short run price and income elasticity of gasoline demand evidence from lebanon abstract we empirically estimate the demand for gasoline in the presence of multiple shifts caused by structural breaks using monthly data from lebanon covering the period 2000 m1 2010 m12 consistent with most studies in the literature our study reports that gasoline is price and income inelastic in the short run however when a single and multiple breaks are introduced the consumers responsiveness to gasoline price and income increase since both price and income elasticity are sensitive to structural changes a policy that pleads for a flat excise tax may not be optimal with respect to either the cyclical pattern of government revenues or the internalization of international environment standards

causalities between co2 electricity and other energy variables during phase i and phase ii of the eu ets the topic of this article is the analysis of the interplay between daily carbon electricity and gas price data with the european union emission trading system eu ets for co2 emissions in a first step we have performed granger causality tests for phase i of the eu ets january 2005 until december 2007 and the first year of phase ii of the eu ets 2008 the analysis includes both spot and forward markets given the close interactions between the two sets of markets the results show that during phase i coal and gas prices through the clean dark and spark spread impacted co2 futures prices which in return granger caused electricity prices during the first year of the phase ii the short run rent capture theory in which electricity prices granger cause co2 prices prevailed on the basis of the qualitative results of the granger causality tests we obtained the formulation testable equations for quantitative analysis standard ols regressions yielded statistically robust and theoretically coherent results

interaction among china carbon emission trading markets nonlinear granger causality and time varying effect abstract china makes great efforts to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate global greenhouse gas in order to identify the interaction among china cet markets this paper comprehensively investigates nonlinear granger causality and time varying effect in markets by using the hiemstra and jones hj test diks and panchenko dp test and time varying parameter structure vector autoregressive tvp svar model the empirical analysis has demonstrated china major cet markets significantly bidirectional nonlinear granger cause each other as to time varying effect we have obtained convincing findings that time varying impulse responses are among china major cet markets in the short term specifically guangdong hubei and shenzhen cet markets are time varying co movement negatively or positively related to each other over time implying there are deep bases for china national cet market construction furthermore the specific time point impulse effects support our discoveries in time varying impulse responses

foreign exchange intervention and inflation targeting the role of credibility abstract we develop a small open economy model where the central bank operates under a flexible inflation targeting regime i e monetary policy is aimed at stabilizing output and inflation in this theoretical framework we analyze to what extent foreign exchange intervention fxi can contribute to the central bank goals for different degrees of credibility we find two key results first in a baseline scenario where the central bank is perfectly credible fxi can improve macroeconomic outcomes by successfully stabilizing both output and inflation in response to foreign disturbances second when central bank lacks credibility fxi policies entail a trade off by reducing output volatility at the expense of inducing higher inflation volatility in this scenario fxi policies prevent the central bank from achieving the goal of price stability these results suggest that fxi is more likely to support an inflation targeting regime when the credibility of the central bank is high

wage rigidities and jobless recoveries abstract real wage rigidities cause jobless recoveries suppose that a one time shock reduces the capital stock below trend if wages are flexible they decline and employment increases at the moment of the shock before both revert back to normal levels as the economy grows back to trend if wages are completely rigid and the labor market is otherwise frictionless the shock causes a proportional and permanent decline in employment capital output consumption and investment relative to trend in a search model with rigid wages the shock causes a persistent but not permanent decline in these economic outcomes a jobless recovery

price and network dynamics in the european carbon market this paper presents an analysis of the european emission trading system as a transaction network it is shown that given the lack of a centralized market place industrial actors had to resort to local connections and financial intermediaries to participate in the market this gave rise to a hierarchical structure in the transaction network to empirically relate networks statistics to market outcomes a pls pm modeling technique is introduced it is shown that the asymmetries in the network induced market inefficiencies e g increased bid ask spread albeit the efficiency of the market has improved from the beginning of phase ii the asymmetry persists imposing unnecessary additional costs on agents and reducing the effectiveness of the market as a mitigation instrument

exploring the price dynamics of co2 emissions allowances in china s emissions trading scheme pilots establishing regional emissions trading scheme pilots in china is a newly transformative and explorative practice in this paper we examine the spot price dynamics asymmetric clustering and regime switching behaviors of co2 emissions allowances in the new china wide emissions trading scheme cets pilots using ar garch ar tarch and mrs ar garch models the regional ets pilots design in china vary widely in their coverage thresholds sector coverage emissions allocation and caps setting methods market trading rules and price stabilization provisions our empirical results indicate that the spot prices of regional emissions allowances exhibit significant dynamic behaviors asymmetric leverage effects and regime switching behaviors in the entire period considered previous market overreactions in the beijing tianjin and guangdong pilots have stronger price clustering effects on future conditional variances than do the shanghai and hubei pilots unexpected market shocks and greater persistence in the beijing tianjin and guangdong ets pilots display stronger market volatility and higher market risks and their asymmetric leverage effects display a decreasing trend in the volatility of the bea tjea and gdea prices the bea and shea prices exhibit significant regime switching behaviors price jumps and higher volatility in addition the changes in the regime switching phases are often related to the political mechanism design and the fundamental market factors those empirical results are beneficial for government decision makers and market participants to strengthen risk management strategies support emission related investment decisions and optimize co benefits of alternative energy environmental policies

the relationship between regional natural gas markets and crude oil markets from a multi scale nonlinear granger causality perspective this study first decomposes the daily returns of regional gas and crude oil at different time scales using the ensemble empirical mode decomposition eemd method it then investigates the causality relationship between each pair of components at the different time scales by employing the linear and nonlinear granger causality tests for the original returns series this study finds that unidirectional linear granger causality exists from crude oil markets to north american and european gas markets however for nonlinear characteristics the crude oil and regional gas markets exhibit bidirectional nonlinear granger causality on the medium term time scale a bidirectional nonlinear spillover effect is found between the markets the long term trends for the markets suggest a significant linear relationship however no nonlinear spillover effect is found between the crude oil and regional gas markets

dynamic evolution characteristics of european union emissions trade system price from high price period to low price period abstract carbon market is a valid measure for promoting green and low carbon development and price is the core of market mechanism in this work combining directed limited penetrable visibility graph and coarse graining method a new method is proposed to identify the potential periods and dynamic evolution characteristics of carbon price which opens up a new perspective for government and investors to understand evolution characteristics and prevent risks at the same time a empirical analysis is conducted based on eu ets daily price from september 29 2009 to september 29 2017 and the dynamic fluctuation characteristics of carbon price from high price period to low price period are obtained

an equilibrium model of consumer energy choice using a personal carbon trading scheme based on allowance price abstract changes in consumer behavior due to a personal carbon trading pct scheme are theoretically attractive yet untested in practice in this paper simulations on the basis of an equilibrium model are used to examine the effects of carbon allowance prices on energy use choice under a particular pct scheme it is shown that the equilibrium price of allowances would emerge under the pct scheme considered here further analyses indicate that the quantity of energy consumption under pct is a nonlinear function of the allowance price with a sharp kink at the point of equilibrium when the allowance price is below the equilibrium price consumers would prefer higher carbon energy in contrast when the allowance price is above the equilibrium price consumers would choose lower carbon energy however when the allowance price equals the equilibrium value consumers would purchase lower carbon energy and higher carbon energy simultaneously furthermore it is shown that the initial allowance allocation could also affect energy use choice on the basis of these results one of the main implications is that the allowance price should exceed the breakeven price to stimulate consumers to switch to green energy and progressively live a low carbon lifestyle

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

the impact of the north american shale gas revolution on regional natural gas markets evidence from the regime switching model this paper investigates the impact of the north american shale gas revolution on price movement regimes in the north american and european gas markets using the markov regime switching model it then measures price spreads between oil and gas from 1998 to 2015 to identify the impact of the revolution on the relationship between oil and regional gas prices the results show that the typical movement regime of henry hub prices changes from slightly upward to sharply downward in addition the clear seasonal effect of henry hub prices has disappeared after the shale gas revolution the typical movement of national balancing point nbp prices has changed gradually from a sharply upward regime to the alternative regimes between sharply downward and slightly upward tending to follow oil prices this indicates that the shale gas revolution has had little impact on nbp price movement meanwhile henry hub prices have decoupled from wti prices while nbp and brent prices have continued to exhibit a long term equilibrium level around which they have swung in the short time frame since the shale gas revolution pertinent energy policy makers and energy market participants should pay attention to these changes and adjust their trade production and investment strategies accordingly

oil indexation market fundamentals and natural gas prices an investigation of the asian premium in natural gas trade abstract a heated debate has arisen over whether the asian premium i e higher prices in asia than elsewhere in natural gas trade is due to price discrimination or different market fundamentals determining the origin of this premium can help to guide the gas industries and policy makers in asia especially when the traditional oil indexed price mechanism fades away using a new systemic time series approach this paper explores the extent to which oil prices and market fundamentals contribute to variations in gas prices in japan the united states and germany we find clear cross country differences and time varying patterns gas prices are much less affected by supply and demand factors than oil prices in japan and germany whereas these factors are more important than oil prices in the us market which has a pricing hub through rolling windows and subsample analysis we discover that oil prices were important in japan and germany but the level of importance has declined significantly in recent years though the contribution of fundamentals does not change much the results show that asian gas prices are determined more by oil prices than by the market fundamentals thus the asian premium is more likely due to this oil indexed pricing mechanism rather than market fundamentals this suggests that developing asia s benchmark prices through trading hubs with a better reflection of regional specific fundamentals can lead to a more efficient allocation of gas resources

what drives volatility in natural gas prices abstract we examine the primary drivers of u s natural gas price volatility to do so we apply a structural heterogeneous autoregressive var shvar model accommodating structural breaks in both the coefficient and volatility to monthly time series data on natural gas supply demand and price between january 1978 and july 2018 we detect several structural changes in coefficients and shock volatility in the natural gas market our findings indicate that the response of natural gas prices differs significantly depending on the regime and type of shock in the natural gas market while demand shocks specific to the natural gas market are the primary drivers of natural gas price volatility structural supply shocks also play a significant role in explaining movements in natural gas prices our results suggest that failure to consider structural breaks in the coefficient and volatility may result in biased estimates and distorted impulse responses of the impact of shocks on natural gas price volatility

wealth and volatility we document that in the us over the course of the past century there has been a systematic negative relation between household wealth and business cycle volatility we develop a microfounded dynamic equilibrium model that contains elements of a traditional keynesian framework in which economic uctuations can be driven by sunspot type uctuations in household optimism or pessimism the novel feature is that the scope for equilibrium uctuations due to sunspots depends on the exogenously given value of household wealth when wealth is high consumers demand is not sensitive to unemployment expectations and the economy is robust to condence crisis when wealth is low consumers demand is sensitive to unemployment expectations the economy becomes vulnerable to condence driven uctuations and is in general more volatile in this case there is a potential role for public policies to stabilize demand we conclude by providing micro economic evidence on the importance of wealth in aecting the sensitivity of demand to aggregate conditions we show that during the great recession consumers with low

the consequences of rigid wages in search models the standard theory of equilibrium unemployment the mortensen pissarides search and matching model cannot explain the magnitude of the business cycle fluctuations in two of its central elements unemployment and vacancies modifying the model to make the present value of wages unresponsive to current labor market conditions amplifies fluctuations in unemployment and vacancies by an order of magnitude significantly improving the performance of the model despite this the welfare consequences of such rigid wages is negligible jel e24 e32 j30 j41 j63 j64

great recession slow recovery and muted fiscal policies in the us this paper reconsiders the role of macroeconomic shocks and policies in determining the great recession and the subsequent recovery in the us the great recession was mainly caused by a large demand shock and by the zlb on the interest rate policy in contrast with previous findings the subsequent jobless recovery is explained by the zlb effect we estimate a fraction of non ricardian households which is close to 50 and obtain comparatively large fiscal multipliers however we cannot detect a significant contribution of fiscal policies in stabilizing the us economy for instance the 2007 2009 large increase in expenditure to gdp ratios was apparently determined by the adverse non policy shocks that caused the recession

shale gas policy in the united kingdom an argumentative discourse analysis shale gas has become an energy policy priority in the united kingdom in light of profitable extraction activities in the united states since 2012 the coalition government has created key economic drivers to encourage shale exploration whilst growing activism in affected site communities has stirred significant media and academic commentary this study examines the growing national debate as a matter of discourse adopting an argumentative discourse analytic approach to assess data collected from stakeholder interviews n 21 and key policy actor statements quoted in broadsheet newspapers we explore three dominant storylines emerging in relation to shale gas policy 1 cleanliness and dirt concerns the relative framing of the environmental benefits and harms of shale gas 2 energy transitions pathways and diversions concerns geographic metaphors of transitions to carbon intensive and low carbon energy systems and 3 geographies of environmental justice concerns divisions of economic benefit distribution environmental impact and procedural fairness we find that central government policy rhetoric emphasises economic development regulatory oversight and distribution of benefits to site communities whilst minimising discussion of the implications of shale gas for anthropogenic climate change the role of these discourses in influencing shale gas policy is discussed

the response of the beijing carbon emissions allowance price bjc to macroeconomic and energy price indices in 2013 china opened pilot carbon emission trading markets in seven provinces where carbon emission allowances have now been traded for more than two years in this paper we employ a structural var model and the price of the beijing carbon emission allowance to study the dynamic relationships among the price of the carbon emission allowance economic development and the price of energy this paper s data cover the period from april 2 2014 to november 6 2015 this paper provides information that will be helpful to both investors and governmental policy makers the results show that 1 an increase of one standard deviation in the coal price leads to an initial increase of approximately 0 1 in the beijing carbon price after 2 days there is a decrease of less than 0 1 and the price gradually increases by approximately 0 1 after 30 days 2 the price of the beijing carbon emission allowance is mainly affected by its own historical price 3 the beijing carbon emission allowance price crude oil price natural gas price and economic development have positive albeit non significant correlations

carbon pricing effectiveness and equity abstract the 2015 paris agreement adopted the goal of limiting the rise in global mean temperature to 1 5 2 c above pre industrial levels carbon pricing can play a key role in meeting this objective a cap and permit system or alternatively a carbon tax indexed to a fixed emission reduction trajectory not only can spur cost effective mitigation and cost reducing innovation but also crucially can ensure that emissions are held to the target level the carbon prices needed to meet this constraint are likely to be considerably higher however than existing prices and conventional measures of the social cost of carbon this poses issues of distributional equity and political sustainability that can be addressed by universal dividends funded by carbon revenues

shale gas analysis of its role in the global energy market shale gas revolution that took place in the united states at the beginning of the 21st century has still been shaping our global fossil fuel market in 2012 the u s has surpassed russia in natural gas production for the first time since 1982 at the same year annual average u s henry hub natural gas spot price decreased to 2 75 per million btu which was 8 69 per million btu in 2005 in 2013 proved shale gas reserves of the world is estimated at nearly 2 7 trillion cubic metres tcm and unproved resources at staggering 203 9 tcm as a result there is a global rush to develop most of this resource as possible however shale gas is no miracle fuel it has been suggested that its effects on the environment could be worse than conventional natural gas fugitive methane emissions groundwater pollution and increased seismicity are amongst the most important potential environmental side effects there is also concern about the accuracy of resource potential estimations due to lack of data and specifically designed shale gas reservoir models nonetheless the analysis in this study clearly showed that without developing global shale gas resources we have to consume 66 of our proved natural gas reserves to supply the demand till 2040 this would make most of the world natural gas importers and rules of economy dictate that limited supply and increasing demand would skyrocket natural gas prices therefore shale gas resource development is not an option but a must for the continuance of our global energy market and economy

an empirical analysis of energy cost pass through to co2 emission prices abstract we use the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag nardl model to analyze the asymmetric and nonlinear pass through effects of changes in crude oil prices natural gas prices coal prices and electricity prices on the co 2 emission allowance prices we find that i the crude oil prices have a long run negative and asymmetric effect on the co 2 allowance prices ii the decreases in the coal prices have a stronger impact on the carbon prices in the short run than the increases iii the natural gas prices and electricity prices have a symmetric effect on the carbon prices but this effect is negative for the former and positive for the latter these findings are robust when using both monthly and daily data and when considering bivariate and multivariate models

price discovery and volatility spillovers in the european union emissions trading scheme a high frequency analysis abstract this paper models the relationship of european union allowance spot and futures prices within the second commitment period of the european union emissions trading scheme based on high frequency data we analyze the transmission of information in first and second conditional moments to reveal long run price discovery we compute common factor weights of schwarz and szakmary 1994 and information shares of hasbrouck 1995 based on estimated coefficients of a vecm to analyze the short run dynamics we perform granger causality tests we identify the futures market to be the leader of the long run price discovery process whereas the informational role of the futures market increases over time in addition we employ a version of the ueccc garch model as introduced by conrad and karanasos 2010 to analyze the volatility transmission structure the volatility analysis indicates a close relationship between the volatility dynamics of both markets whereas in particular we observe spillovers from the futures to the spot market as a whole the investigation reveals that the futures market incorporates information first and then transfers the information to the spot market

income risk of eu coal fired power plants after kyoto coal fired power plants enjoy a significant advantage relative to gas plants in terms of cheaper fuel cost this advantage may erode or turn into disadvantage depending on co2 emission allowance price financial risks are further reinforced when the price of electricity is determined by natural gas fired plants marginal costs we aim to empirically assess the risks in eu coal plants margins up to the year 2020 parameter values are derived from actual market data monte carlo simulation allows compute the expected value and risk profile of coal plants earnings future allowance prices may spell significant risks on utilities balance sheets

time varying correlations in oil gas and co2 prices an application using bekk ccc and dcc mgarch models previous literature has identified oil and gas prices as being the main drivers of co2 prices in a univariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity garch econometric framework alberola et al 2008 oberndorfer 2009 by contrast we argue in this article that the interrelationships between energy and emissions markets shall be modelled in a vector autoregressive var and multivariate garch mgarch framework so as to reflect the dynamics of the correlations between the oil gas and co2 variables overtime using the baba engle kraft kroner bekk constant conditional correlation ccc and dynamic conditional correlation mgarch dcc mgarch models on daily data from april 2005 to december 2008 we highlight significant own volatility cross volatility spillovers and own persistent volatility effects for nearly all markets indicating the presence of strong autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity arch and garch effects besides we provide strong empirical evidence of tim

indivisible labor lotteries and equilibrium abstract this paper considers an economy where labor is indivisible and agents are identical although the discontinuity in labor supply at the individual level disappears as a result of aggregation it is shown that indivisible labor has strong consequences for the aggregate bahavior of the economy it is also shown that optimal allocations involve lotteries over employment and consumption

turbulent times uncovering the origins of us natural gas price fluctuations since deregulation abstract in this paper we investigate supply and demand shocks in the u s natural gas market focusing on how the effects of these shocks have changed over time using a sign identified structural vector autoregression svar model that allows for both time varying parameters and stochastic volatility we find that supply and demand shocks are the main drivers of natural gas price fluctuations during 1993 2015 with speculative activities playing a minor role during a portion of the sample period we also find that after the recent shale boom the supply and demand of natural gas in the us have become somewhat more elastic an examination of several volatile episodes during the sample period suggest that though natural gas price fluctuations are predominately determined by fundamental factors supply and demand shocks have significantly evolved over time

price drivers and structural breaks in european carbon prices 2005 2007 this article aims at characterizing the daily price fundamentals of european union allowances euas traded since 2005 as part of the emissions trading scheme ets the presence of two structural changes on april 2006 following the disclosure of 2005 verified emissions and on october 2006 following the european commission announcement of stricter phase ii allocation allows to isolate distinct fundamentals evolving overtime the results extend previous literature by showing that eua spot prices react not only to energy prices with forecast errors but also to unanticipated temperatures changes during colder events besides the sub period decomposition of the pilot phase gives a better grasp of institutional and market events that drive allowance price changes

consumption versus expenditure previous authors have documented a dramatic decline in food expenditures at the time of retirement we show that this is matched by an equally dramatic rise in time spent shopping for and preparing meals using a novel data set that collects detailed food diaries for a large cross section of u s households we show that neither the quality nor the quantity of food intake deteriorates with retirement status we also show that unemployed households experience a decline in food expenditure and food consumption commensurate with the impact of job displacement on permanent income these results highlight how direct measures of consumption distinguish between anticipated and unanticipated shocks to income whereas measures of expenditures obscure the distinction

information linkage dynamic spillovers in prices and volatility between the carbon and energy markets abstract the european union emissions trading system eu ets has strengthened the information flow and connection between carbon market and energy markets which makes the carbon energy system more complicated this paper investigates information linkages and dynamic spillover effects between the carbon and energy markets we adopt a systemic time series approach to study connectedness in both returns and volatility in the carbon energy system moreover a rolling windows method is used to show the dynamic features empirical results show that brent oil prices play an important role in affecting carbon price changes and risks feedback exists from the carbon market to other energy markets and electricity prices are shown to be the biggest information receiver in the system it is also shown that the level of connectedness in the volatility system is substantially higher than that in the returns system our results can provide useful implications for policymakers to design market mechanisms and market investors to manage their portfolios

modeling co2 emission allowance prices and derivatives evidence from the european trading scheme this paper studies the three main markets for emission allowances within the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets powernext nord pool and european climate exchange ecx the analysis suggests that the prohibition of banking of emission allowances between distinct phases of the eu ets has significant implications in terms of futures pricing motivated by these findings we develop an empirically and theoretically valid framework for the pricing and hedging of intra phase and inter phase futures and options on futures respectively

exogenous information endogenous information and optimal monetary policy most of the analysis of optimal monetary policy is conducted with the calvo model this paper studies optimal monetary policy when the slow adjustment of the price level is due to imperfect information by decision makers in firms we consider two models a model with exogenous dispersed information and a rational inattention model in the model with exogenous dispersed information complete stabilization of the price level is optimal after aggregate productivity shocks but not after markup shocks by contrast in the rational inattention model complete stabilization of the price level is optimal both after aggregate productivity shocks and after markup shocks moreover in the model with exogenous dispersed information there is no value from commitment to a future monetary policy by contrast in the rational inattention model there is value from commitment to a future monetary policy because then the private sector can trust the central bank that not paying attention to certain variables is optimal

multiple bubbles in the european union emission trading scheme abstract the european union emission trading scheme eu ets is the first large scale co 2 emission trading system in the world carbon allowances are financial assets potentially vulnerable to the behavior of traders and investors in fact the carbon price has been quite volatile since the inception of the market and it has recently hit very low values however to date no work exists to evaluate whether volatility and price spikes are due to episodes of speculation and price bubbles our paper fills this gap we use the recent approaches developed by phillips and yu 2010 phillips et al 2011 and phillips et al 2015a 2015b who propose a recursive right sided unit root approaches to detect and date stamp mildly explosive behaviors and carbon market exuberance we complement this methodology by using the wild bootstrap procedure by goncalves and kilian 2004 to control for the heteroschedasticity of carbon price data analyzing the eu ets front month contract price from 2005 to 2014 we find different episodes of price bubbles these episodes are not explained by similar behavior of the fundamentals but seem related to energy and environmental policy announcements our results can provide insightful policy implications in the context of the actual carbon market reform as well as the implementation of stricter financial regulations rules to co 2 trading

equilibria under monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a portfolio choice model abstract this paper studies how the presence of income taxes changes the properties of general equilibrium models with monetary and fiscal policy interactions it is found that from a global perspective the only policy regime that leads to a unique equilibrium is one where fiscal policy is active i e the fiscal theory of the price level regime in sims 1994 from a local perspective there are three regimes in particular and relative to the previous literature following leeper 1991 a new third regime exists where a passive fiscal rule combined with a passive monetary rule can still deliver determinacy where the same area of the parameter space would lead to multiple solutions if taxes were lump sum to obtain the size of the new regime the paper characterizes analytically the extent to which tax cuts are self financing and how the distortionary tax laffer curve looks near the steady state in the new regime monetary and fiscal backstops are brought into play so as to rule out off equilibrium dynamics and inflation can temporarily increase in order to increase seigniorage revenues with this flexibility the monetary policy is consistent with the real debt remaining bounded and the arithmetic that follows is monetarist and unpleasant in the sense of sargent and wallace 1981

carbon pricing and system linking lessons from the new zealand emissions trading scheme abstract textbook theory of linking carbon systems suggests linking reduces marginal abatement costs contrasting theoretical work and policy analyses suggests that linking or at least unfettered linking may not always be beneficial the new zealand emissions trading scheme nz ets is unique in that until 2013 it allowed unlimited use of kyoto allowances nz ets thus provides an ideal context to explore the effect of linking and linking restrictions on carbon pricing of small systems using data on importation and exportation of allowances we provide the first empirical analysis of the determinants of allowance prices in the early phase of the nz ets our results indicate that imports of offsets rather than fundamentals have been the major price determinant moreover the pricing of new zealand units nzus can be placed into three distinct periods delineated by two structural breaks in the first period the system is largely autarkic in the second period as international offset prices drop below the nzu price the system becomes a price taker in the final period following policy interventions the system regains some independence the case of the nz ets shows that small trading systems need to impose or have the option to impose quantitative import restriction so as to reap the benefits lower abatement cost but not the drawbacks importation of distortions and market integrity issues of linking

abatement and allocation in the pilot phase of the eu ets we use historical industrial emissions data to assess the level of abatement and over allocation that took place across european countries during the pilot phase 2005 2007 of the european union emission trading scheme using a dynamic panel data model we estimate the counter factual business as usual emissions scenario for eu member states comparing this baseline to allocated and verified emissions we find that both over allocation and abatement occurred along with under allocation and emissions inflation over the three trading years of the pilot phase we find over allocation of approximately 280 million euas and total abatement of 247 mt co2 however we calculate that emissions inflation of approximately 73 mt co2 also occurred possibly due to uncertainty about future policy design features

the emissions trading paradox abstract this article considers the price history of co2 allowances in the eu emission trading scheme since european emissions trading started in 2005 the prices of allowances have varied between less than one and thirty euro per ton of co2 this previously unpredicted volatility and more notably a significant price crash in may 2005 led to the hypothesis that electricity producers might use their market power to influence the prices of allowances besides market power the combination of information asymmetry and price interdependencies between prices of primary goods especially electricity and allowances plays an important role in explaining the emissions trading paradox the model presented will show that banking can lead to such a price crash if market participators act rationally furthermore in such a scenario banking can be profitable for sellers at the cost of buyers

what happens to the relationship between eu allowances prices and stock market indices in europe abstract the stock market may reflect the economic conditions of an economy and a positive economic situation is expected to improve the companies profits which makes company shares more attractive since the expected dividends to shareholders will be larger theoretically higher economic activity leads to higher energy demand and consequently higher carbon emissions which give rise to higher eu allowances eua prices therefore the stock market and eua prices seem to be connected with causality going from the stock markets to eua prices this paper formally tests for it showing that the causality effectively runs from the stock market to the european climate exchange market furthermore the paper studies the effects of the evolution of european stock markets on the eua spot prices

understanding the gains from wage flexibility the exchange rate connection we study the gains from increased wage exibility and their dependence on exchange rate policy using a small open economy model with staggered price and wage setting two results stand out i the impact of wage adjustments on employment is smaller the more the central bank seeks to stabilize the exchange rate and ii an increase in wage exibility often reduces welfare and more likely so in economies under an exchange rate peg or an exchange rate focused monetary policy our ndings call into question the common view that wage exibility is particularly desirable in a currency union

modeling the price dynamics of co2 emission allowances abstract in this paper we analyze the short term spot price behavior of carbon dioxide co 2 emission allowances of the new eu wide co 2 emissions trading system eu ets after reviewing the stylized facts of this new class of assets we investigate several approaches for modeling the returns of emission allowances due to different phases of price and volatility behavior in the returns we suggest the use of markov switching and ar garch models for stochastic modeling we examine the approaches by conducting an in sample and out of sample forecasting analysis and by comparing the results to alternative approaches our findings strongly support the adequacy of the models capturing characteristics like skewness excess kurtosis and in particular different phases of volatility behavior in the returns

the impact of consumer credit access on unemployment unemployed households access to unsecured revolving credit more than tripled over the last three decades this article analyses how both cyclical fluctuations and trend increases in credit access impact the business cycle the main quantitative result is that credit expansions and contractions have contributed to moderately deeper and more protracted recessions over the last 40 years as more individuals obtained credit from 1977 to 2010 cyclical credit fluctuations affected a larger share of the population and became more important determinants of employment dynamics even though business cycles are more volatile newborns strictly prefer to live in the economy with growing but fluctuating access to credit markets

ecosystem services and regional development an application to sweden this study carries out interregional comparisons of development and sustainable use of natural capital with and without inclusion of non marketed ecosystem services a simple dynamic model of an open economy shows that appropriate adjustment of conventional income accounts includes flow and stock components but excludes explicit entrance of pollution calculations are made for swedish regions and for two types of ecosystem services pollution sequestration and recreational services provided by three types of ecosystems forests agricultural landscape and wetlands when comparing the adjusted and non adjusted regional income accounts it is shown that the two measurements generate significantly different pictures of regional income and growth regions that are traditionally considered as relatively less growth promoting are shown to hold important sources of wealth from natural capital while counties that are rich in conventional accounts fall behind when adjusting for values of changes in natural capital

a multiscale analysis for carbon price drivers abstract this study proposes a multiscale analysis model to explore and identify the carbon price drivers at different timescales by introducing the latest multivariate empirical mode decomposition carbon price and its potential drivers are decomposed into several groups of simple modes with specific economic meanings the cointegration techniques error correction model and newey west estimator are combined to capture the carbon price drivers at similar timescales illustrated by the samples of the european union emissions trading system from 2009 to 2016 a few interesting results can be found that at the original data level among the three most important drivers of carbon price electricity price and stock index show positive impacts while coal price shows a negative impact at different timescales the effects of electricity and stock index appear comparatively earlier which drive carbon price from the short timescales and continue to strengthen however the impacts of coal oil and gas prices are lagging behind which respectively drive the carbon price at the medium and long timescales

carbon price drivers phase i versus phase ii equilibrium abstract the aim of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the carbon price during the two phases of the european union emission trading scheme eu ets more specifically relying on daily eu allowance futures contracts we test whether the carbon price drivers identified for phase i still hold for phase ii and evolve toward a long run relationship using cointegration techniques and accounting for the 2006 structural break in the carbon market we show that while a cointegrating relationship exists for both phases of the eu ets the nature of this equilibrium relationship is different across the two subperiods with an increasing role of fundamentals in phase ii deriving equilibrium values we show that the carbon price tends to be undervalued since the end of 2009

causes of the eu ets price drop recession cdm renewable policies or a bit of everything new evidence the price of eu allowances euas in the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets fell from almost 30 tco2 in mid 2008 to less than 5 tco2 in mid 2013 the sharp and persistent price decline has sparked intense debates both in academia and among policy makers about the decisive allowance price drivers in this paper we examine whether and to what extent the eua price drop can be justified by three commonly identified explanatory factors the economic recession renewable policies and the use of international credits capitalizing on marginal abatement cost theory and a broadly extended data set we find that only variations in economic activity and the growth of wind and solar electricity production are robustly explaining eua price dynamics contrary to simulation based analyses our results point to moderate interaction effects between the overlapping eu ets and renewable policies the bottom line however is that 90 of the variations of eua price changes remains unexplained by the abatement related fundamentals together our findings do not support the widely held view that negative demand shocks are the main cause of the weak carbon price signal in view of the new evidence we evaluate the eu ets reform options which are currently discussed

how do oil price shocks affect the output volatility of the u s energy mining industry the roles of structural oil price shocks abstract this paper focuses on how explicit structural shocks that characterize the endogenous character of international oil price change affect the output volatility of the u s crude oil and natural gas mining industries to this end we employ a modified structural vector autoregressive model svar to decompose real oil price changes into four components u s supply shocks non u s supply shocks aggregate demand shocks and oil specific demand shocks mainly driven by precautionary demand the results indicate that output volatility of the u s crude oil and natural gas mining industry has significantly negative responses to u s supply shocks aggregate demand shocks and oil specific demand shocks while lacks significant response to non u s supply shocks variance decomposition and historical decomposition confirm that u s supply shocks occupy most explaining variations in output volatility among the four structural oil shocks moreover the oil specific demand shocks explain more variation than that of aggregate demand shocks for the crude oil mining industry but the opposite is true for the natural gas mining industry

financialization fundamentals and the time varying determinants of us natural gas prices abstract increasing empirical evidence shows that natural gas prices have decoupled from oil prices yet there remains an open question as to what are the determining factors of natural gas prices following the demise of oil indexation this paper aims to address this question using a dynamic model averaging dma approach dma can help identify key important price determinants and importantly does so within a time varying framework allowing us to document how the set of determinants has evolved in response to key market changes using time series data between 2001 and 2018 we demonstrate a clear declining role of oil prices in the natural gas pricing mechanism verifying the demise of indexation market or fundamental factors such as weather demand and supply conditions have at the same time become more important in addition our results illustrate an increasing role from financial markets captured by speculation related variables providing empirical evidence to support the recent literature on commodity market financialization the rising impact of speculation to natural gas prices introduces questions over how to balance market efficiency and risk management in the post indexation regime

how to explain carbon price using market micro behaviour abstractin this article we analyse the micro behaviours of the emitting companies and financial intermediaries in the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets and their influence on carbon prices based on the full sample community independent transaction log citl the micro behaviours can be observed in a closed system the micro behaviours of the emitting companies are divided into compliance trading and non compliance trading based on the emitting companies trading motivations the micro behaviours of the financial intermediaries are measured by their influence on the total supply and demand in the market then an ar garch model is established to examine the dynamic relationships between carbon prices and the micro behaviours of the emitting companies and financial intermediaries the estimation results suggest that the prices behaviours relationship is significant other important findings are as follows 1 the mean value of carbon prices positively depends on the compliance trading

the impact of the shale gas revolution on the u s and japanese natural gas markets we investigated whether the increase in the us shale gas production changed the structures of the us and japanese natural gas markets using market data for the period 2002 5 2012 5 our analysis consists of a structural break test and market integration analysis the bai and perron structural break test detected a break point of natural gas prices and consumption in 2005 as well as other external shocks hurricane katrina and the lehman shock that are irrelevant to shale gas development we eliminated the impact of these shocks by separating the data set using the breaks identified in our analysis we found the breaks skewed the estimation a market linkage existed between the us and japanese markets in the original data set while it did not in the separated data the vector autoregressive var model also indicated a significant change before and after the break point the us market had a one side influence on the japanese market before 2005 but the influence disappeared after 2005 our results implied that the shale gas revolution triggered by the increase in shale gas production in 2005 caused the change in the relationship between the us and japanese natural gas markets

is information assimilated at announcements in the european carbon market abstract we examine the high frequency new information impact on prices volatility trading volume and illiquidity at scheduled macroeconomic and verified emissions announcements for the european carbon futures market verified emissions united states non farm payroll and german new factory order macroeconomic announcements impact carbon prices swiftly within 5 min we show that a one standard deviation surprise increase in verified emission announcements is associated with an approximate ten percentage point 9 96 increase in carbon futures returns a wait and see stylized trading behavior is evident at announcements in volatility and trading volumes market illiquidity increases at announcements in relation to united states non farm payroll albeit there is no evidence of an increase in illiquidity prior to announcements the development of new information impact over time occurs mainly in the at announcement 5 minute time interval

review of taiwan s climate policy after copenhagen abstract the copenhagen accord in 2009 initiated new opportunities for international cooperation in reducing greenhouse gas ghg emissions the purpose of this study was to review taiwan s current climate policy and in response to the copenhagen accord to deliberate this policy in the light of new strategic thinking the study proposes a two stage approach with a dividing line in 2020 in the first stage from now until 2020 strategy should be based on cost constraints with a suggested reduction cost below 60 t co 2 and implementation of domestic ghg emissions trading scheme and reduction strategies in the second stage from 2020 and beyond action by taiwan should accord with international cooperative actions to link its domestic emissions trading scheme with the international carbon market

international debt deleveraging i provide a framework for understanding debt deleveraging in a group of nancially integrated countries during an episode of international deleveraging world consumption demand is depressed and the world interest rate is low reecting a high propensity to save if exchange rates are allowed to oat deleveraging countries can depreciate their nominal exchange rate to increase production and mitigate the fall in consumption associated with debt reduction the key insight of the paper is that in a monetary union this channel of adjustment is shut o and therefore the falls in consumption demand and in the world interest rate are amplied hence monetary unions are especially prone to hit the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate and enter a liquidity trap during deleveraging in a liquidity trap deleveraging gives rise to a union wide recession which is particularly severe in high debt countries the model suggests several policy interventions that mitigate the negative impact of deleveraging on output in monetary unions

heterogeneous consumers segmented asset markets and the real effects of monetary policy this paper proposes a novel mechanism by which changes in the distribution of money holdings have real effects specifically i develop a flexible price model of segmented asset markets that generates real aggregate effects of monetary policy through the dependence of optimal markups on the heterogeneity of money holdings because varieties of consumption bundles are purchased sequentially newly injected money disseminates slowly throughout the economy via second round effects the model predicts a short term inflation output trade off a liquidity effect countercyclical markups and procyclical wages after monetary shocks among other correlations of financial variables it also reproduces the empirical negative relationship between changes in the money supply and markups

eu emission allowances and the stock market evidence from the electricity industry this paper constitutes to our best knowledge the first econometric analysis on stock market effects of the eu emission trading scheme eu ets our results suggest that eu emission allowance eua price developments matter to the stock performance of electricity firms eua price changes and stock returns of the most important european electricity corporations are shown to be positively related this effect does not work asymmetrically so that stock markets do not seem to react differently to eua appreciations in comparison to depreciations the carbon market effect is shown to be both time and country specific it is particularly strong for the period of eua market shock in early 2006 and differs with respect to the countries where the electricity corporations analysed are headquartered stock market reactions to eua volatility could not be shown

structural breaks in international tourism demand are they caused by crises or disasters it is recognised that the tourism industry is vulnerable to some form of crises or disaster however despite the attention given to the nature and consequences of tourism crises and disasters there is a gap in the literature regarding the ex post detection of these events in this article we estimate both the number and date of structural breaks in international tourism arrival series for 25 countries and madeira island using the bai and perron 1998 structural break test we compare the date of tourism crises and disasters to the dating of these structural breaks we observe that tourism crises and disasters are largely consistent with the dates of breaks therefore this method allows us to solve a gap in the tourism industry related to the correct allocation of negative shocks in international tourism arrival demand to crisis or disaster phenomena

modeling persistence of carbon emission allowance prices this study reexamines the issue of persistence in carbon emission allowance spot prices using daily data and covering the period from 28 2 2007 to 14 05 2014 for this purpose we use techniques based on the concept of long memory accounting for structural breaks and non linearities in the data with both of these aspects potentially affecting the degree of persistence our results indicate that while there is no evidence of non linearity when allowing for structural breaks persistence of shocks to the carbon emission allowance is markedly reduced with the same being transitory in nature for recent sub samples

time and frequency connectedness among oil shocks electricity and clean energy markets abstract this paper examines the time and frequency connectedness among electricity carbon and clean energy markets and oil price demand and supply shocks in doing so we use the spillover method proposed by diebold and yilmaz 2012 and its extension in the frequency domain by barunik and k ehlik 2018 we find increased connectedness during the global financial crisis as well as in the shale oil revolution period the total connectedness is also higher in the short run compared to the long run due to their low connectedness electricity futures can act as a risk diversifier and safe haven asset against oil shocks net pairwise directional connectedness among oil shocks and the clean energy index is higher during the shale oil revolution these results have important implications for investors with different investment time horizons

modelling the price spread between eua and cer carbon prices abstract this paper identifies factors impacting on the dynamics of the price spread between european allowances euas and certified emission reductions cers by detecting changes in the structural relationship between them while prior studies have assumed a fixed structural relationship this paper analyses the dynamic evolution of the price spread by employing a time varying parameter analysis using daily data from march 2008 to september 2011 the analysis reveals that a lack of competitive conditions in markets access constraints on the use and the availability of cers regulatory changes regarding both euas and cers and uncertainty surrounding cers can explain a significant portion of the price spread

sticky price models durable goods and real wage rigidities the standard two sector new keynesian model with durable goods is at odds with conventional wisdom and vector autoregression var evidence following a monetary shock the model generates i either negative or no comovement across sectoral outputs and ii aggregate neutrality of money when durable goods prices are flexible we reconcile theory with evidence by incorporating real wage rigidities into the standard model as long as durable goods prices are more flexible than nondurable goods prices we obtain positive sectoral comovement and thus aggregate nonneutrality of money

the vermont common assets trust an institution for sustainable just and efficient resource allocation both private and public sectors have failed to adequately provide critical ecosystem goods and services or an equitable distribution of wealth and income to address this problem the vermont legislature is considering the creation of a vermont common assets trust vcat that would make the state s atmosphere aquifers and other resources created by nature or by society as a whole the common property of all vermonters present and future under the trust a board of trustees would have the legal obligation to manage these assets for the benefit of all vermonters including future generations this paper first explains why certain resources are likely to be managed more sustainably fairly and efficiently as common property than as private property it then discusses mechanisms for integrating assets into the trust estimates of potential revenue from a vcat suggest that it could eliminate the state budget deficit contribute to a better distribution of wealth and resources and help address critical ecological problems survey results suggest that a vcat is politically feasible the vcat promises to be an important pilot project that could later be scaled up to a national or global level

further evidence on the debate of oil gas price decoupling a long memory approach abstract the long run oil gas price relationship has been challenged more often in recent years as these two prices have shown evidence of decoupling from each other this paper proposes the use of a long memory approach and a rolling windows method to model the time varying oil gas price relationship in three markets namely the united states europe and japan the results extend existing research conclusions on the oil gas price relationship and answer the question of whether it is a temporary phenomenon or a permanent market change our findings indicate that the us oil gas relationship remains nonstationary at almost all windows and illustrate strong evidence of decoupling conversely the european and asian oil gas prices exhibit temporary decoupling over time although the overall relationship still favours the oil indexation hypothesis the us experience suggests that oil and gas do not share the same fundamentals and a pricing hub can better reflect the true value of natural gas policy makers in europe and asia should reinforce their efforts towards a market based pricing mechanism for gas

global mechanisms for sustaining and enhancing pes schemes article i nfo an international payment for ecosystem service ipes schemes may be one of the only mechanisms available to stimulate the provision of vital non marketed ecosystem services at the global level as those nations that benefit from global ecosystem services ges cannot readily force other sovereign nations to provide them currently international trade offers trillions of dollars in incentives for countries to convert natural capital into marketable goods and services and few payments to entice countries to conserve natural capital in order to sustain critical non marketed ecosystem services we examine the biophysical characteristics of climate change and biodiversity to understand the obstacles to developing effective ipes schemes we find that none of the existing schemes for providing ges are adequate given the scale of the problem a cap and auction scheme for co2 emissions among wealthy nations could fund ipes and simultaneously deter carbon emissions to disburse funds we should adapt brazil s icms ecologico and apportion available funds to targeted countries in proportion to how well they meet specific criteria designed to measure the provision of ges individual countries can then develop their own policies for increasing provision of these services ensured of compensation if they do so indirect ipes should include funding for freely available technologies that protect or provide ges such as the low carbon energy alternatives that will be essential for curbing climate change markets rely on the price mechanism to generate profits which rations technology to those who can afford it reducing adoption rates innovation and total value

a fiscal stimulus and jobless recovery we analyze the effects of a government spending expansion in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with mortensen pissarides labor market frictions deep habits in private and public consumption investment adjustment costs a constant elasticity of substitution ces production function and adjustments in employment at both intensive and extensive margins the combination of deep habits and ces technology is crucial the presence of deep habits magnifies the responses of macroeconomic variables to a fiscal stimulus while an elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in the range of available estimates allows the model to produce a scenario compatible with the observed jobless recovery

the impact of the european union emission trading scheme on electricity generation sectors in order to comply with their commitments under the kyoto protocol france and germany participate to the european union emission trading scheme eu ets which concerns predominantly electricity generation sectors in this paper we seek to know if the eu ets gives appropriate economic incentives for an e cient and strong system in line with kyoto commitments because if so electricity producers in these countries should include the price of carbon in their costs functions after identifying the di erent sub periods of the eu ets during its pilot phase 2005 2007 we model the prices of various electricity contracts and look at their volatilities around their fundamentals while evaluating the correlation between the electricity prices in the two countries we finnd that electricity producers in both countries were constrained to include the carbon price in their cost functions during the rst two years of operation of the eu ets during this period german electricity producers were more constrained than their french counterparts and the inclusion of the carbon price in the cost function of electricity generation has been so much more stable in germany than in france furthermore the european market for emission allowances has increased the market power of the historical french electricity producer and has greatly contributed to the partial alignment of the wholesale price of electricity in france with those of germany

an overview of co2 cost pass through to electricity prices in europe this paper investigates the link between wholesale electricity prices in europe and the co2 cost i e the price of european union allowances euas over the two first phases of the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets we set up a theoretical framework and an empirical model to estimate to what extent daily fluctuations of co2 costs may have impacted electricity prices regarding estimation results for the first phase of the eu ets about 42 of estimated pass through rates appear to be statistically significant while only one third of them are statistically different from zero in the second phase we try to improve those results by proposing alternative estimates based on the eu ets compliance periods

gas versus oil prices the impact of shale gas abstract what significance will developments in shale gas production have for european gas prices some commentators paint a gloomy picture of the future gas markets but most forecasts for the oil market are positive consequently a view appears to prevail that price trends will differ sharply between oil and gas markets this article looks at developments in us shale gas production and discusses their impact on the movement of european gas prices the relationship between oil and gas prices over time is also analysed

world crude oil and natural gas a demand and supply model abstract this paper examines world markets for crude oil and natural gas over the period 1918 1999 it analyzes the time series properties of output and prices and estimates demand and supply elasticities during 1918 1973 and 1973 1999 oil and gas prices were stable during the first period they became volatile afterwards reflecting deep changes in the market structure following the oil shock in 1973 demand price elasticities were too low however demand income elasticities were high supply price elasticities were also too low the elasticity estimates help to explain the market power of the oil producers and price volatility in response to shocks and corroborate elasticity estimates in energy studies

gas and lng trading hubs hub indexation and destination flexibility in east asia abstract in the east asian gas markets issues like gas trading hubs hub indexed pricing and destination flexibility are being debated this paper examines the impact of a change in east asia s pricing benchmark and contract flexibility on the regional and global gas markets the paper uses the nexant world gas model a linear program with global cost minimization as the objective to our knowledge this study on hub competition price benchmark change and contract flexibility improvement in east asia will be the first in the literature and have real policy relevance the results show that both price benchmark change and contract flexibility improvements will create an overall benefit for the world and east asia importers but the impacts are different among exporters and importers however there is no evidence of competition among different benchmark hubs and no evidence that destination restrictions cause the asia premium it implies that removal of destination clauses has higher priority than the change to hub indexation for japan korea and chinese taipei but both should be treated equally in china the study also suggests that east asian importers should cooperate among themselves and with exporters to facilitate the hub creation and contract changes in east asia

the role of underground storage in the dynamics of the us natural gas market a threshold model analysis abstract natural gas is an important source of energy in the global economy hence understanding the drivers of its prices is of significant interest for the many economic agents this paper investigates the role of inventories for the dynamics of the u s natural gas market our contribution is twofold first within the threshold structural var framework we demonstrate that in a low inventory regime spot prices are more responsive to economic fundamentals in comparison to situation in which the inventories are high second we present evidence that the level of natural gas inventories have a significant effect on the relationship between spot and futures prices