets among the strategies considered are exporting exp joint ventures with local partners jv and wholly owned production facilities wos in the foreign country our research takes a first step in modeling the influence of exchange rates on the choice and dynamic adjustment of such strategies the insights obtained from our modeling analysis are then translated into testable hypotheses and empirically verified with the use of firm level data from u s multinational corporations both at the firm and a more aggregate level an insightful result of our model is the identification of a hysteresis phenomenon that characterizes switching behavior between strategies in the presence of switchover cost the magnitude of the hysteresis band which is a measure of the inertia associated with keeping the current ownership structure is affected by a multiplicity of factors such as exchange rate volatility and market power of the entering firm analytical and numerical results on the effects of such factors on the hysteresis band are provided the four testable hypotheses generated from our modeling analysis are rigorously tested with the use of a multinomial logit model on data obtained from the harvard multinational enterprise database and a data set maintained by the bureau of economic analysis the u s department of commerce the empirical results strongly support our insights that relatively depreciated real exchange rates i e weak home currency favor a the jv over the wos and b exp mode over the wos or jv finally we summarize our results into useful guidelines for global production managers

exploring the driving factors of global lng trade flows using gravity modelling abstract taking into account the attributes of the liquefied natural gas lng trade and the space time characteristics of trade flows this paper identifies the multiple dimensional factors that influenced the global lng trade between 2004 and 2015 following an analysis of the data via the application of gravity models the empirical results of this study indicate that these influencing factors possess both general and regional characteristics in contrast to general trade the lng trade is mainly affected by the economic magnitude of the demand side regionally pipeline natural gas has a significant substitute effect on the lng trade within the global model though not within the asian model additionally the lng trade in asia is more sensitive to the influence of import prices and research and development investment than in the global model our subsample analyses show that the results are robustness across different periods finally this paper discusses pertinent policy implications for the lng trade especially as related to asia

global facility network design in the presence of competition abstract we study the facility network design problem for a global firm that is a monopolist seller in its domestic market but faces local competition in its foreign market the global firm produces in the face of demand and exchange rate uncertainty but can postpone localization and distribution of the output until after uncertainties are resolved the competitor in the foreign market however enjoys the flexibility of postponing all production activities until after uncertainties are resolved the two firms engage in an ex post cournot competition in the foreign market we consider three potential network configurations for the global firm under a linear demand function we provide the necessary and sufficient condition that one of the three networks is the global firm s optimal choice and explore how the presence of foreign competition affects the sensitivity of the global firm s design to various cost parameters and market uncertainties

structural breaks energy consumption and economic growth revisited evidence from taiwan abstract this paper studies the stability between energy consumption and gdp for taiwan during 1954 2003 we use aggregate as well as various disaggregate data of energy consumption including coal oil gas and electricity to employ the unit root tests and the cointegration tests allowing for structural breaks our main findings are first though gas consumption seems to have structural breaks in the 1960s after considering the structural breaks the series is a stationary variable when taiwan adopted its expansionary export trade policy second we find that different directions of causality exist between gdp and various kinds of energy consumption the empirical result shows unanimously in the long run that energy acts as an engine of economic growth and that energy conservation may harm economic growth third the cointegration between energy consumption and gdp is unstable and some economic events may affect the stability overall we do find the structural breakpoints and they look to match clearly with the corresponding critical economic incidents

measurement of health state utilities for economic appraisal health status measurement for use in economic appraisal of health care programmes is reviewed in this paper with particular emphasis on utility measurement a framework for economic appraisal is presented displaying the various components that must be measured and showing how the three forms of analysis cost effectiveness analysis cost benefit analysis and cost utility analysis relate to the framework and to each other one of the components in the framework is health status it can be measured using ad hoc numeric scales willingness to pay receive or health state utilities the determination of health state utilities is reviewed covering the following issues alternative sources of utilities health state descriptions multi attribute utility approach determination of appropriate subjects utility aggregation and accuracy three measurement techniques for health state utilities are described in detail rating scale standard gamble and time trade off the use of these methods is described for both chronic and temporary health states and for both health states considered better than death and those considered worse than death

qalys standard gambles and the expected budget constraint this paper shows that when quality adjustment factors for use in constructing qaly indices are established through answers to standard gamble questions or similar methods the assumptions that are made by respondents about the financial consequences of changing probabilities of illness and death are critically important for the use of qalys in cost utility analysis cua it qualifies meltzer s journal of health economics 16 1997 33 result that the cost per quality adjusted life year qaly for life saving medical interventions should include the future consumption of those who would otherwise not have survived by showing that its validity depends on how the qaly index has been established the paper also shows that contrary to a widely held notion allocation of a fixed health care budget through cua does not generally result in a second best efficient allocation another finding is that failure to specify carefully what respondents to standard gamble questions are supposed to assume about the financial consequences of ill health may result in a bias against providing care to older individuals

optimal operating policies in the presence of exchange rate variability we study the structure of the optimal policies for a firm operating plants in different countries the relative costs of production between the plants are assumed to vary over time due to economic and political factors such as exchange rates inflation taxes and tariffs based on the costs the firm can alter the quantity produced in each plant we determine the structure of the optimal policies for deciding when and by how much to alter the production quantities when the switch over costs are linear or step functions regardless of whether the variable production costs are concave or piece wise linear convex and regardless of whether the firm is supplying one or more markets the optimal policy is always a barrier policy the optimal barriers can be determined by using linear programming techniques and the optimal costs can be computed by solving a system of linear equations when the number of optimal barriers is two the optimal expected costs and the condition that determines the optimal barriers are explicitly derived

determinants of global natural gas consumption and import export flows abstract based on the data of the bp statistical review of world energy this paper constructs the consumption and import export of natural gas identities it discusses the drivers of changes in global natural gas consumption and trade flows from 2008 to 2015 using the extended logarithmic mean divisia index the results show that differences in the natural gas supply and demand across countries or regions as well as the distribution of energy between the domestic and international markets can be better explained when natural gas trade movements are considered by comparing the supply and consumption increment of natural gas this study finds that only the energy intensity economic growth and demographic effects are consistent with each other the changes in the impact of other effects mainly depend on storage variations and statistical errors in addition the primary drivers of the incremental changes in natural gas consumption vary in different countries they include production scale import scale export scale consumption structure proportion energy intensity economic growth and population and balance effects finally the consumption competitiveness of the liquefied natural gas significantly improved over the examined period

economic evaluation of services for a national health scheme the case for a fairness based framework in this paper we argue that the usual framework for evaluating health services may need modification in the context of a national health scheme nhs some costs and benefits may need to be ignored or discounted others included at face value and some transfer payments included in the decision algorithm in contrast with the standard framework we argue that economic evaluation in the context of an nhs should focus on social transfers between taxpayers and beneficiaries and that the nature and scope of these transfers is determined by the level of social generosity some of the implications of a modified framework are illustrated with a re examination of i costs and transfer payments ii unrelated future costs iii moral hazard and iv the rule that marginal costs should equal marginal benefits we argue that an explicitly fairness based framework is needed for the evaluation of services in an nhs in contrast the usual welfare economic theoretic framework facilitates the sidelining of issues of fairness

valuing operational flexibility under exchange rate risk in this paper we develop a stochastic dynamic programming formulation for the valuation of global manufacturing strategy options with switching costs overall we adopt a hierarchical approach first exchange rates are modeled as stochastic diffusion processes that exhibit intercountry correlation second the firm s global manufacturing strategy determines options for alternative product designs as well as supply chain network designs product options introduce international supply flexibility supply chain network options determine the firm s manufacturing flexibility through production capacity and supply chain network linkages third switching costs determine the cost of operational hedging i e the costs associated with reducing downside risks overall the firm maximizes its expected discounted global after tax value through the exercise of product and supply chain network options and or through exploitation of operational flexibility contingent on exchange rate realizations in this environment the firm must trade off fixed operating costs switching costs and the economic benefits derived from exploiting differentials in factor costs and corporate tax rates a multinomial approximation of correlated exchange rate processes is proposed that leads to a consistent and tractable lattice model for this compound option valuation problem we then demonstrate how the global manufacturing strategy planning model framework can be utilized to analyze financial and operational hedging strategies

a literature survey on energy growth nexus abstract this paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of energy consumption economic growth and electricity consumption economic growth causality nexus the survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of energy electricity in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables although the positive role of energy on growth has become a stylized fact there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies a general observation from these studies is that the literature produced conflicting results and there is no consensus neither on the existence nor on the direction of causality between energy consumption electricity consumption and economic growth as a policy implication to avoid from conflicting and unreliable results the authors may use the autoregressive distributed lags bounds test two regime threshold co integration models panel data approach and multivariate models including new variables such as real gross fixed capital formation labor force carbon dioxide emissions population exchange rates interest rates etc thus the authors should focus more on the new approaches and perspectives rather than by employing usual methods based on a set of common variables for different countries and different intervals of time

future costs and the future of cost effectiveness analysis in the past decade the use of cost effectiveness ce analysis to guide resource allocation in health care has grown in the united kingdom and in continental europe its use in the united states has been far more limited the political resistance to explicit consideration of costs in the medicare s coverage decision making has all but buried efforts to make coverage decisions based on cost effectiveness criteria and explicit use of cost effectiveness analysis is unusual among private u s health insurers nevertheless this technique is attracting greater interest among policymakers and private health plans even in the united states and its adoption elsewhere confirms that it is now seen as an essential tool to increase the efficiency of health expenditures if it is really to be used we should make sure that we get it right and that its guidance will improve well being our previous article garber and phelps 1997 was motivated by two simple questions does a cost effectiveness criterion lead to potential pareto improvement as is known to be the case when a cost benefit criterion positive net benefit is applied and if so under what conditions by this means we hoped both to establish whether cost effectiveness analysis provided a reasonable alternative to cost benefit analysis as a guide to health expenditures and to resolve methodological controversies particularly whether unrelated future costs of care should be excluded from ce analysis or included we proposed that the correct criterion for the use of ce analysis was to determine whether the allocations that resulted from application of the technique were optimal in the sense that they represented a potential pareto improvement just as costbenefit criteria could do we argued that if the future costs were truly unrelated it did not matter whether such costs were included or excluded as long as the cutoff ce ratio above which the costs of the health expenditure would exceed the value of the resulting benefits were properly adjusted in an article published in the same issue of jhe meltzer 1997 argued that the future unrelated costs not only of health care but of consumption more generally must be included in the cost effectiveness calculation in order to rank alternatives for optimal resource allocation

the saving and investment nexus for china evidence from cointegration tests the saving and investment nexus as postulated by feldstein and horioka fh 1980 is revisited the saving investment correlation for china is estimated over the periods 1952 1998 and 1952 1994 the latter culminating in a period of fixed exchange rate regime amongst the key results it is found that saving and investment are correlated for china for both the period of the fixed exchange rate and the entire sample period with high saving investment correlation the results suggest that the chinese economy is in conformity with the fh hypothesis this is a valid outcome for in china capital mobility was fairly restricted over the 1952 1994 period as indicated by the relatively low foreign direct investment