are environmental taxes a free lunch issues in modelling the macroeconomic effects of carbon taxes applied analysis of output and employment effects from revenue neutral environmental taxation depends critically on how the supply side of the economy is modelled despite the long history of theoretical and computable general equilibrium supply side models the empirical basis of much of this work has been quite weak until recently however most econometric attempts to capture factor substitution effects have not been based on theoretically consistent structures this paper examines the methodological issues that underlie these problems and compares the results of imposing environmental taxes in two different econometric modelling structures the implications of theories of endogenous technical progress on the simulation properties of such models are discussed and a simple empirically based model that embodies some of these features is presented

primary energy demand in japan an empirical analysis of long term trends and future co2 emissions abstract this paper examines the long run relationship between energy demand gnp and the real energy price in japan using data covering 1887 2001 it is found that if an underlying energy demand trend is appropriately incorporated the resulting econometric model produces a long run income elasticity of about unity and a long run price elasticity of about 0 2 the estimated model is utilised to forecast energy consumption and co 2 emissions up to 2012 it is shown that given current economic conditions and policies there is considerable uncertainty about whether japan will be able to meet its kyoto target by reducing co 2 emissions in 2008 2012 to the 1990 level it is shown that this uncertainty depends on the strength of the economy and leaves the japanese government with a difficult policy dilemma if there is a resurgence in growth to something near the annual average growth rate since the early 1980s a considerable effort will be required in order to meet its kyoto target requiring not only using the kyoto mechanisms but also additional tougher domestic policies and measures such as emissions capping r d incentives and education for energy conservation in addition to a pricing and tax policy

global warming and energy demand list of tables list of figures list of contributors preface 1 global warming and energy elasticities terry barker paul ekins and nick johnstonepart 1 estimating long term energy elasticities 2 alternative approaches to estimating long run energy demand elasticities an application to asian developing countries ron smith and m hashem pesaran 3 a survey of international energy elasticities neil manning and jago atkinson 4 long run demand elasticities for gasoline thomas sterner and mikael franzen 5 responses of energy demand in uk manufacturing to the energy price increases of 1973 and 1979 80 alan ingham 6 elasticities for oecd aggregate final energy demand lakis vouyoukas 7 modelling uk energy demand derek hodgson and keith millerpart ii energy the economy and greenhouse gas abatement 8 endogenous technological progress in fossil fuel demand laurence boone stephen hall david kemball cook and clare smith 9 uk energy price elasticities and their implications for long term co2 abatement terry barker 10 price elasticity and market structure overcoming obstacles to ensure energy efficiency tim jackson 11 rethinking the use of energy elasticities stefan p schleicher 12 revisiting the costs of co2 abatement paul ekins 13 asymmetrical price elasticities of energy demand michael grubb14 conclusions terry barker paul ekins and nick johnstone bibliography index

structural change in europe s gas markets three scenarios for the development of the european gas market to 2020 abstract against the background of the european union s gas directive and the emergence of new players and markets in europe s gas sector this paper explores how company actions could shape the future for the gas industry starting with an examination of company strategies this paper develops three scenarios for the future a gradual transformation scenario where a single european gas market develops that is essentially oligopolistic in nature a vertical integration scenario where upstream and downstream gas companies merge to form a vertically integrated gas supplier and a pull the plug scenario where the current market structure decomposes into a competitive market these scenarios are examined in terms of their impact on gas prices demand and the distribution of gas rent along the supply chain the paper highlights the fact that the eu s gas directive is not sufficient for the introduction of competition into europe s gas markets but that company actions will be the key determinant and they may favour alternative market structures

a reexamination of the role of thermodynamics for environmental economics abstract as the discussion about the role of thermodynamics in environmental economics has not led to a conclusion yet a more fundamental approach seems to be necessary which also takes into consideration the relationship between economics and the natural sciences in general to this end value theory is chosen as a starting point because it is the centerpiece of every economic theory it is shown that neoclassical environmental economics suffers from serious deficiencies because of its value concept heedlessly copied from classical mechanics thermodynamics can be expected to be helpful to redress these defects because the economy can be thought of as a dissipative structure dependent on its environment the obvious way to integrate thermodynamics consists in the formulation of thermodynamic constraints to complement neoclassical environmental economics but this approach remains unsatisfactory because the neoclassical mechanical hardcore is incompatible with the entropy law and its implications evidently the neoclassical paradigm and its value concept have to be given up but the alternative of the energy theory of value must be rejected because its determinism cannot be reconciled with the richness of human behaviour as thermodynamic analogies offer no solution either there is a dilemma between the necessity and the apparent impossibility of adequately integrating thermodynamic concepts it turns out that a normative inconsistency is responsible which is due to the demand for intergenerational justice therefore the integration of thermodynamics into environmental economics hinges on a meta economic value decision if sustainability is adopted as the guiding principle the insights of thermodynamics call for a macro economic environmental policy setting absolute limits to the economy but this macro policy is incompatible with neoclassical economics so that a social reconstruction of economics based on a social theory of value becomes necessary in sum thermodynamics is important for environmental economics besides fulfilling a general heuristic function it also fulfils a decisive conceptual and an analytical function insofar as it helps to justify sustainability and to operationalize macro economic environmental policy

neoclassical consumer demand theory and the demand for money m friedman 1956 suggests that the demand for money should be analyzed in terms of consumer demand theory although often the interpretation of empirical results from studies using aggregate data appears to be in terms of the motives approach i e transactions precautionary and speculative motives the authors develop friedman s ideas within an explicit model of consumer theory and find that they provide a consistent framework for analyzing portfolio choice and offer greater insights into results from aggregate studies of the demand for money than the motives approach in particular the authors provide a new interpretation of the role of nominal interest rates inflation and a hicksian measure of wealth in the demand for money function copyright 1991 by royal economic society

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

trade liberalization and local labor market adjustment in south africa abstract despite a large literature analyzing trade liberalization in developing countries little evidence exists around its effects in sub saharan african economies characterized by high levels of baseline unemployment and weak manufacturing sectors using a local labor market approach we investigate the causal effects of tariff reforms implemented in south africa between 1994 and 2004 on labor market outcomes at the individual level more specifically we construct a district level measure of exposure to tariff reductions equal to a weighted average of industry tariffs using baseline industry shares as weights and estimate the effect of this shock on local economies we find that workers in districts facing larger tariff reductions experience a significant decline in both formal and informal employment in the tradable sector driven primarily by a decline in manufacturing employment relative to workers in districts less exposed to these reductions there is no evidence of any significant effect on wages for those who remain employed however displaced workers do not show any evidence of transitions into other sectors or migration to less affected regions rather they are more likely to become discouraged workers or exit the labor force entirely and show an increased probability of accessing government transfers

consumption of electricity in punjab structure and growth electricity has played a pivotal role in the development of punjab economy of late there has been a steep rise in the demand for electricity in the state the present study undertakes a holistic view of growth of demand for electricity in the state the technique applied is multiple regression and secondary data is used for the purpose of analysis the study concludes that demand for electricity in the state is price inelastic but income elastic for majority of consuming sectors an important policy implication thereof is that price hike will be ineffective in regulating and managing demand unless price is varied in an hourly basis therefore the state has to resort to other demand side management dsm measures such as improving efficiency of electricity use and its conservation considering the high income elasticity of electricity demand sufficient electricity generating capacity needs to be created since demand is expected to grow at an accelerated rate in future this calls for a comprehensive electricity policy the study further concludes that in the long run price demand as well as income demand relationship in case of electricity is likely to remain uncertain especially in the post reform era

the market for tradable ghg permits under the kyoto protocol a survey of model studies abstract this paper gathers results from 25 models of the market for tradable greenhouse gas ghg emission permits under the kyoto protocol due to diverging projections of emissions growth and different modeling approaches the model results differ substantially the average market volume is approximately 17 and 33 billion usd under global trading and annex b trading respectively including non carbon ghg lowers compliance costs and permit prices in the absence of the us permit demand roughly equals hot air from the former soviet union these countries can increase their revenues from selling permits by restricting supply which raises the permit price

complementing empirical evidence on global recycling and trade of waste paper this comment provides a critical analysis of van beukering and bouman s world development 29 2001 1717 article on global paper recycling and trade we first question their notion that developin

rethinking the costs related to global warming a survey of the issues one approach to the economic analysis of global warming seeks to balance the costs of damage from or adaptation to it with the costs of mitigating it the costs of adaptation and damage have been estimated using techniques of environmental evaluation but are subject to a wide margin of uncertainty the costs of mitigation principally by reducing the emissions of co2 have been estimated using different kinds of economic models some of the results of which have suggested that very little abatement of carbon emissions is justified before the costs of abatement exceed the benefits of it in terms of foregone damage and adaptation costs the paper analyses the extent to which this conclusion is a function of the modelling assumptions and techniques used rather than likely practical outcomes with regard to the models treatment of unemployed resources revenue recycling prior distortions in the economy due to the tax system and possible dynamic effects from the introduction of a carbon energy tax it concludes that with different and arguably more appropriate treatment of the above issues especially when the secondary benefits of reducing co2 emissions are also taken into account it is not clear that even substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels will incur net costs especially if there is the prospect of even moderate costs from global warming

the economics of climate change impacts a la stern novel and nuanced or rhetorically restricted abstract the stern report conducts an estimation of greenhouse gas control costs weighed against the benefits of avoiding damages at the global scale as i show stern and colleagues are aware of the limits to cba although they chose to ignore the considerable literature on the subject the many contributions by ecological economists and especially work specific to the enhanced greenhouse effect various problems are raised or mentioned in the report including strong uncertainty incommensurability plural values non utilitarian ethics rights distributional inequity poverty and treatment of future generations how then can this report acknowledging so many of those aspects of climate change that render cba an unsuitable tool for generating policy recommendations go ahead to conduct a global cba and make policy recommendations i explain how issues are suppressed and sidelined in a careful and methodical manner with the pretence they have been addressed by state of the art solutions meanwhile the authors maintain allegiance to an economic orthodoxy which perpetuates the dominant political myth that traditional economic growth can be both sustained and answer all our problems besides perpetuating myths this diverts attention away from alternative approaches away from ethical debates over harming the innocent the poor and future generations and away from the fundamental changes needed to tackle the very real and serious problems current economic systems pose for environmental systems

estimating energy elasticity with structural changes in japan abstract the purpose of this paper is to estimate energy elasticity in japan taking into account structural changes we employ a residual based cointegration model developed by gregory and hansen gregory allan w hansen bruce e 1996 residual based tests for cointegration in models with regime shifts journal of econometrics 70 99 126 the empirical results show that the three variables have a stable relationship in the long term when considering structural changes in the second quarter of 1993 as compared with the values obtained in previous studies the income elasticity is higher and the price elasticity is lower from our analysis we can confirm whether a carbon tax will meet the objective of the kyoto protocol in conclusion the tax rate required in the case without structural changes is lower than that in the case with structural changes

the intertemporal evolution of agriculture and labor over a rapid structural transformation lessons from vietnam abstract we combine nationally representative household and labor force survey data from 1992 to 2016 to provide a detailed description of rural labor market evolution and how it relates to the structural transformation of rural vietnam especially within the agricultural sector our study adds to the emerging literature on structural transformation in low income countries using micro level data and helps to answer several policy related questions we find limited employment creation potential of agriculture especially for youth rural urban real wage convergence has gone hand in hand with increased diversification of the rural economy into the non farm sector nationwide and rapid advances in educational attainment in all sectors and regions workforce minimum wage laws seem to have played no significant role in increasing agricultural wages this enhanced integration also manifests in steady attenuation of the longstanding inverse farm size yield relationship farming has remained securely household based and the family farmland distribution has remained largely unchanged small farm sizes have not obstructed mechanization nor the uptake of labor saving pesticides consistent with factor substitution induced by rising real wage rates as rural households rely more heavily on the labor market human capital accumulation rather than land endowments have become the key correlate of improvements in rural household well being

competitiveness and exemptions from environmental taxes in europe a number of european countries have introduced a variety of environmental taxes a common characteristic of their implementation is the inclusion of exemptions and tax relief in particular for some sectors of manufacturing industry this paper analyses the pattern and motivation of exemptions as they have developed in western european countries making clear the difference between the nominal and effective tax rates once the exemptions have been taken into account the principal motivation for exemptions relates to concern about competitiveness while particular environmentally intensive sectors may have some grounds for concern even these might be able to achieve cost effective environmental improvements such that their competitive position is not over disadvantaged while for an economy structured like the uk s an environmental tax plus rebate scheme sometimes called an ecological tax reform would be likely to yield benefits in terms of competitiveness the exemptions usually run counter to the environmental economic logic of using environmental taxes to internalise social costs and give economic signals that are based on the full costs of production and they are likely to increase the costs of achieving a given level of emission reduction with little justification for them also on the grounds of competitiveness it would therefore be undesirable on both economic and environmental grounds for them to remain a feature of the implementation of environmental taxes in the future

export markets and labor allocation in a low income country we study the effects of a positive export shock on labor allocation between the informal microenterprise sector and the formal firm sector in a low income country the united states vietnam bilateral trade agreement led to large reductions in us tariffs on vietnamese exports we find that the share of manufacturing workers in vietnam in the formal sector increased by 5 percentage points in response to the us tariff reductions the reallocation was greater for workers in more internationally integrated provinces and for younger cohorts we estimate the gap in labor productivity within manufacturing across the informal and formal sectors this gap and the aggregate labor productivity gain from the export induced reallocation of workers across the two sectors are reduced when we account for worker heterogeneity measurement error and differences in labor intensity of production

planning carbon emission trading for beijing s electric power systems under dual uncertainties in this study a full infinite interval stochastic mixed integer programming fimp method is developed for planning carbon emission trading cet under dual uncertainties fimp has advantages in uncertainty reflection and policy analysis particularly when the input parameters are provided as crisp and functional intervals as well as probabilistic distributions the developed fimp is applied to a real case study for managing carbon dioxide co2 emissions with trading scheme of beijing s electric power system eps electric power industry is one of the major sources of co2 emission in china it is essential to accumulate relevant experience to provide a reliable basis for establishing a regional or national cet market so as to prepare for docking with the international market this is the first attempt to introduce cet scheme into beijing s eps to mitigate co2 emissions the solutions for energy supply electricity generation carbon quota allocation and capacity expansion are obtained they cannot only be used for formulating co2 reduction policies and assessing the associated economic implications in purchasing emission permits or bearing economic penalties but also facilitate analyzing various policies when pre regulated electricity generation plans and pre defined co2 emission schemes are violated

energy models for demand forecasting a review abstract energy is vital for sustainable development of any nation be it social economic or environment in the past decade energy consumption has increased exponentially globally energy management is crucial for the future economic prosperity and environmental security energy is linked to industrial production agricultural output health access to water population education quality of life etc energy demand management is required for proper allocation of the available resources during the last decade several new techniques are being used for energy demand management to accurately predict the future energy needs in this paper an attempt is made to review the various energy demand forecasting models traditional methods such as time series regression econometric arima as well as soft computing techniques such as fuzzy logic genetic algorithm and neural networks are being extensively used for demand side management support vector regression ant colony and particle swarm optimization are new techniques being adopted for energy demand forecasting bottom up models such as markal and leap are also being used at the national and regional level for energy demand management

us agricultural exports and labor market adjustments this study empirically investigates the impact of us agricultural exports on farm and nonfarm employment and tests how individuals adjust to agricultural export shocks based on the data from 1991 to 2017 and a bartik style instrument that exploits cross regional variation in agricultural export exposure stemming from initial differences in agricultural specialization and temporal variation in predicted us exports from exogenous tariff reductions we find that a 1 increase in agricultural exports increases farm employment by 0 302 and has no statistically significant impact on nonfarm employment the individual level analysis shows that in response to positive agricultural export demand shocks natives with a college degree are more likely to become self employed and start farm activities and while non natives without a college degree are more likely to become hired farmworkers a back of the envelope calculation based on the estimates of agricultural trade elasticities of employment shows that on balance job gains due to us agricultural exports are slightly larger than job loss due to agricultural imports resulting in a net gain of around 0 24 million farm jobs over 1991 2017

econometric modelling of international carbon tax regimes an econometric model of fossil fuel demand has been estimated for eight oecd countries relating coal oil and gas demands to gdp and prices in addition a model of endogenous technical progress has been estimated aiming to include both price induced innovation in energy and structural change in the economy as long term determinants of energy consumption a number of possible international carbon energy tax agreements are simulated showing the impacts on carbon dioxide emissions and comparing the two models in the long run the magnitude of taxes required to stabilize or reduce emissions would be large and there are important differences between countries in price responses which must be taken into account in international modelling and policy formulation

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

a cost effective approach to attracting low income countries to international emissions trading theory and experiments the cost effectiveness of the kyotoprotocol and any similar non global treatywould be enhanced by attracting additionalcountries to international emissions tradingand achieving this as soon as possible incontrast to what is heard in most of thedebate such an enlargement is here taken to beattained with the new participants atleast to begin with being fullycompensated this paper focuses on twoforms of compensation that can be used toattract poor countries to participate inemissions trading the theoretical aswell as experimental evidence suggests that ifpoor countries are more risk averse than richcountries partial compensation in terms offinancial transfers is more cost effective thanrelying solely on compensation in kind emission quotas as has been the case so far using money for partial compensation would alsoreduce the risk for hot air allocations andthe ensuing political obstacles tocost effectiveness that such allocations tendto create

when is a break up of gazprom good for russia in the late 1990s several proposals for a structural reform that would bring competition and market prices to the russian gas industry were intensely debated splitting up russian gas monopolist gazprom into several producing companies was a considered option in this paper i examine theoretically and numerically how a split up of gazprom would affect russian national welfare results show that under the current gas market structures in europe and russia the split up of gazprom s monopoly might not be beneficial for russia however analysis in the paper indicates that the market shares that gazprom has in both russian domestic and european gas markets are important in determining whether gazprom s dominance is supported under the national welfare criteria when gazprom has small market share in europe and large market share in russia a break up of gazprom might plausibly result in increase of russian national welfare

the effects on competitiveness of coordinated versus unilateral fiscal policies reducing ghg emissions in the eu an assessment of a 10 reduction by 2010 using the e3me model abstract international competitiveness effects from coordinated and uncoordinated multilateral policies to reduce co 2 emissions from 11 member states of the eu by 2010 are compared with those from unilateral policies to achieve a 10 cut in each member state alone the paper presents the results from four projections using a large scale integrated regionalised e3 model of the eu estimated on time series cross section data 1968 93 with international trade treated as between each member state and a european transport and distribution network the 10 reduction is achieved by additional excise duties incremented every year 1999 to 2010 according to the carbon contents of fuels with special with special treatment of electricity taxed on outputs not inputs with revenues recycled via reductions in employers social security contributions multilateral coordinated policies require a common tax rate of 156 ecu per tonne carbon 1999 prices which rises to an average of 165 ecu per tonne with a wide range between regions when policies are uncoordinated all the tax shift projections show double dividends for emission reduction and employment gain for all member states unilateral policies do not show much carbon leakage but they show smaller gains for output and employment effects for price competitiveness appear to be small and mixed with serious losses appearing only for the netherlands and for metals and chemicals especially for unilateral action

moral hazard vs liquidity and optimal unemployment insurance this paper presents new evidence on why unemployment insurance ui benefits affect search behavior and develops a simple method of calculating the welfare gains from ui using this evidence i show that 60 percent of the increase in unemployment durations caused by ui benefits is due to a liquidity effect rather than distortions on marginal incentives to search moral hazard by combining two empirical strategies first i find that increases in benefits have much larger effects on durations for liquidity constrained households second lump sum severance payments increase durations substantially among constrained households i derive a formula for the optimal benefit level that depends only on the reduced form liquidity and moral hazard elasticities the formula implies that the optimal ui benefit level exceeds 50 percent of the wage the exact identification approach to welfare analysis proposed here yields robust optimal policy results because it does not require structural estimation of primitives

forecast errors in iea countries energy consumption every year energy policy of iea countries includes a forecast of the energy consumption in the member countries forecasts concerning the years 1985 1990 and 1995 can now be compared to the actual values the second oil crisis resulted in big positive forecast errors the oil price drop in 1986 did not have a similar opposite effect a correction for economic growth reduces forecast errors during the second oil crisis but not elsewhere industry has a relatively big positive forecast error while transportation has a negative forecast error even when the forecast error is small the results are not so nice because the small value is often the sum of large positive and negative errors almost no significant correlation is found between forecast errors in the 3 years correspondingly no significant correlation coefficient is found between forecast errors in the 3 main energy sectors therefore a relatively small forecast error is not caused by a relatively small forecast error in all 3 sectors

russian gas price reform and the eu russia gas relationship incentives consequences and european security of supply in order to provide a comprehensive picture on the relationship between russia and the eu the focus should be on both the external energy relationship as well as russia s internal organization this paper sets out to do this by combining both strands of research in order to arrive at recommendations for europe on the way to adjust its energy policy towards russia the emphasis is on whether or not russia should impose unified gas pricing main conclusions are that the perceived advantages of unified russian gas pricing to russia as well as europe are in fact overstated and that eu security of supply might worsen under unified gas prices three policy recommendations are that eu policy should 1 more explicitly acknowledge the interdependence between russia and europe 2 not push russia towards unified gas pricing and 3 not take for granted any increase in russian exports flowing to europe

economic growth trade and energy implications for the environmental kuznets curve abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis asserts that pollution follows an inverted u path with respect to economic growth the ekc has been explained in terms of structural changes in the composition of economic output and increased environmental regulation at higher income levels while some authors have incorporated the impact of trade policy orientation on the ekc the impact of the actual movement between countries of goods that embody pollution has not been considered this paper attempts to econometrically quantify the effect using pooled cross country and time series data the ekc hypothesis is examined with respect to commercial energy consumption the source of many serious environmental problems it was found that while both industrializing and industrialized countries have added to their energy requirements by exporting manufactured goods the growth has been substantially higher in the former at the same time industrialized countries have been able to reduce their energy requirements by importing manufactured goods exports of manufactured goods by industrialized countries has thus been an important factor in generating the upward sloping portion of the ekc and imports by industrialized countries have contributed to the downward slope

underlying energy demand trends in south korean and indonesian aggregate whole economy and residential sectors abstract this paper used annual time series data over the period 1973 2008 to estimate energy demand functions for south korea and indonesian aggregated whole economy and residential sectors furthermore the underlying energy demand trend uedt which may be non linear and reflects not only technical progress which usually produces greater energy efficiency but also other factors such as changes in consumer tastes and the economic structure that may be working in the opposite direction is also examined in the paper in estimating the price and income elasticities the study applies harvey s structural time series approach where a stochastic trend is used as a proxy for uedt empirical evidence from this study reveals that the estimated long run income and price elasticities range from 0 58 to 1 15 and from 0 09 to 066 respectively furthermore the stochastic form for the uedt is preferred for both countries and sectors suggesting a wide variation in the exogenous effects of energy saving technical progress in addition to other pertinent exogenous factors such as economic structure consumer preferences and socio economic influences

empirical evidence of direct rebound effect in catalonia this paper reviews the empirical literature concerning the direct rebound effect in households it briefly analyzes the main theoretical and methodological aspects and finally estimates the magnitude of direct rebound effect for all energy services using electricity in households of catalonia spain using econometric techniques the main results show an estimated direct rebound effect of 35 in the short term and 49 in the long term the existence of a rebound effect reduces the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies

endogenous censoring in the mixed proportional hazard model with an application to optimal unemployment insurance in economic duration analysis it is routinely assumed that the process which led to censoring of the observed duration is independent of unobserved characteristics the objective of this paper is to examine the sensitivity of parameter estimates to this independence assumption in the context of an economic model of optimal unemployment insurance we assume a parametric model for the duration of interest and leave the distribution of censoring unrestricted allowing it to be correlated with both observed and unobserved characteristics this leads to loss of point identification we provide a practical characterization of the identified set with moment inequalities and suggest methods for estimating this set in particular we propose a profiled procedure that allows us to build a confidence set for a subvector of the model parameters we apply this approach to estimate the elasticity of exit rate from unemployment with respect to unemployment benefit and find that both positive and negative values of this elasticity are supported by the data when combined with the welfare formula in chetty 2008 these estimates do not permit us to put an upper bound on the size of the welfare change due to an increase in the unemployment benefit we conclude that given the available data alone one cannot credibly judge if the unemployment benefits in the us are close to the optimal level

electricity demand and conservation potential in the chinese nonmetallic mineral products industry newhuadu business school research fund ministry of education foundation 10jzd0018 10jbg013 china sustainable energy program g 1103 13921 national social science foundation 09zd050

underlying trends and seasonality in uk energy demand a sectoral analysis this paper demonstrates the importance for energy demand modelling of allowing for trends and seasonal effects that are stochastic in form inherent underlying trends may be non linear and reflect not only technical progress which usually produces greater energy efficiency but also other factors such as changes in consumer tastes and the economic structure that may be working in the opposite direction using quarterly unadjusted data for various sectors in the uk it is shown that unless energy demand models are formulated so as to allow for stochastic trends and seasonals estimates of price and income elasticities could be seriously biased

costs of reducing global carbon emissions po rojecting the costs of reducing carbon emissions is extremely important and exceedingly difficult such projections are an integral component of cost benefit analyses of alternative policies for example for the global climate policy analysis described by william nordhaus in this symposium moreover the nature of the climate change problem dictates that costs be incurred long before benefits can be realized or accurately measured consequently the political spotlight predictably focuses on the cost estimates whenever specific policy options are contemplated projecting the costs of reducing carbon emissions is difficult because many assumptions must be made about how the world will evolve over a very long period of time with and without a control program typically some of these assumptions like population growth are taken from outside sources other factors like the response of energy demand to changes in economic output or energy prices are the result of modeling the behavior of economic actors in response to exogenous stimuli considerable uncertainty exists about both the exogenous factors and the best way to model the behavioral responses the global nature of the climate change problem adds yet another complication to the cost analysis scientists have concluded that it is the global concentration of carbon in the atmosphere that influences climate moreover since carbon in the atmosphere gets mixed more or less uniformly emissions anywhere change concentrations everywhere but with a long lead time current global carbon emissions are estimated to be only about 4 percent of the stock of co2 in the atmosphere attributable to human activity and about

russian natural gas exports will russian gas price reforms improve the european security of supply in this paper we use both theoretical and numerical tools to study potential effects on russian gas exports from different russian domestic gas prices and production capacities in 2015 we also investigate whether a fully competitive european gas market may provide incentives for gazprom the dominant russian gas company to change its export behaviour our main findings suggest that both increased domestic gas prices and sufficient production capacities are vital to maintain gazprom s market share in europe over the next decade in fact russia may struggle to carry out its current long term export commitments if domestic prices are sufficiently low at the same time if russian prices approach european net back levels gazprom may reduce exports in favour of a relatively more profitable domestic market

industrial companies demand for electricity evidence from a micropanel abstract the paper presents a micro econometric analysis of industrial companies demand for electricity previous studies on electricity consumption in the industrial sector have relied on aggregate data or cross section observations here we present an econometric study on electricity demand based on a panel of 2949 danish companies followed from 1983 to 1996 it is found that estimators of electricity demand that take account of the panel structure fixed effect models yield considerably lower price and production elasticities compared to estimators that do not like cross section models it is also investigated how various company characteristics like size type of industrial sub sector and electricity intensity in production influence price and production elasticities it appears that companies with a high electricity intensity also have a high own price elasticity

rethinking economic development i provide a summary reflection and assessment of the current state of economic development in both the policy and academic worlds in terms of development policy currently the primary focus is on policy interventions namely foreign aid aimed at fixing the deficiencies of developing countries academic research also has a similar focus except with an emphasis in rigorous evaluation of interventions to estimate causal effects a standard set of versatile quantitative tools is used e g experimental and quasi experimental methods which can be easily applied in a range of settings to estimate the causal effects of policies which are typically presumed to be similar across contexts in this article i take a step back and ask whether the current practices are the best that we can do are foreign aid and policy interventions the best options we have for poverty alleviation what else can be done is our current research strategy characterized by rigorous but a lack of context specific analysis the best method of analysis is there a role for other research methods for a deeper understanding of the local context and for more collaboration with local scholars repenser le developpement economiquee dans cet article je propose un apercu une reflexion et une evaluation de l etat actuel du developpement economique a la fois dans les spheres politiques et universitaires en matiere de developpement economique l attention est principalement portee sur l intervention politique c est a dire l aide exterieure visant a corriger les defaillances des pays en developpement les recherches universitaires y portent une attention similaire mais en mettant davantage l accent sur l evaluation rigoureuse de ces memes interventions pour en mesurer les effets de causalite a cette fin un ensemble d outils quantitatifs et modulables standard sont utilises notamment par l entremise de methodes experimentales et quasi experimentales pouvant facilement s appliquer a une vaste gamme de situations et ce aux fins d evaluations des liens de causalite engendres par ces politiques liens habituellement consideres comme similaires d un contexte a l autre dans cet article je prends un peu de recul pour m interroger sur la pertinence des pratiques actuelles les interventions politiques et l aide exterieure offrent elles les meilleures options pour reduire la pauvrete que pouvons nous faire d autre notre strategie de recherche actuelle caracterisee par des analyses rigoureuses mais peu adaptees a des contextes specifiques est elle la meilleure d autres methodes de recherche peuvent elles permettre de mieux comprendre les contextes regionaux et favoriser une meilleure collaboration avec les intellectuels locaux

international coal trade and restrictions on coal consumption coal consumption is a major source of co2 emissions and other air pollutants and is therefore a focus of environmental policy however countries that restrict their coal consumption will likely expand their coal exports to foreign markets with fewer restrictions on consumption the adjustment in international trade will mitigate the impact on coal industry employment but will also reverse some of the reduction in global emissions this paper quantifies the impact of restrictions on coal consumption in the united states and several other large countries on global coal consumption trade and industry employment the impact calculations are based on an econometric model of the international coal market the parameters of the model are fitted to panel data on coal consumption and production in 53 countries

endogenously censored median regression with an application to benefit elasticity of us unemployment duration abstract we suggest a new inference method for median regression which is robust to assumptions on the censoring mechanism applying the method on the sipp data we obtain that the benefit elasticity of median unemployment duration is between 1 1 and 7 9

emissions trading and investment decisions in the power sector a case study in finland abstract organizations which consider investment in or divestment of power production licences capacity within the european community are exposed to the impacts of the european union emission allowance trading scheme eu ets in this paper the consequences of the eu ets on investment decisions are explored in a country specific setting in finland first we review the general mechanisms through which the eu ets influences size timing and cashflows of an investment next we discuss the projected changes in finnish power producers investment environment and examine the financial impacts due to the eu ets on a case investment decision a hypothetical condensing power plant 250 mwe the standard discounted cash flow dcf analysis is extended to take into account the value of two real options the option to wait and the option to alter operating scale in a quantitative investment appraisal the impact of emissions trading not only depends on the expected level of allowance prices but also on their volatility and correlation with electricity and fuel prices the case study shows that the uncertainty regarding the allocation of emission allowances is critical in a quantitative investment appraisal of fossil fuel fired power plants

empirical analysis of energy management in danish industry abstract in this article we examine energy management practice in the danish manufacturing industry the paper addresses the following to what extent is energy management put into practice in danish industry from which sources does danish industry obtain its information about making improvements in energy management based upon the results of a telephone survey covering 304 danish industrial firms and by use of our definition of the minimum requirements for energy management we concluded that between 3 and 14 practice energy management inspiration to manage energy comes from many different sources but the electricity utilities emerge as the main source of inspiration this leads to a presentation of a statistical model synthesising two types of energy management and two potential avenues that can lead to improved energy management one size fits all is not appropriate when giving incentives for firms to practice improved energy management possible variations between industrial sectors are addressed

emission trading under the kyoto protocol effects on fossil fuel markets under alternative regimes abstract the consequences of the kyoto protocol for the fossil fuel markets depend on which policy instruments are used in order to reach the emission targets this paper uses a numerical model to assess the significance of international emissions trading for the oil coal and gas markets three different trading regimes are compared particular attention is devoted to the eu proposal about limits on acquisitions and transfers of emission permits we find that the eu proposal will be non binding for buyers of emission permits but will significantly constrain the sale of emission permits from eastern europe the eu proposal will increase the level of abatement in annex b countries and will cause a sharp increase in the price of permits compared to the free trade equilibrium

margins of labor market adjustment to trade abstract we use both longitudinal administrative data and cross sectional household survey data to study the margins of labor market adjustment following brazil s early 1990s trade liberalization we document how workers and regional labor markets adjust to trade induced changes in local labor demand examining various adjustment margins including earnings and wage changes interregional migration shifts between tradable and nontradable employment and shifts between formal employment informal employment and non employment our results provide insight into the regional labor market effects of trade and have important implications for policies that address informal employment and that assist trade displaced workers