estimation on oil demand and oil saving potential of china s road transport sector national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013 national natural science foundation of china 71203186 fundamental research funds for the central universities 2010221051 national science foundation for disting

does the type of political regime matter for trade and labor market policies this article uses cross country data to examine the link between a country s type of political regime and its degree of openness and labor market distortion the analysis indicates that more authoritarian regimes are associated with higher trade protection and greater labor market distortions this supports the view that political authoritarianism may be counterproductive to development in important respects

a multiplier decomposition method to analyze poverty alleviation abstract the objective of this paper is to present a multiplier decomposition method focusing on poverty alleviation the decomposition captures the various mechanisms and linkages through which a production sector s output contributes to poverty alleviation within a socioeconomic system represented by a social accounting matrix sam it is shown that a multiplier can be broken down into two multiplicative effects the distributional and interdependency effects the decomposition method is applied to the case of indonesia a key policy implication is that the human capital of the poor needs to be enhanced if they are not to be sealed off from the industrialization process

global impact of uncertainties in china s gas market abstract this paper examines the uncertainties in chinese gas markets analyze the reasons and quantify their impact on the world gas market a literature review found significant variability among the outlooks on china s gas sector further assessment found that uncertainties in economic growth structural change in markets environmental regulations price and institutional changes contribute to the uncertainties the analysis of china s demand and supply uncertainties with a world gas trading model found significant changes in global production trade patterns and spot prices with pipeline exporters being most affected china s domestic production and pipeline imports from central asia are the major buffers that can offset much of the uncertainties the study finds an asymmetric phenomenon pipeline imports are responding to china s uncertainties in both low and high demand scenarios while lng imports are only responding to high demand scenario the major reasons are higher top levels and the current practice of import only up to the minimum top levels for lng as well as a lack of liberalized gas markets the study shows that it is necessary to create lng markets that can respond to market dynamics through either a reduction of top levels or change of pricing mechanisms to hub indexation

the impacts of petroleum price fluctuations on income distribution across ethnic groups in malaysia crude oil price hikes have compelled governments of developing countries to let domestic prices of energy increase fiscal priorities made it impossible to fully compensate the hikes by raising energy subsidies this paper examines the potential impacts of a limited deregulation of the petroleum price on the income distribution in malaysia paying specific attention to differences in impacts on major ethnic groups we introduce an extended social accounting matrix sam model which not only incorporates substitution possibilities among production inputs and consumption goods but also allows for the exogenous determination of the price of intermediate inputs the results of simulations indicate that distributional impacts of rising petroleum prices tend to be regressive affecting poor people more severely than richer people all ethnic groups experience income loss with the real incomes of malay households which are relatively poor on average more than the chinese and indian households which are the generally richer

the impact of research led agricultural productivity growth on poverty reduction in africa asia and latin america abstract twenty percent of the world s population or 1 2 billion live on less than 1 per day 70 of these are rural and 90 are in asia and sub saharan africa research led technological change in agriculture generates sufficient productivity growth to give high rates of return in africa and asia and has a substantial impact on poverty currently reducing this number by 27 million per annum whereas productivity growth in industry and services has no impact the per capita cost of poverty reduction by means of agricultural research expenditures in africa is 144 and in asia 180 or 50 cents per day but this is covered by output growth by contrast the per capita cost for the richer countries of latin america is over 11 000

china s co2 emission structure for 1957 2017 through transitions in economic and environmental policies abstract this paper provides an insight into the structure of co 2 emissions in china through transitions in economic and environmental policies for the period of 1957 2017 by using input output and network analysis with newly compiled environmentally extended historical input output tables of china these tables which include firm level industry level and macro level statistical data are the first environmentally extended input output tables covering the years in the early stage of the people s republic of china the results present the following two main findings the first is due to the stable economic structure associated with the independent economic policy china s emission structure has been stable for more than 60 years heavy industry has contributed about 80 of co 2 emissions since the 1950s on a second account although the emission structure was stable stricter environmental controls and regulations led to a decrease of the growth rate of co 2 emissions after 2010 against this background as a policy choice of china instead of carbon leakage that could break up the stable economic structure balanced technology upgrading across all sectors induced by stricter environmental controls is a realistic way for china to achieve increased energy efficiency emission mitigation and economic development so that the country can keep the promise of reducing co 2 emissions after they peak around 2030

organized labor and the political economy of product market distortions why are economic reforms reversed through strikes and demonstrations in some countries but backed by the labor movement in other countries why do product and labor market distortions differ so much across countries this article addresses these questions by means of a simple heuristic model of the economy that replicates in an integrated manner several independent results from the recent political economy literature unlike most of this literature however the model focuses on the role played by organized labor rather than by rent seeking firms and guilds a two stage game between the government and organized labor determines the level of product market distortions for example import tariffs in the first stage the players may undertake costly actions such as redistributing income or striking in order to increase their bargaining power in the second stage they negotiate over product market distortions and wages under very general assumptions several policy regimes exist changes in the key parameters of the economy may trigger a switch in the strategy of trade unions from confrontation to cooperation and hence change the policy regime cross country data highlight that in spite of its simplicity the model reproduces some observed empirical regularities

evaluating china s natural gas supply security based on ecological network analysis abstract growing role of natural gas as an effective policy choice has kindled the discussions surrounding the security of its supplies in the policy circles of the chinese government this study tries to evaluate china s natural gas supply security and employs a system oriented modelling approach namely ecological network analysis ena to integrate all the critical compartments of china s natural gas supply system several ena indicators are constructed which disclose that domestic natural gas production contributes significantly to china s natural gas supply system in comparison with all the external natural gas suppliers in addition the variations in a system stability indicator suggest that diversification of external natural gas suppliers has a positive influence on china s natural gas supply security furthermore the results revealed that china s natural gas supply security policy is orchestrated on following features 1 to increase the investment in the upstream natural gas production sector to boost its domestic production in order to reduce its import requirements and 2 to diversify the external natural gas supplies by sources and routes to reduce the level of the economic and supply disruption related risks

nonlinear production path and an alternative reserves estimate for south asian natural gas abstract natural gas is a finite resource that may be estimated directly through geophysical methodologies or indirectly through historical production data the rapid growth in consumption of this limited natural resource strictly connected to the oil economy may lead to its imminent depletion and a related economic crisis the transition to a new economy based on renewable and sustainable energy resources is a crucial challenge for the next decades at world and regional levels with different dynamics therefore an accurate forecast of the availability of natural gas is important to ensure a sustainable energy policy providing essential information about the timing of this transition postulating a finite life cycle of recoverable resources in this paper we investigate the natural gas production of four neighboring south asian states bangladesh india myanmar and pakistan we use a number of homogeneous diffusion models with convenient extensions and check the model validation in terms of prediction capability the results indicate that india and myanmar have already extracted more than 50 of their ultimately recoverable natural gas resources urr whereas good prospects for natural gas extraction remain in the near future for bangladesh and pakistan the four neighboring asian states can build a sustainable power reserve system for natural gas to meet their increasing demand within a medium term horizon some further policy implications are also suggested in this paper

the status of conventional world oil reserves hype or cause for concern the status of world oil reserves is a contentious issue polarised between advocates of peak oil who believe production will soon decline and major oil companies that say there is enough oil to last for decades in reality much of the disagreement can be resolved through clear definition of the grade type and reporting framework used to estimate oil reserve volumes while there is certainly vast amounts of fossil fuel resources left in the ground the volume of oil that can be commercially exploited at prices the global economy has become accustomed to is limited and will soon decline the result is that oil may soon shift from a demand led market to a supply constrained market the capacity to meet the services provided by future liquid fuel demand is contingent upon the rapid and immediate diversification of the liquid fuel mix the transition to alternative energy carriers where appropriate and demand side measures such as behavioural change and adaptation the successful transition to a poly fuel economy will also be judged on the adequate mitigation of environmental and social costs

global oil gas depletion an overview abstract the world s production of conventional hydrocarbons will soon decline hydrocarbon shortages are inevitable unless radical changes occur in demand or in the supply of non conventional hydrocarbons the details are as follows global conventional oil supply is currently at political risk this is because the sum of conventional oil production from all countries in the world except the five main middle east suppliers is near the maximum set by physical resource limits should middle east suppliers decide to substantially curtail supply the shortfall cannot be replaced by conventional oil from other sources world conventional oil supply will soon be at physical risk the middle east countries have only little spare operational capacity and this will be increasingly called upon as oil production declines elsewhere large investments in middle east production if they occur could raise output but only to a limited extent a partial exception is iraq but even here there would be significant delays before prospects are confirmed and infrastructure is in place if demand is maintained and if large investments in middle east capacity are not made the world will face the prospect of oil shortages in the near term even with large investments resource limits will force middle east production to decline fairly soon and hence also global conventional oil production the date of this resource limited global peak depends on the size of middle east reserves which are poorly known and unreliably reported best estimates put the physical peak of global conventional oil production between 5 and 10 years from now the world contains large quantities of non conventional oil and various oil substitutes but the rapidity of the decline in the production of conventional oil makes it probable that these non conventional sources cannot come on stream fast enough to fully compensate the result will be a sustained global oil shortage for conventional gas the world s original endowment is probably about the same in energy terms as its endowment of conventional oil since less gas has been used so far compared to oil the world will turn increasingly to gas as oil declines but the global peak in conventional gas production is already in sight in perhaps 20 years and hence the global peak of all hydrocarbons oil plus gas is likely to be in about 10 or so years

the price and income elasticity of china s natural gas demand a multi sectoral perspective abstract natural gas as a clean low carbon energy will play an important role in the world s low carbon energy transformation in this paper research on the elasticity of natural gas demand is surveyed and it is found that the price and income elasticities of natural gas demand in different sectors are distinctive in particular this paper constructs an autoregressive distribution lag model to study the elasticity of natural gas demand in various sectors of china the results show that except for the residents sector the long run price elasticity of natural gas demand in other sectors is greater than 0 which is contrary to the estimates of developed countries the demand for natural gas is complementary to coal in industrial and power generation sectors which is also different from developed countries the elasticity of natural gas demand in residents sector is lack in price elasticity but abundant in income elasticity which is similar to the developed countries the results also shows that natural gas and oil are substitutes for each other in the transportation sector and natural gas and coal are substitutes for each other in service sector

growth and inequality in india analysis of an extended social accounting matrix summary based on an extended social accounting matrix sam for 2002 03 this study shows how sectoral growth in india affects inequality a breakdown of the wage account into three educational levels and 10 sectors of employment improves the link between sectoral expansion and household income in the sam the results show that only agricultural growth reduces inequality while growth in heavy manufacturing and services sectors raises inequality given india s current growth pattern inequality is likely to increase further in an analysis of the standard sam growth in any sector would appear to reduce inequality which underlines the importance of our extension

political regimes and economic growth arguments that relate regimes to growth focus on property rights pressures for immediate consumption and the autonomy of dictators while everyone seems to agree that secure property rights foster growth it is controversial whether democracies or dictatorships better secure these rights the main mechanism by which democracy is thought to hinder growth is pressure for immediate consumption which reduces investment only states that are institutionally insulated from such pressures can resist them and democratic states are not the main argument against dictatorships is that authoritarian rulers have no interest in maximizing total output these views are summarized in turn

china s natural gas consumption peak and factors analysis a regional perspective abstract china s natural gas consumption usually accounts for a small proportion of total energy consumption but it has increased rapidly in recent years china has a vast territory and the level of economic development varies significantly across regions in this paper a panel unit root and heterogeneous panel cointegration methods are applied to investigate the natural gas consumption of 30 provinces in mainland china the influencing factors of natural gas consumption are also investigated from a long term point of view china s per capita natural gas consumption seems to fit the energy kuznets curve which implies that the current rapid growth rate of natural gas consumption would not be sustained in the long term there is a peak at 200 450 cubic meters which is about 2 4 times the current consumption per capita of china and about 7 16 of russia the specific peak consumption level and peak year depend on the speed of economic development and the pace of pipeline network development in summary gas population rate plays a more important role in gas consumption in the long run and the impact of gdp weakens the potential of gas consumption of the different regions differs greatly

is china s natural gas market globally connected abstract the rise of the shale gas industry and the need for clean low carbon energy transformation in china has meant that the relationship between domestic and foreign natural gas markets has become closer therefore identifying the changing relationships between the major global natural gas markets and china s natural gas market has important practical value for the current chinese domestic natural gas pricing system this paper used the dcc garch nardl ardl ecm as the analytical framework to study these relationships from which it was found that there was no unified global natural gas market and that china s natural gas market was not yet aligned with this market it was shown that there was no significant asymmetry in the impact of international gas prices on china s gas prices as no flexible adjustment measures were found in china s imported natural gas pricing mechanism moreover while international natural gas prices were found to have a significant impact on china s natural gas prices over the long term there were obvious regional differences over the short term accordingly new pricing policies should be designed to promote market oriented natural gas pricing reforms in acknowledging features such as asymmetry the difference between imported gas sources and the periodicity of price adjustment

long term forecasting of natural gas production abstract natural gas is an important energy source for power generation a chemical feedstock and residential usage it is important to analyse the future production of conventional and unconventional natural gas analysis of the literature determined conventional urr estimates of 10 700 18 300 ej and the unconventional gas urr estimates were determined to be 4250 11 000 ej six scenarios were assumed with three static where demand and supply do not interact and three dynamic where it does the projections indicate that world natural gas production will peak between 2025 and 2066 at 140 217 ej y 133 206 tcf y natural gas resources are more abundant than some of the literature indicates

measuring changes in poverty a methodological case study of indonesia during an adjustment period analysis of the effects of policy changes on the poor is often hindered by the difficulties inherent in measuring poverty and comparing levels of poverty before and after policy changes this article outlines two techniques which can overcome many of these measurement problems stochastic dominance conditions which can facilitate a robust poverty ranking of distributions of living standards and a decomposable poverty index which allows measured changes in aggregate poverty to be disaggregated into their various components such as the changes among population subgroups and growth and redistributive components these techniques can be applied to a wide range of indicators of economic well being and poverty lines and to assumptions about the poor the approaches are illustrated using household survey data from indonesia before and after external shocks and the subsequent structural adjustment program in the mid 1980s the study finds that favorable initial conditions and pro poor pattern of growth enabled indonesia to maintain its momentum in poverty alleviation during the period

analysis of resource potential for china s unconventional gas and forecast for its long term production growth abstract china is vigorously promoting the development of its unconventional gas resources because natural gas is viewed as a lower carbon energy source and because china has relatively little conventional natural gas supply in this paper we first evaluate how much unconventional gas might be available based on an analysis of technically recoverable resources for three types of unconventional gas resources shale gas coalbed methane and tight gas we then develop three alternative scenarios of how this extraction might proceed using the geologic resources supply demand model based on our analysis the medium scenario which we would consider to be our best estimate shows a resource peak of 176 1 billion cubic meters bcm in 2068 depending on economic conditions and advance in extraction techniques production could vary greatly from this if economic conditions are adverse unconventional natural gas production could perhaps be as low as 70 1 bcm peaking in 2021 under the extremely optimistic assumption that all of the resources that appear to be technologically available can actually be recovered unconventional production could amount to as much as 469 7 bcm with peak production in 2069 even if this high scenario is achieved china s total gas production will only be sufficient to meet china s lowest demand forecast if production instead matches our best estimate significant amounts of natural gas imports are likely to be needed

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

the effects of location and sectoral components of economic growth on poverty evidence from indonesia abstract in this paper we investigate the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction by differentiating growth and poverty into their sectoral composition and urban rural location using data from indonesia we find that rural services growth reduces poverty in all sectors and locations however urban services growth has the largest effect on poverty in most sectors finally we also find that rural agriculture growth strongly reduces poverty in rural areas the largest contributor to poverty in indonesia this implies that while agriculture growth in rural areas still plays a major role in reducing poverty policies that enable strong growth in the services sector in both urban and rural areas would expedite poverty reduction

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

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

structural path analysis and multiplier decomposition within a social accounting matrix framework the main purpose of this paper is to apply structural path analysis to a social accounting matrix sam framework because the sam is a comprehensive essentially general equilibrium data system the whole network through which influence is transmitted can be identified and specified through structural path analysis the latter provides an alternative and much more detailed way to decompose multipliers as compared with the traditional treatment of stone 1978 and pyatt and round 1979 this paper consists of five sections the first one reviews the sam framework as a basis for multiplier analysis and multiplier decomposition in particular the additive decomposition in terms of transfer open loop and closed loop effects is succinctly presented section ii applies this conventional decomposition to a sam of south korea to illustrate with eleven specific cases the effects of an exogenous injection on the endogenous accounts of the sam i e the incomes of the factors household groups and production activities section iii is devoted to the presentation of the elements of structural analysis and more particularly the transmission of economic influence within a structure finally section iv applies structural path analysis to the south korean sam and compares and contrasts the multiplier decomposition which it yields with the alternative decomposition discussed in section ii the comparison is the more significant in that the two decomposition methods are applied to the same eleven selected cases spanning a variety of sectors i e poles of origin for the injection and sectors poles of destination the empirical analysis in section iv suggests that structural path analysis applied to a sam is a potentially operationally useful technique within which a whole series of policy issues can be addressed the final section is devoted to a brief summary and conclusions

why has economic growth been more pro poor in some states of india than others abstract we use 20 household surveys for india s 15 major states spanning 1960 1994 to study how the sectoral composition of economic growth and initial conditions interact to influence how much growth reduced consumption poverty the elasticities of measured poverty to farm yields and development spending did not differ significantly across states but the elasticities of poverty to urban and rural non farm output varied appreciably and the differences were quantitatively important to the overall rate of poverty reduction states with higher elasticities did not experience higher rates of non farm growth the non farm growth process was more pro poor in states with initially higher literacy higher farm productivity higher rural living standards relative to urban areas lower landlessness and lower infant mortality

policy recommendations to promote shale gas development in china based on a technical and economic evaluation because of its resource potential and clean burning advantages the development of shale gas can significantly increase the supply of cleaner energy while offering the associated benefits to foster shale gas development many policy incentives have been introduced in china however the current incentives have not been sufficiently aggressive and the shale gas industry has been slow to develop existing policies thus need to be further improved to provide effective support for decision makers in china a technical and economic evaluation is performed in this study to explore the profitability of shale gas production in pilot zones the results show that shale gas production is subeconomic under the current technical and economic conditions based on this evaluation a policy analysis is conducted to investigate the profitability improvement offered by the major policies available in china to elucidate a path toward improving incentive policies the results indicate that policy instruments related to gas prices financial subsidies corporate income taxes or combinations thereof could be used as priority options to improve policy incentives based on these results recommendations are presented to improve the current incentive polices aimed at accelerating shale gas development

credibility and reputation building in the developmental state a model with east asian applications abstract we use a game theoretic model to analyze the role of credibility reputation and investment coordination in a developmental state our model focuses on why a soft state serving narrow social groups so often obtains in less developed countries and under what conditions a hard or developmental state can emerge the model highlights the dilemma that although state and private sector alike may want economic growth both must simultaneously invest to achieve it but the equilibrium outcome analogous to the prisoner s dilemma is investment by neither even when initial conditions are favorable and a state is potentially developmental with the genuine capability to elicit private sector investment this may not materialize and an equilibrium of low or no investment will prevail to avoid this deadlock and foster growth the successful developmental state must demonstrate commitment by promoting its developmental credentials through a process of reputation building a consequent incentive to act tough together with seeming advantages of authoritarianism in implementing the developmental state may help to explain why it is often associated with an authoritarian political system

estimating the relative benefits of agricultural growth on the distribution of expenditures does the sectoral composition of aggregate economic growth affect poverty we ask whether agricultural growth in developing countries increases the expenditures of poorer households more than growth in other sectors while some reduced form analyses have tackled this question using either country level time series data regional panel data for one country or cross sectional country data this paper is unusual in using panel data for many countries we improve on much of the existing literature by devising an instrumental variables strategy to correct for the endogeneity of sectoral gdp growth involving averaging over sectoral income growth rates for neighboring countries our principal finding from our instrumental variable estimator is that the estimated elasticities associated with growth in agricultural income are significantly greater than for non agricultural income for all but the extreme top and bottom deciles in the middle range of the income distribution the effect of a given gdp growth due to agriculture is 3 4 times larger than if it was due to non agricultural activities having established that on average growth in gdp originating in agriculture is more beneficial for poorer deciles we finally explore whether this is a pattern which holds across different groupings of countries a second important finding is that there is heterogeneity across some groupings most particularly we find that it is the poorest people in the poorest countries for whom agricultural income growth is the most beneficial

state and development the need for a reappraisal of the current literature this essay tries to bring out some of the complexities that are overlooked in the usual treatment of the state in the institutional economics literature and supplement the latter with a discussion of some alternative approaches to looking at the possible developmental role of the state it refers to a broader range of development goals including the structural transformation of the economy and focuses on problems like the resolution of coordination failures and collective action problems the conflicting issues of commitment and accountability and the need for balancing the trade offs they generate some ingredients of state capacity and political coalition building usually missed in the literature the possible importance of rent sharing in a political equilibrium the advantages and problems of political centralization and decentralization and the multidimensionality of state functions that may not be addressed by markets or private firms

sectoral growth and poverty alleviation a multiplier decomposition technique applied to south africa abstract how does an increase in a sector s output affect poverty alleviation in this paper a multiplier decomposition for a socioeconomic system represented by a social accounting matrix sam is used to study this linkage the decomposition applied to south africa reveals that growth in agriculture services and some manufacturing sectors can alleviate poverty for the black african population for sectoral growth to be effective however the need for appropriate skill acquisition for the poor must be addressed directly only long term policies geared towards improving both economic growth and the human capital stock of the poor can lead to significant poverty alleviation

a bridge between east and west turkey s natural gas policy abstract world energy demands have been increasing rapidly so natural gas sources in the world play significant role in order to meet those demands the fastest consumption growth rate of the world s primary energy sources belongs to natural gas in addition it has the highest consumption growth rate among the developing countries based on supply demand models declining domestic gas production in some regions will lead to a growing supply demand gap in fact industrial countries which are also the largest natural gas consumers will lose their key roles in the global natural gas supply in the next two decades middle east countries with considerable increase in gas production and due to their economical political and geopolitical situations could be the best players in the future demand supply scenarios this paper deals with natural gas policy of turkey as a bridge for energy to connect europe to asia and middle east because of its geographical and strategic location turkey is in an important position to vary european countries supply therefore turkey s role for energy security of european union has increased with current and planned natural gas pipelines that cross over anatolia

is peakoilism coming peak oil research and the association for the study of peak oil and gas aspo have contributed a great deal to improve people s recognition of peak oil although peak oil is becoming a part of public recognition it is still hard to say whether peak oil discussion will develop into a theory such as peakoilism on one hand there are still some difficult problems in peak oil research on the other hand the peakoilers have the potential for scientific research and have their allies the climate change researchers and the new energy advocates oil is a limited non renewable resource and an oil peak is inevitable peak oil theory is a kind of development theory rather than a crisis theory which promotes reasonable utilization of the limited oil resources promotes conservation and encourages the development of renewable energy

the composition of growth matters for poverty alleviation this paper contributes to explain the cross country heterogeneity of the poverty response to changes in economic growth it does so by focusing on the structure of output growth the paper presents a two sector theoretical model that clarifies the mechanism through which the sectoral composition of growth and associated labor intensity can affect workers wages and thus poverty alleviation then it presents cross country empirical evidence that analyzes first the differential poverty reducing impact of sectoral growth at various levels of disaggregation and the role of unskilled labor intensity in such differential impact the paper finds evidence that not only the size of economic growth but also its composition matters for poverty alleviation with the largest contributions from labor intensive sectors such as agriculture construction and manufacturing the results are robust to the influence of outliers alternative explanations and various poverty measures

political systems and distortions an empirical study this paper studies empirically why price distortions are more prevalent in some countries than in others we find no significant difference between democracies and dictatorships but frequent regime changes reduce distortions political systems factional subordinate that encourage redistributive activities rda tend to have more distortions allowing for different effects of rda in democracies and dictatorships there is a positive and significant effect of rda on distortions in dictatorships in democracies distortions destroying lobbying seems more important since no significant relation between rda and distortions can be found

the end of cheap oil current status and prospects abstract this paper analyses the factors impacting the price of crude oil in order to examine the likely evolution of the oil market and attempts to answer the question whether cheap oil is already a thing of the past based on data made publicly available mostly by the major oil companies it examines the effects of demand and supply the evolution of world oil reserves the trends in new discoveries of new oilfields the evolution of world gross domestic product gdp and the depletion of oil resources the analysis concludes that the world peak in conventional oil production the point beyond which oil production will irreversibly start declining is approaching and will be reached even according to the most optimistic scenarios before 2040 and quite possibly much sooner if the appropriate solutions for substituting crude oil and for conserving the use of energy are not implemented in time then the current upward trend in oil prices is bound to continue

the sectoral structure of poverty during an adjustment period evidence for indonesia in the mid 1980s the authors examine the structure of poverty in indonesia by sector of employment and how it changed during the adjustment period 1984 to 1987 they find that while aggregate poverty decreased during the period the gains to the poor were quite uneven across regions and sectors gains to the rural sector in key regions were quantitatively important to indonesia s success in alleviating poverty they found most poverty exists and most gains in alleviating poverty were made in the rural farming sector these gains were associated with crop diversification and continued growth in off farm employment the government s adjustment program favored rural areas and were crucial to indonesia s evident success at maintaining momentum in alleviating poverty however one should not underrate the favorable conditions in indonesia when adjustment started

corruption pollution and the kuznets environment curve abstract this paper examines the implications of corruption and rent seeking behavior by the government for the relationship between pollution and growth cases of both cooperative and non cooperative interaction between the government and the private firm are studied it is shown that corruption is not likely to preclude the existence of an inverted u shaped kuznets environmental curve under both these cases however for any level of per capita income the pollution levels corresponding to corrupt behavior are always above the socially optimal level further the turning point of the kuznets curve takes place at income and pollution levels above those corresponding to the social optimum

impact of unconventional natural gas development on regional water resources and market supply in china from the perspective of game analysis abstract this study presents a detailed framework for evaluating water resource constraint and game based supply strategies of unconventional and conventional natural gases in china surface water production pressure and groundwater pollution risk level are used to measure the extent of water resource constraint on shale gas development cournot and stackelberg game models are applied to illustrate the oligopoly mechanism between unconventional and conventional natural gas manufacturing a subsidy multiplier model is then proposed to identify the impact of government subsidy on different game strategies results indicate that high amounts of estimated ultimate recovery and recycling wastewater would significantly reduce water resources consumption during shale gas development an increased subsidy coefficient would increase the amount of unconventional natural gas but decrease the amount of conventional natural gas however the majority of subsidy multiplier values would be less than 1 implying an inconspicuous effect of the subsidy moreover the equilibrium production of unconventional natural gas in the cournot and stackelberg game models would increase with the increased substitution factor m1 but decrease with the increased substitution factor m2 conversely the high amount of equilibrium production of conventional natural gas would increase the substitution factor m2 but reduce the substitution factor m1 within these two models

a proposal for using incentive precommitments in public enterprise funding abstract among the central problems of less developed countries ldcs is the poor performance of their public enterprises pes and the seemingly limited ability of governments and other agencies to improve this performance this paper proposes that project agencies be induced as a part of the initial financing of pes to undertake specific types of precommitments a precommitment to liquidate the project if its ex post performance falls below some threshold level and a precommitment to link a non negligible part of employee compensation to actual performance our proposal is not guaranteed to improve pe performance because there are no perfect solutions to what is inherently a politically difficult problem nevertheless we argue that as long as public enterprises exist independent of whether this is a good idea or not a precommitment to use performance based incentives is likely to improve their performance we discuss the primary sources of pe losses compare their probable magnitudes and explain how various precommitments are likely to ameliorate such losses our proposal is aimed at stimulating more thought on this subject and is addressed to a broad audience

agricultural growth and poverty in an archetypical middle income country chile 1987 2003 is a reduced share of agriculture in the economy an obstacle for the agricultural sector to play an important role in poverty alleviation what is the key channel if any by which agriculture is benefiting the poor in chile that would be worthwhile to promote in other countries by answering these questions we expand the literature on poverty and composition of growth by proposing a methodology that allows to disentangle the mechanisms by which agricultural growth can be poverty reducing we find that in chile agriculture plays a large role in reducing poverty and most of this effect is channeled through the labor market

beyond agriculture versus non agriculture decomposing sectoral growth poverty linkages in five african countries summary africa s development debate is often cast as agriculture versus non agriculture with agriculture s proponents arguing that agricultural growth is more effective at reducing poverty this dual economy perspective overlooks the heterogeneity within and synergies between these two broad sectors recent studies decompose agriculture into subsectors and find that agricultural growth led by smallholder farmers is even more effective at reducing poverty than larger scale estate farms in contrast few studies estimate subsectoral growth poverty linkages for non agriculture yet we strongly expect for example that growth led by informal traders or foreign owned mining companies will have quite different implications for poverty reduction different perspectives on what constitutes non agriculture might therefore explain divergent views on its relative importance for poverty reduction to address this gap in our understanding we estimate sectoral poverty growth elasticities using economy wide models for five african countries while our estimated elasticities are higher for agriculture than for non agriculture as a whole the extent to which this is true varies considerably across nonagricultural subsectors and across countries we find that the poverty growth elasticities for trade and transport services and manufacturing especially agro processing are often close to and sometimes exceed agriculture s this means that growth led by these nonagricultural subsectors might be as effective as agriculture at reaching the poor this confirms the need for a more nuanced treatment of non agriculture in africa s policy debate and may explain conflicting perspectives on agriculture s role vis a vis non agriculture

linear sam models for inequality changes analysis an application to the extremadurian economy social accounting matrices are adequate databases for the economic modelling these matrices emphasize the role of households in the economy and so they usually disaggregate the household sector into several groups this disaggregation allows social accounting matrices to be used for diverse income distribution analysis the objective of this work is to use the linear sam models to study how inequality is modified by several exogenous injections of income the set of multipliers and indicators presented is applied to the economy of extremadura a region situated in the southwest of spain in particular together with the accounting multipliers two redistributed income matrices are presented to show how changes in final demand and in income transfers cause opposite effects in inequality for contrasting these results gini and theil indices are also used finally a major reduction in both would result from an appropriate re allocation of transfers

the successful developmental state where does it come from abstract in this paper it is taken for granted that the state has played an important role in the industrialization of east asia accepting this the purpose of the paper is to determine why government policy was so effective in these countries while failing to a great extent in much of the rest of the developing world the key seems to reside in the ability of the state to discipline firms which in turn is dependent upon the credibility of government policy the latter depends on a large number of variables this paper argues that a crucial factor is the size of the domestic market for manufactured goods