the mineral economy a model for the shape of oil production curves abstract the production and the depletion of mineral resources and especially oil and fossil fuels has been an object of extensive predictive modeling these predictions are often derived from hubbert s model which is based on the fitting of the experimental data to a symmetric bell shaped curve although this model describes several historical cases in particular crude oil production in the lower 48 us states not all theoretical models for the mineral economy are based on symmetric curves also not much attention has been dedicated so far to the mechanisms which lead to such a behavior in particular scarce attention has been dedicated to the factors which may make the production curve asymmetric e g a decline in production more abrupt than the growth in the present paper the author uses a stochastic model to examine factors affecting these phenomena the results of the simulations indicate that the production curves of a non renewable resource may be asymmetric in dependence on factors such as the search strategy or the presence of technological improvements considering worldwide oil production the simulations indicate that the after peak downward slope might turn out to be considerably more steep than the upward slope something that could have unpleasant effects on the economy

an investigation of the role of china s urban population on coal consumption abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between urban population real gdp electricity production and coal consumption in china for the period 1971 2009 using a vector autoregression framework and a modified version of the granger 1969 causality test proposed by toda and yamamoto j econ 66 1995 225 the results suggest that there is causality running from gdp to coal consumption the variance decomposition analysis report that urban population and coal affect electricity production variability over the forecast period we also find that increasing urban population may negatively affect china s gdp over time policy measures aimed at influencing gdp could ultimately affect coal consumption

the infant export industry argument when actual consumption experiences are required to learn about a commodity s qualities subsidization of infant exporters can be justified as a first best policy measure this paper develops a dynamic model of optimal foreign market cultivation and examines the type and magnitude of trade intervention that is warranted and how this intervention adjusts over time it also focuses on changing production consumption and trade patterns as well as on welfare implications for individuals and society as the subsidization process unfolds international borrowing is allowed and is shown to cushion against severe welfare losses in the early phases of export subsidization l argument en faveur de la protection d une industrie d exportation dans la phase initiale de son developpement quand on ne peut apprecier les qualites d un bien qu en le consommant effectivement on peut defendre comme politique optimale les subventions aux exportateurs dans la phase initiale de production de leur bien ce memoire developpe un modele dynamique de mise en valeur optimale des marches etrangers et examine quel type d intervention est justifiee quelle intensite de support est necessaire et a quel moment cette aide doit etre modifiee a mesure que le temps passe l auteur examine aussi les implications pour la structure de la production de la consommation et du commerce de ce type d intervention ainsi que ses effets sur le niveau de bien etre des individus et de la collectivite l emprunt international permet d amortir le choc de pertes de bien etre importantes dans les phases initiales de la subvention des exportations

what is the limit of chinese coal supplies a stella model of hubbert peak abstract american geophysicist m king hubbert in 1956 first introduced a logistic equation to estimate the peak and lifetime production for oil of usa in his 1956 article nuclear energy and the fossil fuels in which he predicted the production peak for the usa hubbert used 80 pages of differential equations to draw his conclusions that earned him some criticism because only those with profound mathematical knowledge could understand hubbert presented in his 1982 article techniques of prediction as applied to the production of oil and gas an alternative method that was much more accessible since then a fierce debate ensued on the so called hubbert peak including also its methodology the production of coal fields generally appears like a bell shaped curve a gradual increase to maximum output then a short peak and a gradual decline some people thought the capacity of coal supply only depended on the economical cost and technological factors but did not consider the life cycle of coal fields namely that once the output has reached hubbert peak no matter by whatever effort one cannot increase production this paper proposes to use the generic stella model to simulate hubbert peak particularly for the chinese raw coal production this model is demonstrated as being robust according to this simulation the coal peak in china comes between 2025 and 2032 with peak production at about 3339 4452 million tonnes before the peak comes chinese coal output will grow by about 3 4 annually after the peak however the output will fall china s coal demand at 2050 would be about 2500 mt of raw coal and possess 42 6 of total primary energy the figure of coal demand 2500 mt would be beyond possible supply which is 2338 mt according to the hubbert curve of this paper the gap between coal supply and demand will be 7 of the demand at 2050 notably the sustainability of chinese coal dominated energy policy will be challenged seriously by this so called hubbert peak in the coming decades china should find a new energy development policy related to supply diversification

losing credibility the stabilization blues in exchange rate based stabilization programs credibility often follows a distinct time pattern at first it rises as the highly visible nominal anchor provides a sense of stability and hopes run high for a permanent solution to fiscal problems later as the domestic currency appreciates in real terms and the fiscal problems are not fully resolved the credibility of the program falls sometimes precipitously this paper develops a political economy model that focuses on the evolution of credibility over time and is consistent with the pattern just described inflation inertia and costly budget negotiations play a key role

limits to growth in the renewable energy sector abstract it has been well documented that population growth development of biological subsystems and the utilization of resources in ecology and economy frequently follow a logistic or sigmoid time development in the context of oil and gas extraction such development is known as hubbert s peak oil theory we observe that the logistic equation describes the historic development of nuclear and hydroelectric energy production as well previous studies have hypothesized that the present time fastest growing renewable technologies wind and solar energy will develop under similar constraints here we provide evidence that the installation of these technologies follow a logistic curve in contrast to what is commonly perceived the specific growth rate in energy extraction from wind turbines and photovoltaics have decreased in recent years in an optimistic scenario where we have included forecasted data from the solar and wind associations four years into the future the logistic model implies that the total installed capacity saturates at around 1 8 tw in 2030 this is in sharp contrast to the almost established belief that these energy technologies will experience an exponential growth far into this century

path towards achieving of china s 2020 carbon emission reduction target a discussion of low carbon energy policies at province level abstract following the announcement of the china s 2020 national target for the reduction of the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gdp by 40 45 compared with 2005 levels chinese provincial governments prepared to restructure provincial energy policy and plan their contribution to realizing the state reduction target focusing on fujian and anhui provinces as case studies this paper reviews two contrasting policies as a means for meeting the national reduction target that of the coastal province of fujian proposes to do so largely through the development of nuclear power whilst the coal rich province of anhui proposes to do so through its energy consumption rate rising at a lower rate than that of the rise in gdp in both cases renewable energy makes up a small proportion of their proposed 2020 energy structures the conclusion discusses in depth concerns about nuclear power policy energy efficiency energy consumption strategy and problems in developing renewable energy

the role of export subsisies when product quality is unknown abstract we explore the role of export subsidies when foreign goods are initially of unknown quality to domestic consumers absent export subsidies entry of high quality firms may be blocked by their inability to sell at prices reflecting their true quality export subsidies can break this entry barrier and increase welfare moreover even when high quality firms find it possible to signal their quality to consumers through an introductory pricing strategy a rolefor government policy can arise the signal low introductory price transfers surplus from foreign producers to domestic consumers and can be avoided with an appropriate export tax subsidy policy

alternative models of spatial competition the concept of a spatial price equilibrium underlies most studies of spatial movement and competition however this concept is based upon a notion of perfectly competitive markets that is often unrealistic for many markets such as the markets for oil and coal and ignores the existence of local spatial monopolies this paper presents alternative economic models of spatial competition and shows how all of these models can be solved with essentially the same solution algorithm specifically after reformulating the classical spatial price equilibrium model and two extensions of takayama and judge s monopoly model we state and analyze a cournot nash model and discuss solution algorithms we then generalize these models and algorithms to multiple commodities and networks with transshipment nodes we conclude with a brief discussion of possible extensions of this class of models and associated algorithms

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

energy backcasting a proposed method of policy analysis abstract there have recently emerged a number of analyses which suggest that there exists a large potential for soft energy policy paths it is difficult to illustrate this argument using conventional forecasting techniques therefore these analyses tend to use an alternative method called energy backcasting this involves setting policy goals and then determining how those goals could be met as yet however little attention has been paid to the theoretical aspects of backcasting techniques in this article a specific backcasting method is proposed which it is argued allows consideration of many factors obscured in traditional energy supply and demand forecasts

speculation and the decision to abandon a fixed exchange rate regime this paper investigates the extent to which it is possible for speculative attacks to be predictable given information on economic fundamentals a standard model of predictable attacks is extended to incorporate an optimizing monetary authority it is shown that while incorporating a forward looking monetary authority improves our understanding of many observed phenomena it also implies that the branch of the literature that places emphasis on predictable movements in fundamentals cannot generate predictable speculative attacks in addition the model provides useful insights into the viability of temporary nominal anchor policies and a theoretical foundation for an important empirical methodology

protection and the product line monopoly and product quality the product line decision of a monopolist is analyzed and used to study the effect of specific and ad valorem taxes on the entire product line while specific taxes or quotas raise average quality ad valorem taxes may not the welfare consequences of such policies when the monopolist is a home one and when he she is a foreign one are discussed with a home monopolist both specific and ad valorem subsidies are welfare improving while with a foreign monopolist their welfare properties depend on the distribution of consumers copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the transition towards renewable energies physical limits and temporal conditions abstract the perspectives of the depletion of fossil energy resources together with the consequences of climate change have provoked the development of numerous national and pluri national energy policies however there have been few overall studies on the evolution of these resources this paper uses a dynamic model to study the exhaustion patterns of world fossil and nuclear fuels and their possible replacement by renewable energy sources the results show that peak oil will be the first restriction and it will not be easily overcome electric vehicles can produce some interesting savings but they are insufficient to avoid the decline in oil biofuels are even more limited due to the enormous extensions of fertile land they require and their low productivity this shows that overcoming the decline in oil will need much more ambitious policies than the mere substitution of technology if the oil economy relationship does not change substantially world economic growth may be seriously limited or even negative in contrast the production of electrical energy is not such a worrying problem in the short and middle term

incentive compatibility in signaling games with a continuum of types on donne deux resultats utiles pour demontrer l existence et pour caracteriser des equilibres de separation dans des jeux de signalement

the quality of export products and optimal trade policy this paper demonstrates that voluntary export restraints may be socially desirable to upgrade the quality of export products when informational externalities in the recognition of quality result in suboptimal production of quality by competitive firms and the enforcement of socially desirable quality is very costly optimal trade policy calls for export restrictions these restrictions apply to both size and number of firms in the export industry export licenses combined with a specific production tax cum subsidy represent a suitable pair of instruments copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

commercial policy and imperfect discrimination by a foreign monopolist this paper examines the effects of commercial policy and the qualit y of imports that are supplied by a multiproduct foreign monopolist th e author finds that a specific quota on some imported products leads to upgrading of the quality of imports and enhances national welfare a specific tariff which does not lead to a decrease in the varieties of imported products does not affect the quality of imports and result s in enhanced national welfare in contrast an ad valorem tariff leads to lower qualities of imported goods and lowers consumer surplus a general quota is undesirable since it results in a lower quality of imports and lower national warfare copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

peak globalization climate change oil depletion and global trade abstract the global trade in goods depends upon reliable inexpensive transportation of freight along complex and long distance supply chains global warming and peak oil undermine globalization by their effects on both transportation costs and the reliable movement of freight countering the current geographic pattern of comparative advantage with higher transportation costs climate change and peak oil will thus result in peak globalization after which the volume of exports will decline as measured by ton miles of freight policies designed to mitigate climate change and peak oil are very unlikely to change this result due to their late implementation contradictory effects and insufficient magnitude the implication is that supply chains will become shorter for most products and that production of goods will be located closer to where they are consumed

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

u s oil dependence 2014 is energy independence in sight abstract the importance of reducing u s oil dependence may have changed in light of developments in the world oil market over the past two decades since 2005 increased domestic production and decreased oil use have cut u s import dependence in half the direct costs of oil dependence to the u s economy are estimated under four u s energy information administration scenarios to 2040 the key premises of the analysis are that the primary oil market failure is the use of market power by opec and that u s economic vulnerability is a result of the quantity of oil consumed the lack of readily available economical substitutes and the quantity of oil imported monte carlo simulations of future oil market conditions indicate that the costs of u s oil dependence are likely to increase in constant dollars but decrease relative to u s gross domestic product unless oil resources are larger than estimated by the u s energy information administration reducing oil dependence therefore remains a valuable goal for u s energy policy and an important co benefit of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions

symmetric equilibrium existence and optimality in differentiated product markets abstract equilibrium existence and optimality are analysed in a market for products differentiated by their variety a game of three stages is analysed firms enter in the first stage choose varieties in the second stage and choose prices in the third stage the existence of subgame perfect equilibria is established at equilibrium products are symmetrically located in the space of characteristics and are offered at equal prices the surplus maximizing solution is characterized and it is shown that surplus maximizing product diversity is lower than the equilibrium one

quality choice trade policy and firm incentives quality choice is examined in a duopoly with one foreign and one domestic firm where consumers have similar preferences for quality but different preferences for brands firms make quality commitments prior to choosing price and policy intervention assumes several forms the policy conclusions depend on whether firms face set up costs in raising product quality in the absence of set up costs both domestic and foreign firms make socially optimal quality choices in the presence of set up costs the foreign firm and often the domestic firm sets quality below the socially optimal level incomplete information alters these conclusions however copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

import competition product quality reversal and welfare abstract we investigate product quality in an import competing country using the framework of vertical product differentiation comparison of three polices suggests that the quality based r d subsidy brings quality reversal leading to a win win win equilibrium in consumer surplus domestic profit and social welfare

a variant of the hubbert curve for world oil production forecasts abstract in recent years the economic and political aspects of energy problems have prompted many researchers and analysts to focus their attention on the hubbert peak theory with the aim of forecasting future trends in world oil production in this paper a model that attempts to contribute in this regard is presented it is based on a variant of the well known hubbert curve in addition the sum of multiple hubbert curves two cycles is used to provide a better fit for the historical data on oil production crude and natural gas liquid ngl taking into consideration three possible scenarios for oil reserves this approach allowed us to forecast when peak oil production referring to crude oil and ngl should occur in particular by assuming a range of 2250 3000 gigabarrels gb for ultimately recoverable conventional oil our predictions foresee a peak between 2009 and 2021 at 29 3 32 1 gb year

growing chinese coal use dramatic resource and environmental implications chinese coal consumption continues to rise as the country s economy and industry expand coal is particularly critical for china s fast growing power sector generating about 80 of electricity output notwithstanding the importance of coal and electricity many international forecasts today underestimate their rising use in china this paper acknowledges the current world financial crisis and assumes that chinese gdp growth to 2025 will not again approach double digit levels using the scenario analysis this paper demonstrates that even with conservative assumptions about chinese gdp growth and income elasticity of electric demand to 2025 the country will likely experience much higher coal demand and emit much greater volumes of carbon dioxide than forecast by various international energy agencies the paper also analyzes how china s domestic coal reserves may be threatened within two decades possibly affecting long term economic growth in china as well as world coal prices

oligopolistic competition and international trade quantity and quality restrictions abstract we examine trade restrictions such as quantity and quality limitations on imports in an oligopolistic industry consisting of foreign and domestic firms we find that the effects of trade policy hinge on the location of the quality produced by the firms in the quality spectrum a quota leads to positive protection while minimum quality standards leads to negative protection furthermore minimum standards lower national welfare and a quota has an ambiguous effect on welfare

estimating coal production peak and trends of coal imports in china more than 20 countries in the world have already reached a maximum capacity in their coal production peak coal production such as japan the united kingdom and germany china home to the third largest coal reserves in the world is the world s largest coal producer and consumer making it part of the big six at present however china s coal production has not yet reached its peak in this article logistic curves and gaussian curves are used to predict china s coal peak and the results show that it will be between the late 2020s and the early 2030s based on the predictions of coal production and consumption china s net coal import could be estimated for coming years this article also analyzes the impact of china s net coal import on the international coal market especially the asian market and on china s economic development and energy security

great expectations and hard times the argentine convertibility plan this paper studies the process that led to the argentine crisis the analysis concentrates on the sequence of public and private decisions together with the varying perceptions and policy incentives that motivated them in the 1990s argentina searched for a new growth trend during much of the period the behavior of agents seemed to be based on the anticipation that current and future incomes could sustain a value of domestic spending much higher than in the past in both real and dollar terms the government was motivated to reinforce those expectations for signaling and political economy reasons the monetary regime not only provided a very visible nominal anchor but also operated as a basic framework for financial contracts mostly denominated in dollars dollar contracting implicitly presumed that the dollar value of incomes would support the servicing of debts despite precautionary actions on the part of the government and the private sector over time an increasing mass of decisions and contracts came to rely on the sustainability of the real exchange rate in the late 1990s exports stopped rising and the foreign supply of credit tightened the economy contracted in the face of these constraints and the solvency of the government was called into question the financial system was vulnerable both in the event of devaluation and in the event of a large deflation cum adjustment convertibility proved to have very large exit costs as was implicit in its design and management

trade policy and its impact on quality of imports this paper examines the role of trade policies in influencing a foreign monopolist s decision on price quantity and in particular the quality of its product we show that a specific tariff leads to higher quality whereas an ad valorem tariff usually does the opposite quotas and specific tariffs are shown to be equivalent and both dominate an ad valorem tariff in terms of welfare we also show that subjecting imports to minimum quality requirements hampers national welfare finally we present a comprehensive ranking of all the policy instruments considered in this paper

logistic growth curve modeling of us energy production and consumption abstract this research used four parameter multi cycle logistic growth curve models on us energy information agency annual data from 1949 to 2015 to produce fixed condition forecasts of us energy production and consumption to 2040 these models and forecasts were used to assess the ability of us energy production sources to meet demand to anticipate production and technology challenges and to make general policy recommendations the logistic fixed condition forecasts indicated the ongoing increases in total us energy production dominated by crude oil and natural gas production will likely peak in 2017 at 95 0 quadrillion quad btu then rapidly decrease through 2040 at 36 2 quad btu while total us energy consumption indicated an ongoing plateau at 98 1 quad btu new growth cycles not evident in the 2015 data will certainly occur mitigating the decline in energy production before 2040 however without adequate foresight and preemptive action it is possible that new production growth would not be adequate to reverse the decline given historical growth trends therefore in addition to continued increases in energy efficiency reductions in use and implementation of carbon management technologies direct effort towards the sustainable development of substantial new growth cycles in all energy production sources through adequate investment of resources should be a priority of the us energy industry policy makers and the public alike

impacts of unconventional gas development on china s natural gas production and import abstract china has become a net importer of natural gas as a result of rapidly increasing consumption in recent years a production peak would exist since natural gas is an exhaustible resource as conventional natural gas production peak approaches the development of unconventional natural gas is attracting increasing attention china s unconventional natural gas reserves are abundant but exploration is still in its infancy stage thus with the increasing quest for low carbon development and china s natural gas price reform studying the impacts of unconventional gas development on china s natural gas supply and price reform under different scenarios has practical significance in this paper we predict china s natural gas production trends in different scenarios and forecast natural gas demand this paper concludes that the exploitation of unconventional natural gas will greatly improve china s annual natural gas production and delay the production peak year this is important for china s natural gas supply security as it can decrease dependence on imported gas furthermore as the cleanest fossil fuel it will enable more time and space for renewable energy development given the many costs and controversies surrounding its development in china

forecasting natural gas supply in china production peak and import trends china s natural gas consumption has increased rapidly in recent years making china a net gas importer as a nonrenewable energy the gas resource is exhaustible based on the forecast of this article china s gas production peak is likely to approach in 2022 however china is currently in the industrialization and urbanization stage and its natural gas consumption will persistently increase with china s gas production peak china will have to face a massive expansion in gas imports as the largest developing country china s massive imports of gas will have an effect on the international gas market in addition as china s natural gas price is still controlled by the government and has remained at a low level the massive imports of higher priced gas will exert great pressure on china s gas price reform

overnight borrowing interest rates and extreme value theory we examine the dynamics of extreme values of overnight borrowing rates in an inter bank money market before a financial crisis during which overnight borrowing rates rocketed up to simple annual 4000 percent it is shown that the generalized pareto distribution fits well to the extreme values of the interest rate distribution we also provide predictions of extreme overnight borrowing rates before the crisis the examination of tails extreme values provides answers to such issues as what are the extreme movements expected in financial markets have we already seen the largest moves is there a possibility for even larger movements and are there theoretical processes that can model the type of fat tails in the observed data the answers to such questions are essential for proper management of financial exposures and laying ground for regulations

stabilization and its discontents argentina s economic restructuring in the 1990s abstract this paper assesses the argentine stabilization and market reform strategies since 1989 we argue that argentina may be penned in by its own success exchange rate targeting quelled inflation but the resulting real appreciation has limited export and employment growth microeconomic reforms raised efficiency but have threatened income distribution and hence political stability exclusive styles of policy making helped enact reform but have led to corruption and policy insensitivity and contributed to rising social discontent we close by suggesting how a second generation of reforms could tackle these issues and spread the proceeds of reform to a wider segment of the argentine public

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

exogenous oil supply shocks how big are they and how much do they matter for the u s economy abstract the paper proposes a new measure of exogenous oil supply shocks the timing the magnitude and the sign of this measure may differ greatly from current state of the art estimates it is shown that only a small fraction of the observed oil price increases during oil crisis periods can be attributed to exogenous oil production disruptions exogenous oil supply shocks cause a sharp drop of u s real gdp growth after five quarters rather than an immediate and sustained reduction in economic growth and a spike in cpi inflation after three quarters overall exogenous oil supply shocks made remarkably little difference for the evolution of the u s economy since the 1970s although they did matter for some historical episodes

when are stabilizations delayed alesina drazen revisited abstract in an influential article alesina and drazen 1991 why are stabilizations delayed american economic review 81 1170 1188 model delay of stabilization as the result of a struggle between political groups supporting reform plans with different distributional implications in this paper we show that ex ante asymmetries in the costs of delay for the groups will reduce the probability of conflict and will lead to a shorter expected delay accurate common information about the cost of delay may lead to no delay at all in an asymmetric conflict a wider divergence in the distributional implications of reform will reduce the probability of conflict but will lead to a longer expected delay we motivate the asymmetric model of delay by reference to latin american episodes of the 1980s

coal lumps vs electrons how do chinese bulk energy transport decisions affect the global steam coal market this paper demonstrates the ways in which dierent chinese bulk energy transport strategies aect the future steam coal market in china and in the rest of the world an increase in chinese demand for steam coal will lead to a growing need for additional domestic infrastructure as production hubs and demand centers are spatially separated and domestic transport costs could inuence the future chinese steam coal supply mix if domestic transport capacity is available only at elevated costs chinese power generators could turn to the global trade markets and further increase steam coal imports increased chinese imports could then yield signicant changes in steam coal market economics on a global scale this eect is analyzed in china where coal is mainly transported by railway and in another setting where coal energy is transported as electricity for this purpose a spatial equilibrium model for the global steam coal market has been developed one major nding is that if coal is converted into electricity early in the supply chain worldwide marginal costs of supply are lower than if coal is transported via railway furthermore china s dependence on international imports is signicantly reduced in this context allocation of welfare changes particularly

three laws of energy transitions the paper formulates and explores a hypothesis on three general energy transition laws the law of stable long term energy costs to income ratio the law of improving energy quality and the law of growing energy productivity these laws are essential for shaping long term projections and checking for their consistency all three are rooted in amazingly stable in time and universal across countries energy costs to income ratios limited energy purchasing power sets up thresholds which if exceeded bring asymmetry to energy demand to price elasticity the author believes that the theoretical postulate on the substantial substitution among production factors which is used in the production functions theory may be incorrect in reality innovations mainly lead to the substitution of a low quality production factor with the same yet of a better quality improving energy quality with stable costs to income ratio is accompanied by growing energy productivity energy costs to income thresholds are indicators allowing for better projections of oil prices

coal use embodied in globalized world economy from source to sink through supply chain abstract an empirical analysis of coal use embodied in the globalized world economy is performed in the present work via the application of a systems multi regional input output model for 2012 the use of primary coal is tracked from the sources of exploitation to the sinks of final use through inter regional trade as a global supply network mainland china is revealed to be the largest coal user but the per capita coal use embodied in its household consumption is only a quarter of that in the united states and doesn t even exceed the level in the united kingdom the leader in the movement away from coal the global trade volume of coal use is in magnitude calculated up to seventy percent of the world total coal exploitation the united states is demonstrated to be the world s leading importer of coal use of which the imports are dominated by non coal products as indirect coal imports in contrast mainland china is the leading exporter mainly due to the massive exports of commodities made in china two new indicators of self sufficiency rates are developed in order to explore the direct and indirect external coal dependence of the region two fifths of the coal finally used by the united states turns out to be exploited from foreign areas which is different from the result that the united states has no dependence on foreign coal resources based on the conventional external dependence degree this overview of coal use aims to provide a global insight into energy sustainability as well as a sound scientific reference for policy making for global resources management and climate change mitigation

disinflation programs under policy uncertainty abstract this paper uses a model with endogenous labor supply to study exchange rate based inflation stabilization programs under uncertainty regarding the duration of the program the paper finds that the output and consumption dynamics induced by these programs are extremely sensitive to whether the programs are perceived to have a chance of continuing permanently or whether they are expected to end in finite time it is shown that the business cycle dynamics for output that are typically associated with these programs arise only when the policy is expected to collapse in finite time furthermore for the purposes of rationalizing the stylized facts the uncertain duration channel appears to induce a fundamental tension between the consumption dynamics and the current account dynamics these results raise doubts regarding the explanatory power of the uncertain duration channel in particular and the credibility channel in general

global energy crunch how different parts of the world would react to a peak oil scenario peak oil theory predicts that oil production will soon start a terminal decline most authors imply that no adequate alternate resource and technology will be available to replace oil as the backbone resource of industrial society this article uses historical cases from countries that have gone through a similar experience as the best available analytical strategy to understand what will happen if the predictions of peak oil theorists are right the author is not committed to a particular version of peak oil theory but deems the issue important enough to explore how various parts of the world should be expected to react from the historical record he is able to identify predatory militarism totalitarian retrenchment and socioeconomic adaptation as three possible trajectories

the inclusion of economic and environmental factors in the ecological cumulative exergy consumption analysis of industrial processes abstract resource economic and environmental impacts are three major factors in the evaluation of industrial processes all of them might imply certain contributions of ecosystems services a comprehensive accounting of these factors is critical to sustainability assessment of industrial activities at the ecological scale ecological cumulative exergy consumption ecec analysis is a promising approach to address these issues however the current knowledge on ecec is incomplete especially in economic investment and environmental impact in this paper ecec analysis is extended to quantify purchased resources and pollutant emissions of industrial production accordingly an extended ecec framework is proposed integrating the resource economic and environmental factors furthermore for better understanding of sustainability a concept of ecological life cycle cost elcc is put forward revealing the relationship between the ecec and traditional economic evaluation finally a case study of china s raw coal production is used to illustrate the features of these proposed frameworks the ecec and elcc analyses indicate the great ecological influence of raw coal which has been underestimated by the traditional assessment approaches

coal production forecast and low carbon policies in china abstract with rapid economic growth and industrial expansion china consumes more coal than any other nation therefore it is particularly crucial to forecast china s coal production to help managers make strategic decisions concerning china s policies intended to reduce carbon emissions and concerning the country s future needs for domestic and imported coal such decisions which must consider results from forecasts will have important national and international effects this article proposes three improved forecasting models based on grey systems theory the discrete grey model dgm the rolling dgm rdgm and the p value rdgm we use the statistical data of coal production in china from 1949 to 2005 to validate the effectiveness of these improved models to forecast the data from 2006 to 2010 the performance of the models demonstrates that the p value rdgm has the best forecasting behaviour over this historical time period furthermore this paper forecasts coal production from 2011 to 2015 and suggests some policies for reducing carbon and other emissions that accompany the rise in forecasted coal production

trade policy and quality leadership in transition economies trade policy and quality leadership in transition economies are analyzed in a duopoly model of trade and vertical product differentiation we first show that the incidence of trade liberalization is sensitive to whether firms in transition economies are producers of low or high quality second we find that neither free trade nor the absence of a domestic subsidy are optimal both a tariff and a subsidy increase price competition and while the former extracts foreign rents the latter results in quality upgrading third there exists a rationale for a government to commit to a socially optimal policy to induce quality leadership by the domestic firm when cost asymmetries are low finally we establish an equivalence result between the effects of long run exchange rate changes and those of trade policy on price competition but not on social welfare

did investment become green in china evidence from a sectoral panel analysis from 2003 to 2012 under conditions of policy incentives and energy transition an investment is considered to become green if greater investment would support a reduction in the proportion of total energy consumption involving coal use however few empirical studies have attempted to investigate green investment in china at the sector level using panel data for 5 sectors in china between 2003 and 2012 we tested the relationships between investment and different factors including carbon dioxide co2 emission reduction policies and energy structure by building panel models for the national sample the results demonstrated that investment did not become green and mainly relied on gross domestic product gdp during the 2003 2012 period in china although investments in the industry sector and the commerce and services sector were weakened by the co2 emission regulations chinese climate policies had no effect on investment in the agriculture sector or the construction sector and had a positive effect on investment in the transportation sector moreover the proportion of total energy consumption involving coal use had no effect on investment in the construction sector or the commerce and services sector but had a negative effect on investments in the agriculture sector and the transportation sector investment in the industry sector showed strong viscosity to low price coal consumption finally we propose a series of policy implications based on the test results which may guide green investment

eco labels trade and protectionism eco labels are suspected to serve protectionist purposes we analyze the choice between an environmental standard and a voluntary eco label scheme in a partial trade model with one domestic firm and one foreign firm the environmental standard will only apply to the domestic firm while both firms can adopt the eco label pollution is production related and domestic consumers demand products that are produced in an environmentally friendly way our results show that it may be optimal for the domestic government to introduce an eco label and get both firms to adopt the label instead of setting an environmental standard however to what extent this policy serves protectionist purposes is ambiguous in particular if the willingness to pay for green products is sufficient to cover the pollution abatement costs of the foreign firm foreign firm profit will increase while domestic firm profit will decrease compared to the outcome with a domestic environmental standard on the other hand if the willingness to pay for green products is insufficient the foreign firm would be better off with a domestic environmental standard

dynamics of energy technologies and global change technological choices largely determine the long term characteristics of industrial society including impacts on the natural environment however the treatment of technology in existing models that are used to project economic and environmental futures remains highly stylized based on work over two decades at iiasa we present a useful typology for technology analysis and discuss methods that can be used to analyze the impact of technological changes on the global environment especially global warming our focus is energy technologies the main source of many atmospheric environmental problems we show that much improved treatment of technology is possible with a combination of historical analysis and new modeling techniques in the historical record we identify characteristic l such network e ects yield high barriers to entry even for superior competitors these simple observations allow three improvements to modeling of technological change and its consequences for global environmental change one is that the replacement of long lived infrastructures over time has also replaced the fuels that power the economy to yield progressively more energy per unit of carbon pollution from coal to oil to gas such replacement has d they also include endogenous generation of s we show that doing so can yield projections with lessened environmental impacts without necessarily incurring negative e ect on the economy arriving on that path by the year 2100 depends on intervening actions such as incentives to promote greater diversity in technology and lower barriers to entry for new infrastructures that could accelerate historical trends of decarbonization 1999 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

china s energy security and its challenges towards 2035 abstract within the last twenty years china has become dependent on import of coal oil and natural gas especially oil is now an economic and a security concern by the chinese regime and key international stakeholders until 2035 china will account for one fourth of the global net growth in global gas consumption and more than half of the net growth in oil consumption the future demand cannot be covered by china s own conventional and unconventional sources pipelines from neighboring countries can cover more than half of the needed import of natural gas by 2030 but only 10 percent of the import demand of oil is secured so far even if china attempts to address its insufficient supply of oil by increased investments in overseas oil fields there is still a large gap furthermore the oil import will largely come from politically unstable countries and regions and the bulk of the supplies must be shipped through the potentially insecure hormuz and malacca straits the ongoing territorial disputes with neighboring countries regarding areas with gas and oil reserves in contested waters bear evidence to regional conflict potentials and china appears to engage more actively in energy diplomacy and regional cooperation