interfuel substitution biomass consumption economic growth and sustainable development evidence from brazil abstract this paper examines the possibilities of substituting the fossil fuels including natural gas coal and oil for biomass consumption in brazil for the period 1980 2015 we used the ridge regression procedure to generate the parameter estimates from a second order taylor series approximation of log linear trans log specification for robustness sake we constructed an index of sustainable development sd as additional regressand alongside the conventional gross domestic product gdp overall the results show strong evidence of substitution possibilities between biomass and the fossil fuels in both the gdp and the sd models indicating that brazil can continue with its growth and sustainability agenda by using more biomass and less fossil fuels the results also show that the sd model gives a more robust output elasticity estimates as it detects the inherent negative effect of some of the fossil fuels on the economy that are not directly observable in the gdp model

environmental regulation technological innovation and energy consumption a cross region analysis in china abstract china has encountered the environmental issues and energy pressures in the middle income stage strengthening environmental regulation is a crucial measure to prevent environment deterioration and energy dilemma this paper investigates the three types of environmental regulations on energy consumption using feasible generalized least squares method during 1997 2015 in direct and indirect path the main conclusions are as follows in the direct path the economical and supervised types of environmental regulations have inhibited energy consumption whilst legal environmental regulation has no significant impact as for indirect path the rebound effect of energy is greater than the energy conservation generated by technological innovation which is embodied as an inhibitory effect the effects of environmental regulation display regional difference the legal and supervised types of environmental regulations have significant cost effect and rebound effect on energy consumption in the entire samples on the contrary the economical environmental regulation shows the opposite sigh in eastern regions the counterfactual simulation results show that the net effects of environmental regulations on energy consumption are negative which is beneficial for relieving energy pressures based on the findings this paper provides pertinent policy implications

a multi dimensional analysis on microeconomic factors of china s industrial energy intensity 2000 2017 abstract reducing energy intensity is the key point to solve the contradiction among economic development energy constraints and environmental pressure in china considering microeconomic factors this paper extends decomposition and attribution models and analyses the drivers of china s industrial aggregate energy intensity aei at the regional sectoral level the results show that aei decreased by 49 during 2000 2017 at the regional level most provinces presented negative contribution on regional energy intensity effect the aei decline was attributed to the drop of greatest negative effect of r d efficiency in liaoning the increase in investment intensity and r d intensity lead to an increase in aei largely owning to shandong and liaoning respectively at the sectoral level the aei decline can be mainly explained by the inhibition effect of energy intensity and r d efficiency however this negative contribution was greatly offset by the r d intensity effect the investment intensity showed a positive impact in aei increase and smelting and pressing of ferrous metals sector was the main contributor regional and sectoral investment structure effect shifted from increasing to decreasing aei over the study period based on the results targeted policy recommendations are proposed to further decrease the china s industrial aei in the 14th fyp period

stationary equilibrium in a market for durable assets this paper presents a dynamic model of consumer trading on the primary secondary and scrap markets for a stochastically deteriorating durable good in a stationary economy with perfect information and no transaction costs we explicitly model the trading process by tracking each durable from its birth in the primary market through its sequence of owners in the secondary market until its death in the scrap market we prove that a stationary equilibrium exists characterize the distribution of consumer holdings of durables and show that equilibrium asset prices are shadow prices to a particular regenerative optimal stopping problem we show that each heterogeneous agent equilibrium is observationally equivalent to a homogeneous agent equilibrium we derive a differential equation for equilibrium rental rates and a functional equation which links rental rates to asset prices these equations show precisely how the structure of durable prices and rental rates embody the functional form and population distribution of preferences and the technological characteristics of durable goods this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

durable goods theory for real world markets the early 1970s witnessed three major advances in durable goods theory swan 1970 1971 and sieper and swan 1973 on optimal durability coase 1972 on time inconsistency and akerlof 1970 on adverse selection this paper surveys durable goods theory starting with these three contributions where much of the focus is on recent literature and on models that explain real world phenomena in addition to the ideas found in the contributions of swan coase and akerlof topics covered include why producers sometimes practice planned obsolescence the role of adverse selection in new car leasing and reasons for aftermarket monopolization

trade ins and introductory offers in a monopoly we model the commonly used marketing practices of offering discounts to either repeat buyers trade ins or new buyers introductory offers of a quasi durable good we analyze these practices in terms of their potential for intertemporal and third degree price discrimination in our two period model the monopolist sets a first period price that segments the second period market optimally into holders and nonholders of the good in the second period different prices are quoted to the two market segments we present three versions of the model with varying assumptions on consumers rationality

competitive price and quality under asymmetric information we present an analysis of equilibrium in markets with asymmetrically informed consumers some consumers know both price and quality of all sellers whereas others know neither but may search among sellers the equilibrium correlation between price and quality generally increases with the level of information in the market and can be negative when this level is sufficiently small a meta analysis of the available empirical studies strongly supports the model s predictions

price discrimination via second hand markets consumers have heterogeneous tastes for new and used goods and second hand markets involve transactions costs a monopoly seller may gain or lose from the existence of a second hand market locally it may prefer lower transactions costs but globally it may prefer high transactions costs so it can strangle the used market the monopolist uses the second hand market as an indirect device to achieve a form of second degree price discrimination if the monopolist can control the quality of its product when used it may wish to deteriorate this quality to worthless or else to have it as good as new

competition in durable goods markets the strategic consequences of leasing and selling in marketing durable goods manufacturers use varying degrees of leasing and selling to consumers e g cars photo copiers personal computers airplanes etc the question that this raises is whether the distinction between leases and sales is simply one of price or whether the proportion of leases and sales effects a firm s ability to compete in the market in this paper we use two approaches to argue that leasing and selling create strategic consequences that extend beyond prices first we develop a stylized theoretical model that shows that the optimal proportion of leases and sales depends on the competitiveness of the market and on the inherent reliability of the firm s product and second we find support for the implications of our theoretical model with data from the automobile industry the u s automobile industry has seen a large increase in leasing over the last five years however the extent to which leasing has been embraced varies widely across manufacturers for example in 1993 the sport utility segment had the following lease percentages ford explorer 29 jeep grand cherokee 24 toyota 4 runner 11 and chevrolet blazer 9 in addition manufacturers often vary lease percentages across models for example in 1993 ford leased 22 of its crown victoria model 35 of its taurus model and 42 of its probe model a popular argument for why we see these differences is that higher priced cars are leased more often because leasing makes them more affordable however this rationale is not compelling in the face of our data for example the ford probe was priced significantly lower than the crown victoria and yet it was leased almost twice as often to develop a better understanding of why we observe differences in the proportion of leasing we develop a two period model of a duopoly in which each manufacturer chooses its optimal quantity and the fraction of units it wants to lease we find that in equilibrium neither firm leases all its units either they use a mix of leasing and selling or they use only selling our analysis suggests that the fraction of leased cars decreases as the manufacturers products become more similar and the competition between them increases the intuition for this result is that a higher fraction of leases puts the firm at a competitive disadvantage in the future this occurs because unlike firms that sell their product firms that lease are at a price disadvantage another important finding in this paper is that the extent of leasing chosen by a manufacturer depends on the reliability of its product in particular all else being equal the lower a product s reliability the lower its proportion of leases within the context of the automobile industry this suggests that more expensive cars may be leased more often because they are of higher quality and not necessarily because they are more expensive finally we test the implications of our theoretical model with data from the u s automobile market in particular for 1993 model year cars we develop a measure of reliability using data from consumer reports in addition we develop a measure of the extent of competition in each segment of the automobile market we support our hypotheses by finding that the extent to which a car model is leased depends strongly on its predicted reliability and on the competitive intensity within the segment

how to reduce energy intensity in china s heavy industry evidence from a seemingly uncorrelated regression abstract with rapid development and large scale urbanization china s environmental and resource constraints are becoming increasingly severe compared to other industries china s heavy industry is energy intensive and emission intensive which exerts pressure on energy conservation policies in this paper by establishing a theoretical model of the impact factors of energy intensity we investigate the effects of energy prices ownership structure and industrial concentration and r d investment on the energy intensity of china s heavy industry and seemingly unrelated regression model was used in the estimation of corresponding coefficients the results show that increase in energy prices decrease in state owned enterprises and increase in industrial concentration may reduce the energy intensity of the industry also the study points to evidence that an increase in r d investment may reduce the oil intensity of heavy industry

estimates of energy subsidies in china and impact of energy subsidy reform abstract for a transitional economy such as china some energy subsidies are reasonable and sometimes even necessary for achieving social goals however with rising energy prices and environmental concerns we see conflicts emerging between energy subsidies energy demand supply fundamentals and climate change considerations energy subsidies have important implications for sustainable development through their effects on energy use efficiency and the choice of fuel source this paper applies the price gap approach to estimate china s energy subsidies results indicate that china s energy subsidies amounted to cny 356 73 billion in 2007 equivalent to 1 43 of gdp subsidies for oil products consumption are the largest followed by subsidies for the electricity and coal sectors furthermore a cge model is used to analyze the economic impacts of energy subsidy reforms our findings show that removing energy subsidies will result in a significant fall in energy demand and emissions but will have negative impacts on macroeconomic variables we conclude that offsetting policies could be adopted such that certain shares of these subsidies are reallocated to support other sustainable development measures which could lead to reducing energy intensity and favoring the environment

investment in technological innovations an option pricing approach abstract this paper develops a model of the optimal investment strategy for a firm confronted with a sequence of technological innovations we incorporate many of the most important characteristics of real world technology markets for example we permit innovations to be stochastic in their arrival times and their profitability we also incorporate learning so that firms adopting current innovations become better able to benefit from future innovations the model yields four distinct investment strategies the model is then used to predict actual firm policy these implications are discussed and compared with observed firm behavior

understanding the role of trade ins in durable goods markets theory and evidence the act of trading in a used car as partial payment for a new car resonates with practically all consumers such transactions are prevalent in many other durable goods markets ranging from golf clubs to ct scanners what roles do trade ins play in these markets what motivates the seller to set up a channel to facilitate trade ins intuitively accepting a trade in would appear to stimulate demand for the producer s product but facilitating the resale of these used goods that substitute for new goods might also increase cannibalization although such transactions involve billions of dollars we know relatively little about this practice from the extant research literature this paper develops an analytical model that incorporates key features of real world durable goods markets i coexistence of new and used goods markets ii consumer heterogeneity with respect to quality sensitivity iii firms that anticipate the cannibalization problem arising from the coexistence of new and used goods and iv lemon problems in resale markets whereby sellers of used goods are better informed than buyers about the quality of their particular item in our analysis a trade in policy amounts to an intervention by the firm in the used goods market which reduces inefficiencies arising from the lemon problem it motivates owners to purchase new goods and reduces their proclivity to hold on to purchased goods because of the low price the latter would fetch in a lemon market we also show that trade in programs are more valuable for less reliable products as well as for products that deteriorate more slowly our analysis shows that producers in durable goods markets should consider trade in programs as a matter of routine despite cannibalization concerns arising from a more active resale market a producer s profits will inevitably rise from introducing trade ins given pervasive lemon problems we test the key predictions of the model about price and volume of trade by assembling a data set of transactions of u s automobile consumers and find broad support for our model

model misspecification and underdiversification in this paper we study intertemporal portfolio choice when an investor accounts explicitly for model misspecification we develop a framework that allows for ambiguity about not just the joint distribution of returns for all stocks in the portfolio but also for different levels of ambiguity for the marginal distribution of returns for any subset of these stocks we find that when the overall ambiguity about the joint distribution of returns is high then small differences in ambiguity for the marginal return distribution will result in a portfolio that is significantly underdiversified relative to the standard mean variance portfolio

dealer price discrimination in new car purchases evidence from the consumer expenditure survey this paper documents the variation in dealer discounts for new cars using transactions price data from the consumer expenditure survey consumer specific characteristics fail to explain dealer discounts whereas model market specific and purchase transaction variables e g first time purchase trade in and financing through dealer do explain them the results contradict earlier findings of race and gender discrimination based on a controlled experiment this contradiction is reconciled by examining the higher moments of the empirical discount distribution while mean and median markups do not vary by race and gender minority purchases are characterized by higher dispersion this may rationalize the disparate treatment of minorities by dealers documented in the controlled experiment

what goes up recent trends in china s energy consumption since 1996 china s energy output has dropped by 17 while primary energy use has fallen by 4 driven almost entirely by shrinking output from coal mines and declining direct use since china is the world s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases it is important to understand the sources of this apparent transformation and whether it portends a permanent change in patterns of energy use this remarkable reversal of the long term expansion of energy use has occurred even as the economy has continued to grow albeit more slowly than in the early 1990s generation of electric power has risen implying a steep fall in end uses particularly in industry available information points to a variety of forces contributing to this phenomenon including rapid improvements in coal quality structural changes in industry shutdowns of factories in both the state owned and non state segments of the economy improvements in end use efficiency and greater use of gas and electricity in households a combination of slowing economic growth industrial restructuring broader economic system reforms and environmental and energy efficiency policies has apparently led to at least a temporary decline in and perhaps a long term reduction in the growth of energy use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions

an analysis of china s coal supply and its impact on china s future economic growth many people believe that china s economic growth can continue almost indefinitely for a manufacturingbased economy such as china s to continue to grow it needs an adequate supply of inexpensive energy to date this energy growth has primarily come from coal but china s indigenous coal supplies are now falling short of the amount needed to support this growth in this situation the status of china s future coal supply will be very important for china s future economic development our analysis shows that china s ultimate recoverable coal reserves equal 223 6 10 9 mt and its production will peak between 2025 and 2030 with peak production of approximately 3 9 10 9 mt the extent to which china can import coal in the future is uncertain with rising coal demand this combination is likely to create a significant challenge to china s future economic development

reduction potential of co2 emissions in china s transport industry newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1311 19436 ministry of education 10 jbg 013 national social science foundation of china 71203186

sectoral relationship analysis on china s marine land economy based on a novel grey periodic relational model abstract with the marine economy being an extension of the land economy it is necessary to quantify the inter industry linkage effects between china s marine land economy for realizing the complementarities and synergies between the maritime and land economy and achieve sustainable socioeconomic development in this paper we present a new grey periodic relational model this grey relational analysis adopts convexity to detect periodicity in a data sequence both amplitude and periodicity are considered in determining relational degree on the basis of this improved model we explore the industrial relationship in china s marine land industry within the same and in different periods our analysis shows that all the three sectors of marine economy are closely related to the secondary section of land economy in the same period and in different periods there is positive asymmetric mutualism over the 2006 2016 period between china s marine land economy the land economy and secondary land sector is playing a major role in serving the maritime sector however the unit energy consumption of the secondary sector of land is the largest in the three land sector so in order to realize the sustainable development of land and marine economy the green development of the secondary land sector should be accelerated and the unit energy consumption should be reduced

co2 emissions energy consumption and output in france abstract this paper examines the dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for france using cointegration and vector error correction modelling techniques we argue that these variables are strongly inter related and therefore their relationship must be examined using an integrated framework the results provide evidence for the existence of a fairly robust long run relationship between these variables for the period 1960 2000 the causality results support the argument that economic growth exerts a causal influence on growth of energy use and growth of pollution in the long run the results also point to a uni directional causality running from growth of energy use to output growth in the short run

what cause the decline of energy intensity in china s cities a comprehensive panel data analysis abstract china s progress in energy efficiency has contributed significantly to the reduction in global energy intensity ei but the descending speed of per unit gdp energy consumption in china has been decreasing during recent years the present study aims to investigate the core driving forces of ei from 2005 to 2016 in 289 chinese cities based on granger casualty test and regression analysis for this purpose the study employs panel data analysis with both fixed coefficient and time varying coefficient which are suitable for examining the effects of influence factors on ei and their change trend the granger casualty test investigates that there supposed to be a bidirectional causality between air pollutant emission and energy consumption in china however due to china s weak environmental regulations the negative effect of emission on ei is not significant further regression analysis shows that a percentage increase in electricity price decreases ei by 0 722 in long term but this adjustment takes time furthermore analysis of short term relationship reveals that optimizing energy structure may be the best way for china to reduce ei in short run finally the time varying coefficients of panel data model indicate that inhibitory effect of promoting electricity consumption on ei will keep improving with expansion of electricity use

energy consumption and gdp in turkey is there a co integration relationship energy consumption and gdp are expected to grow by 5 9 and 7 annually until 2025 in turkey this paper tries to unfold the linkage between energy consumption and gdp by undertaking a co integration analysis for turkey with annual data over the period 1970 2003 the analysis shows that energy consumption and gdp are co integrated this means that there is a possibly bi directional causality relationship between the two we establish that there is a unidirectional causality running from gdp to energy consumption indicating that energy saving would not harm economic growth in turkey in addition we find that energy consumption keeps on growing as long as the economy grows in turkey

the impacts of energy prices on energy intensity evidence from china in this paper we present a review of the deregulation of energy prices in china between 1985 and 2004 and assess the impacts of changes in energy prices on aggregate energy intensity and coal oil electricity intensity we used time series data to provide estimates of energy price elasticities empirical results showed that 1 the own price elasticities of coal oil and aggregate energy were negative in periods both before and after 1995 implying that higher relative prices of different energy types lead to the decrease in coal oil and aggregate energy intensities however the positive own price elasticity of electricity after 1995 probably indicates that the price effect was weaker than other factors such as income effect and population effect 2 the impacts of energy prices were asymmetric over time 3 sectoral adjustment also drove the decrease in aggregate energy intensity although raising energy prices to boost efficiency of energy use seems to be an effective policy tool other policy implications concerned with energy prices such as energy supply security and fuel poverty must also be considered