what explains the industrial revolution in east asia evidence from the factor markets this paper presents dual estimates of total factor productivity growth tfpg for east asian countries while the dual estimates of tfpg for korea and hong kong are similar to the primal estimates they exceed the primal estimates by 1 percent a year for taiwan and by more than 2 percent for singapore the reason for the large discrepancy for singapore is because the return to capital has remained constant despite the high rate of capital accumulation indicated by singapore s national accounts this discrepancy is not explained by financial market controls capital income taxes risk premium changes and public investment subsidies jel o11 o16 o47 o53

impacts of renewables and socioeconomic factors on electric vehicle demands panel data studies across 14 countries abstract electric vehicle demands have increased rapidly since 2010 and depend on renewables and socioeconomic factors using panel data from fourteen countries between 2010 and 2015 we study impacts of seven factors in a multiple linear regression model the factors include percentage of renewable energies in electricity generation number of charging stations education level population density gasoline price gdp per capita and urbanization the first four factors have apparent and positive impacts on the demands and the last two factors don t the gasoline price affects the demands for bevs battery electric vehicles more than that for phevs plug in hybrid electric vehicles one percent increase in renewables would lead to approximately 2 6 increase in ev demands based on the results policy implications are discussed

drivers of stagnating global carbon intensity of electricity and the way forward abstract despite the signing of the paris climate agreement there is still great uncertainty regarding the world s ability to decarbonize and meet the 2 c target in this regard the electricity production sector deserves particular attention the sector has the largest decarbonization potential and its share of the world s co2 emissions from fuel combustion increased from 30 in 1990 to 36 in 2014 to better understand global trends this study analyses the factors influencing changes in the global aggregate carbon intensity aci of electricity a measure of the level of co2 emissions per unit of electricity produced over the last 25 years using multidimensional index decomposition analysis it finds that global aci barely improved since 1990 because of a shift in electricity production from developed to developing countries with higher acis this geographical shift offset consistent improvements to power generation efficiency worldwide and is likely to persist in the future to keep the 2 c target realisable it is imperative to enhance international cooperation to lower the acis of emerging economies and deepen the penetration of renewables which have thus far performed below expectations

energy consumption and economic growth a causality analysis for greece abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between aggregated and disaggregated levels of energy consumption and economic growth for greece for the period 1960 2006 through the application of a later development in the methodology of time series proposed by toda and yamamoto 1995 at aggregated levels of energy consumption empirical findings suggest the presence of a uni directional causal relationship running from total energy consumption to real gdp at disaggregated levels empirical evidence suggests that there is a bi directional causal relationship between industrial and residential energy consumption to real gdp but this is not the case for the transport energy consumption with causal relationship being identified in neither direction the importance of these findings lies on their policy implications and their adoption on structural policies affecting energy consumption in greece suggesting that in order to address energy import dependence and environmental concerns without hindering economic growth emphasis should be put on the demand side and energy efficiency improvements

scale effects time varying markups and the cyclical behaviour of primal and dual productivity this paper presents estimates of the degree of returns to scale using nonparametric measures of primal and dual productivity for 2 digit us manufacturing industries as part of the analysis the cyclical behaviour of primal and dual productivity measures are considered time varying markups are allowed for and the small sample properties of the instrumental variables estimator used to derive the estimates from the primal and dual relations examined both the primal and dual estimates indicate the existence of increasing returns to scale for the durable goods industries the simulation results indicate there is a slight tendency for the dual equation estimates to overestimate the degree of returns to scale however small sample bias appears to be most severe for the non durable goods industries

decoupling analysis and environmental kuznets curve modelling of provincial level co2 emissions and economic growth in china a case study abstract guangdong is one of the most representative provinces of china in terms of reflecting how the provincial level co2 emissions dynamically evolve with economic development during the process of industrialisation and urbanisation the present study combines decoupling analysis with environmental kuznets curve ekc modelling to systematically explore the interactions between co2 emissions and economic growth in guangdong from the short to long terms aiming to provide the referential significance of low carbon development to other chinese provinces empirical results indicate that co2 economy interactions in guangdong dynamically changed with time performing an effect of expansive weak decoupling during 1995 2014 and having a potential to achieve a strong decoupling in the long run the decoupling states of various sectors and their contributions to the provincial overall decoupling differed greatly and varied by time and household and service sectors played increasingly important roles overall the decoupling effect of provincial co2 emissions is distinctly affected by the stage of industrialisation and urbanisation renewable energy utilisation as well as low carbon technical progress therefore promoting co2 economy decoupling at the provincial level should be specific to the feature and development reality of various provinces

unequal resilience the duration of electricity outages abstract the resilience of social biophysical and technological systems is of increasing scholarly and practical import guided by scholarship on disaster resilience environmental inequality and urban service inequality we advance the study of unequal resilience in a critical infrastructure the electric grid we analyze inequality in electricity outage duration at the census block group level using data from the u s census the u s geological survey and a u s electrical utility s database of power outages from 2002 to 2004 our intersectional approach identifies a factor variable of american indian disadvantage as a correlate of average outage duration suggesting possible support for an institutional bias hypothesis however spatial error regression models demonstrate that unequal resilience within our study area is most consistently explained by proximity to priority assets i e hospitals average downstream customers affected by outages and environmental conditions i e the seasonality of outages these results are consistent with existing research on utilities response to power outages and more broadly with the bureaucratic decision rules perspective on service inequalities we discuss the implications of our findings for future research and energy policy

two ways to success expansion of renewable energies in comparison between germany s federal states abstract expansion of renewable energies is a central pillar of the german energy transition towards a non nuclear renewable system the expansion rate is co determined to a significant degree at the level of the federal states and varies considerably from state to state apart from the existence of natural energy resources and general economic conditions do parties in government play an important role for the development at the state level we consider potentially influential factors in a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis fsqca focusing on the expansion of renewable electricity production in all 16 federal german states from 2004 to 2014 as a result two promising ways for accelerated expansion of renewable electricity production can be identified on the one hand a group of economically less developed states have succeeded in promoting expansion and uses it as part of an economic modernization strategy within the economically more developed states however the party political composition of the state governments green party s involvement plays a significant role these results also have implications for other federal countries beyond germany pointing to tailor made policy strategies that consider these specific circumstances

energy and economic growth in industrializing countries the case of greece abstract this paper investigates some aspects of the interrelated paths of economic growth and energy demand in the case of an industrializing economy through the use of numerous econometric models translog functions have helped establish that income and price elasticities of energy two critical parameters in the energy economy interaction exhibit falling trends with time the value share of the industrial sector is strongly associated with both energy demand and energy intensity any increase in the former will lead to amplified increases in the latter rendering the continuation of past trends in industrial expansion questionable under conditions of high energy costs substitution among capital labour and energy does take place though to a limited extent as indicated by the aggregate measure of energy non energy substitution elasticity all findings appear to suggest that energy policymaking in an industrializing country like greece will be of low effectiveness until certain structural changes in the economy are realized

are productivity fluctuations due to real supply shocks abstract shapiro 1987 draws support for real business cycle theories from the behavior of cost based and output based measures of productivity this evidence is examined and shown to rely on spurious correlations

issues on the measurement of the solow residual and the testing of its exogeneity evidence for canada abstract this paper examines the impact of adjusting the solow residual for variable capacity utilization on the empirical assessment of market structure and exogeneity of productivity shocks making use of an innovative measure of capacity utilization available in canada reveals that its aggregate market structure is well described by constant returns to scale and perfect competition in contrast to most studies which do not make this adjustment furthermore when the capital stock is adjusted for variations in utilization rates canadian productivity shocks are exogenous to real and monetary variables

subsidizing renewables as part of taking leadership in international climate policy the german case abstract leadership in climate policy is usually associated with leading by example in mitigation efforts whereas little attention has been paid to leadership in climate friendly technological progress we point out that pioneering activities that create reliable demand such as germany s feed in tariff for solar energy constitute such technological leadership based on global learning curves we argue that the enormous reduction of prices for photovoltaic modules is due to demand side interventions like germany s eeg and related international technology diffusion and policy transfer especially to china for the german case we calculate that the costs of incentivizing this technological progress through the eeg add up to a range between 112 34 and 122 18 bn euro based on a thought experiment of a hypothetical new entrant in 2014

are cyclical fluctuations in productivity due more to supply shocks or demand shocks measured productivity is strongly procyclical real business cycle theories suggest that actual fluctuations in productivity are the source of fluctuations in aggregate output keynesian theories maintain that fluctuations in aggregate output come from shocks to aggregate demand keynesian theories appeal to labor hoarding or off the production function behavior to explain the procyclicality of productivity if observed productivity shocks are true productivity shocks a function of factor prices should covary exactly with productivity in annual data for united states industries that function of factor prices and conventionally measured productivity move together very closely moreover their difference is uncorrelated with aggregate output this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

non nested tests of three competing theories of business cycles this paper tests the keynesian new classical and real business cycle theories against each other as non nested hypotheses using quarterly data for the us covering the period 1959 1 1989 2 the results indicate that no one theory stands out as the dominant explanation of the business cycle this contrasts with the findings of earlier work which is mostly concerned with testing the keynesian against the new classical theory we find that the introduction of a third theory the real business cycle theory which accounts of real factors blurs the distinction between the demand sided keynesian and the new classical theories

productivity growth and factor prices in east asia the industrial revolution in several east asian countries over the last three decades is one of the most important economic events in the postwar era several recent growthaccounting exercises have found that their extraordinary rate of output growth was due primarily to an equally impressive rate of factor accumulation with little due to technological progress see alwyn young 1992 1995 jong il kim and lawrence lau 1994 susan collins and barry bosworth 1996 since these studies suggest that factor accumulation has been the lead actor in east asia s growth many economists have reached the conclusion that the industrial revolution in east asia can largely be explained in terms of transition dynamics in a neoclassical growth framework see e g paul krugman 1994 n gregory mankiw 1995 if this view is correct the lesson from east asia s experience is that there are no easy solutions for a poor country that seeks to join the league of wealthy nations low levels of investment and education may be the result of bad policies but once proper policies are enacted a poor country faces the grim prospect of a further decline in its already low standards of living as it devotes more resources to investment and education the central point of this paper is that if east asia s growth was largely driven by capital accumulation with little technological progress the return to capital should have fallen dramatically as capital accumulation encounters diminishing returns for example the capital output ratio for korea computed from the national accounts has increased at an average rate of 3 4 percent per year from 1966 to 1990 while that of singapore has increased at an average rate of 3 7 percent per year from 1968 to 1990 by dividing the share of payments to capital in total income by the capital output

key challenges to expanding renewable energy the key advantage of renewables is that they are free of direct pollution and carbon emissions given concern over global warming caused by carbon emissions there are substantial policy efforts to increase renewable penetrations the purpose of this paper is to outline and evaluate the challenges presented by increasing penetrations of renewable electricity generation these generation sources primarily include solar and wind which are growing rapidly and are new enough to the grid that the impact of high penetrations is not fully understood the intrinsic nature of solar and wind power is very likely to present greater system challenges than conventional sources within limits those challenges can be overcome but at a cost later sections of the paper will draw on a variety of sources to identify a range of such costs at least as they are foreseen by researchers helping prepare ambitious plans for grids to obtain high shares 30 50 of their megawatt hours from primarily solar and wind generation energy poverty issues are outlined and related to renewable costs issues

demand shocks supply shocks and the cyclicality of real wages the behaviour of real wages over the business cycle has received increasiing attention in recent years the cyclicality of real wages constitues an important aspect of recent models of the business cycle however empirical studies undertaken to determine whether real wages are procyclical or countercyclical have reported conflicting findings in thiis paper we use vector autoregressions to analyse the cyclicality of real wages we find that the source of the disturbance plays a decisive role in the cyclical behaviour of real wages in particular we demonstrate that a supply shock generates procyclical real wages whereas a demand shock yields countercyclicality

explaining industry labor productivity movements i introduction the 1970s marked a significant turning point in the postwar productivity performance for industrialized economies robust productivity growth disappeared and several decades of low growth followed this phenomenon was perhaps most pronounced in the united states figure 1a shows that labor productivity displays a clear slowdown beginning in the mid to late 1960s the figure plots data for log average labor productivity measured as real gnp per full time equivalent employee 1 2 trends in log average labor productivity have varied across u s industries as shown in figure 1b productivity in the manufacturing sector has been comparatively stable in both durable and nondurable goods for durable goods there was a slight slowdown in the mid and late 1970s but the mid 1980s marked an upturn in productivity performance agriculture trade finance insurance real estate and services on the other hand reflect the dramatic halt in labor productivity growth that is evident in the u s aggregate data mining and construction display the most dramatic declines in labor productivity across industries this paper investigates the importance of three shocks at the industry level for explaining industry labor productivity movements industry demand shocks supply shocks and labor supply shocks past studies have attempted to quantify the contribution of changes in factors of production technology education and other supply side variables in explaining the productivity slowdown typically using a growth accounting framework e g denison 1979 this paper instead investigates the importance of traditional notions of demand and supply shocks in explaining productivity movements the results show that demand shocks as defined in the paper are not important in explaining labor productivity movements supply shocks on the other hand have immediate and long lasting effects this suggests that theories of demand driven productivity movements are not consistent with the data these results confirm work by shapiro 1987a who showed that the solow residual in u s aggregate and industry data accurately reflect supply shocks this paper adds to shapiro s results in two important ways first of all supply shocks are broken into productivity shocks and labor supply shocks also the impact and importance of these shocks relative to demand shocks are estimated directly the evidence shows that labor supply shocks are important for explaining labor productivity movements particularly in trade and services positive labor supply shocks are associated with persistently declining labor productivity the two decades beginning in the 1970s saw dramatic shifts in the employment distribution across u s industries as table i shows employment in trade and service industries expanded while the share of employment in manufacturing declined the timing of the productivity slowdown in trade and services is coincident with these changes in the employment distribution the results in the paper suggest that the increase in labor supply that these industries experienced is a main factor explaining their slowdown in labor productivity of course others have examined the effects of employment movements on labor productivity for example mincer 1991 provided evidence that the influx of inexperienced workers has made on the job human capital formation more difficult and has thus led to a decline in labor productivity in addition helliwell sturm and salou 1985 englander and gurney 1994 romer 1987 and perloff and wachter 1980 have all shown that increased employment growth is associated with declining labor productivity darby 1984 baily and gordon 1988 and jurgenson gallop and fraumeni 1987 have pointed to declining labor quality as a factor behind the productivity slowdown all of these studies confirm the negative correlation between employment growth and productivity and attribute some of the productivity slowdown to rapidly increasing employment

energy demand in greece abstract this paper examines the impact of the two energy crises 1973 74 and 1978 79 on energy demand in greece initially some specific characteristics of energy consumption patterns before and after 1973 are presented and compared then demand parameters for hydroelectric energy liquid fuels and solid fuels were estimated using data for the period 1963 1984 and alternative econometric methods ols 2sls fiml to ensure that estimates do not vary across different estimation methods appropriate tests were used to examine whether a structural change in energy demand has occured following either of the two crises the results indicate that while consumption patterns may be different due to price and income changes after the crises the parameters of energy demand in greece have remained unchanged

productivity shocks and business cycles this note uses two measures of productivity growth the solow residual and the dual residual from the cost function to test competing theories of the cycle in a number of oecd countries the empirical results indicate that both demand and supply shocks play a role in driving economic cycles and therefore refute the stronger real business cycle hypothesis

markups in u s and japanese manufacturing a short run econometric analysis in this article a production theory based model of firms markup behavior is constructed the theoretical structure is based on variants of generalized leontief cost and expenditure functions this framework yields a specification of behavior from which the impacts of both supply and demand shocks on firms markup behavior can be assessed through elasticities adjustment costs on both labor and capital and economies of scale are incorporated estimation is carried out using manufacturing data for the united states and japan from 1960 through 1981 the empirical results suggest that markups for manufacturing firms in both the united states and japan have increased over time but have somewhat different cyclical characteristics stemming primarily from differential investment behavior in addition capacity utilization and especially returns to scale tend to counteract the short run profit potential from markup behavior so that markups measured assuming constant returns are typically biased downward finally

how to benefit from a common european electricity market design abstract the realization of an internal electricity market in europe is currently on the one hand progressing in particular thanks to the wide spread implementation of market coupling solutions for cross border congestion management on the other hand diverging national market designs pose a threat to the continuation of this process given the challenges to electricity market design in a multi regional context we analyze how different design aspects namely cross border congestion management and capacity mechanisms affect welfare and generation adequacy in europe in doing so we rely on an agent based simulation model for electricity wholesale markets which we apply within several numerical computational case studies for the region of central western europe 2012 2030 our results confirm the benefits of market coupling in terms of welfare as well as generation adequacy furthermore we find indications that coordinating market designs across regions supports these targets therefore we recommend that european energy policy forms a stable transparent regulatory framework with cross border market coupling as an integral component in this context energy policy targets should be clearly defined and operationalized which also needs to consider potential conflicts between them finally electricity market designs need to be coordinated among states to benefit most from a common european market