estimating the price premium of lng in korea and japan the price formula approach abstract focusing on the price premium which reflects the negotiation power of exporting and importing countries this study empirically investigates the liquefied natural gas lng price formula for korea and japan applying the state space model and kalman filter to the price formula adopted in the lng contracts in the asia pacific region this study estimates the long run price formula and time varying premiums on the lng import prices by trade routes from qatar oman indonesia and malaysia to korea and japan furthermore this study also discusses the differences between korea and japan and the event based changes in the price premiums namely the appearance of russia as a new supplier to korea and japan in april 2009 and the fukushima nuclear disaster in march 2011 the estimation results show that the appearance of a new supplier does not always lead to a decrease in the premium in addition lng importers in northeast asia should pay attention to demand and supply in europe as well as asia because northeast asia and europe share the same middle eastern exporting countries furthermore korea japan and other northeast countries need to establish close cooperation to enhance their negotiation power within the global lng market

multiattribute preference analysis with performance targets this paper develops an approach based on performance targets to assess a preference function for a multiobjective decision under uncertainty this approach yields preference functions that are strategically equivalent to conventional multiattribute utility functions but the target oriented approach is more natural for some classes of decisions in some situations the target oriented preference conditions are analogous to reliability theory conditions for series or parallel failure modes in a system in such cases reinterpreting the conditions using reliability concepts can be useful in assessing the preference function the target oriented approach is also a generalization of common forms of goal programming the approach has particular applicability for resource allocation decisions where the outcome of the decision is significantly determined by the actions of other stakeholders to the decision such as new product development or decision making in a controversial regulated environment

is the consumption income ratio stationary evidence from panel unit root tests this paper provides evidence on the stationarity of the consumption income ratio from a panel of 20 oecd countries using recently developed panel unit root tests which avoid the problem of low power associated with conventional unit root tests our findings suggest that the consumption income ratios in the oecd countries are generated by a nonstationary stochastic process

socially responsible investment a multicriteria approach to portfolio selection combining ethical and financial objectives abstract in a context of socially responsible investment sri this paper deals with portfolio selection for investors interested in ethical policies in the opportunity set there are ethical assets and other assets which are not characterized as ethical two goals are considered the traditional financial goal in the classical utility theory under uncertainty and an ethical goal in the same utility framework a new financial ethical bi criteria model is proposed with absolute risk aversion coefficients and targets depending on the investor s ethical profile this approach is relevant as an increasing number of mutual funds are becoming interested in sri strategies from the proposed model an actual case on green investment is developed concerning this case without generalizing to other contexts an analysis of the numerical results shows that efficient portfolios obtained by the traditional e v model outperform the strong green portfolios in terms of expected return and risk but this does not significantly occur with weak green investment

economics of u s natural gas exports should regulators limit u s lng exports abstract this study assesses the level and destination of u s lng exports using a global natural market model under a wide range of emf 31 scenarios the scenarios reflect different u s natural gas resource outlooks market conditions changing u s environmental regulations and possible changes in geopolitical conditions that affect the global natural gas demand and supply u s lng exports respond to market conditions under each scenario and are free from any artificial limits in the near term u s lng exports are uncompetitive in the reference case and in the long run u s lng exports are significant when u s natural gas resources are plentiful however under demand shocks increase demand in asia or supply shocks reduction in russian supplies or persistence of oil indexed pricing cases u s lng exports become competitive to varying degrees u s exports depend not only on u s economics but also on how u s prices change relative to price changes in other regions of the world we conclude that limiting u s lng exports is inconsistent with simulated uncertainties and it should be left to the market to determine the levels and destination of exports

efficiency and economies of scale of large canadian banks the authors measure the economies of scale of canada s six largest banks and their costefficiency over time using a unique panel data set from 1983 to 2003 they estimate pooled translog cost functions and derive measures of relative efficiency and economies of scale

a panel project on purchasing power parity mean reversion within and between countries abstract previous time series studies have shown evidence of mean reversion in real exchange rates deviations from purchasing power parity ppp appear to have half lives of approximately four years however the long samples required for statistical significance are unavailable for most currencies and are potentially inappropriate because of regime changes in this study we re examine deviations from ppp using a panel of 150 countries and 45 annual post wwii observations our panel shows strong evidence of mean reversion that is similar to that from long time series ppp deviations are eroded at a rate of approximately 15 annually i e their half life is around four years such findings can be masked in time series data but are relatively easy to find in cross sections

purchasing power parity for east asia countries further evidence based on panel stationary test with multiple structural breaks in this article we re investigate the validity of purchasing power parity ppp for a sample of 10 east asia countries over the period of january 1987 to june 2005 using a recently developed econometric technique of the panel stationary test with multiple structural breaks proposed by carrion i silvestre et al 2005 this test considers multiple structural breaks positioned at different unknown dates and a different number of breaks for each individual empirical evidence shows that the ppp holds true for half of 10 east asia countries during the research period our results have important policy implications for these 10 east asia countries under study

financial integration of east asian economies evidence from real interest parity in this article we investigate the financial linkages between the east asian economies with japan and the united states we test for long run real interest rate parity rip using an array of panel data techniques including recent techniques developed by breuer et al 2002 and carrion i silvestre et al 2005 this study offers two important results first the failure to account for structural breaks in the industrialized countries and asian emerging economies is likely to provide evidence of nonstationary series that are stationary second we found strong evidence that the parity condition holds in all the asian countries the failure of earlier studies to confirm mean reversion of real interest rate differential rid may reflect the choice of estimation testing procedure rather than any inherent deficiency in the rip

tri criterion modeling for constructing more sustainable mutual funds one of the most important factors shaping world outcomes is where investment dollars are placed in this regard there is the rapidly growing area called sustainable investing where environmental social and corporate governance esg measures are taken into account with people interested in this type of investing rarely able to gain exposure to the area other than through a mutual fund we study a cross section of u s mutual funds to assess the extent to which esg measures are embedded in their portfolios our methodology makes heavy use of points on the nondominated surfaces of many tri criterion portfolio selection problems in which sustainability is modeled after risk and return as a third criterion with the mutual funds acting as a filter the question is how effective is the sustainable mutual fund industry in carrying out its charge our findings are that the industry has substantial leeway to increase the sustainability quotients of its portfolios at even no cost to risk and return thus implying that the funds are unnecessarily falling short on the reasons why investors are investing in these funds in the first place

sticky prices and deviations from the law of one price evidence from mexican micro price data abstract this paper uses a novel dataset of weekly sampled store level prices to study the impact of sticky prices on the volatility and persistence of intranational deviations from the law of one price lop the volatility of lop deviations is found to be increasing both on the distance separating two locations and on the degree of price stickiness sticky prices are also found to be systematically related to the persistence of lop deviations half lives of lop deviations are systematically larger for goods with stickier prices these observations are shown to accord well with the predictions of a dynamic general equilibrium model featuring real market segmentation and calvo pricing i also find evidence of remarkably fast convergence to the lop average half lives of lop deviations are in the order of 3 6 weeks and show that previously reported convergence estimates may be afflicted by a positive temporal aggregation bias

ethical investment processes and outcomes there is a growing body of literature on ethical or socially responsible investment across a range of disciplines this paper highlights the key themes in the field and identifies some of the major theoretical and practical challenges facing both scholars and practitioners one of these challenges is understanding better the complexity of the relationship between such investment practices and corporate behaviour noting that ethical investment is seldom characterised by agreement about what it actully constitutes and that much of the extant research focuses on a narrow set of issues the paper argues that there are benefits associated with examining ethical investment as a process

the asia pacific natural gas market large enough for all abstract among natural gas producing nations there has been some concern about how the asia pacific will meet future demand for energy we argue that natural gas both regional and global will play a vital role estimates of potential gas consumption in the region are analyzed and used to develop consensus projections to 2030 these consumption profiles are compared with gas supply estimates including indigenous pipeline and lng for the asia pacific market from this analytical framework we find that demand will be sufficiently large to accommodate supplies from diverse sources including north america the middle east central asia russia and the asia pacific itself an important policy implication is that gas producing and consuming nations should benefit from promoting gas trade and not be concerned about a situation of potential lack of demand coupled with oversupply

price level convergence and regional phillips curves in the us and emu abstract we use panel estimates of regional phillips curves of the hybrid new keynesian type to study price level convergence within the us and emu regional inflation rates tend to eliminate ppp deviations in both monetary unions with average half lives around 3 years the start of emu did not greatly affect ppp reversion in the euro area where changes in nominal exchange rates accounted for the bulk of the adjustment process before 1999 this role was largely taken over by regional inflation differences since notwithstanding clear evidence of forward lookingness in the us inflation persistence is substantial in both monetary unions

north american natural gas and energy markets in transition insights from global models this modeling comparison exercise looks at the global consequences of increased shale gas production in the u s and increased gas demand from asia we find that differences in models theoretical construct and assumptions can lead to divergences in their predictions about the consequences of u s shale gas boom in general models find that u s high shale gas scenario leads to increased u s production lower global gas prices and lower gas production in non u s regions gas demand in asia alone has little effects on u s production but together with the shale gas boom the u s can have a large export advantage overall models find u s exports level range from 0 06 to 13 7 trillion cubic feet tcf in 2040 the comparison of supply demand and price changes in response to shocks reveals important differences among models first is how the demand shocks were implemented and how the model responds to shocks static and elastic within each time period vs endogenous to the long term gross domestic product gdp growth second is how the supply response is expressed through fuel technology substitutions particularly the flexibility of cross fuel substitution in the power sector identifying these differences is important in understanding the model s insights and policy recommendations

testing mean reversion in target zone exchange rates the aim of the paper is to assess to what extent european monetary system ems target zone exchange rates have been characterized by mean reverting behaviour to this purpose a new class of mean reversion tests is introduced with respect to standard approaches the proposed tests which are based on the sample excursion of the exchange rate within the band have a better ability to detect target zone mean reverting dynamics the empirical analysis of the exchange rates among the main ems currencies shows that the degree of mean reversion is much higher than what has been reported in the literature both before and after the target zone widening of 1993 finally the proposed tests have a wider range of applications since they originate a new approach to unit root testing

purchasing power parity a quantitative reassessment of the 1920s experience abstract the purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis of purchasing power parity the basic methodology is to start by estimating a general distributed lag equation relating the excchangr rate to its own past and to current and past relative price levels successively more restricted version are then proposed and tested against the general model two interesting facts come out of this one is that the proportionality restrictin is not supported by the data and the other is that all the models estimated by frenkel 1978 are rejected in favor of less restricted models

tests for symmetric and asymmetric nonlinear mean reversion in real exchange rates new tests based on smooth transition autoregressive models for mean reversion in time series of real exchange rates are proposed one test forces mean reversion to be symmetric about the integrated process central case while the other permits asymmetry the tests are applied to monthly series of seventeen real exchange rates against the u s dollar and fourteen against the deutsche mark they reveal stronger evidence against the unit root null hypothesis than does the usual dickey fuller test

the future of u s natural gas production use and trade two computable general equilibrium models one global and the other providing u s regional detail are applied to analysis of the future of u s natural gas the focus is on uncertainties including the scale and cost of gas resources the costs of competing technologies the pattern of greenhouse gas mitigation and the evolution of global natural gas markets results show that the outlook for gas over the next several decades is very favorable in electric generation given the unproven and relatively high cost of other low carbon generation alternatives gas is likely the preferred alternative to coal a broad ghg pricing policy would increase gas use in generation but reduce use in other sectors on balance increasing its role from present levels the shale gas resource is a major contributor to this optimistic view of the future of gas gas can be an effective bridge to a lower emissions future but investment in the development of still lower co2 technologies remains an important priority international gas resources may well prove to be less costly than those in the u s except for the lowest cost domestic shale resources and the emergence of an integrated global gas market could result in significant u s gas imports

natural gas consumption and economic growth are we ready to natural gas price liberalization in iran this paper examines the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth in iran within a multivariate production model we also investigate the effects of natural gas price on its consumption and economic growth using a demand side model the paper employs bounds test approach to level relationship over the period of 1972 007 we find evidence of bidirectional positive relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth in short run and long run based on the production model the findings also suggest that real gdp growth and natural gas have positive and negative impacts on gross fixed capital formation respectively employment however was found to have negative but insignificant impact on gross fixed capital formation moreover the estimation results of demand side model suggest that natural gas price has negative and significant impact on natural gas consumption only in the long run though there is insignificant impact on economic growth these results imply that the iranian government s decision for natural gas price liberalization has the adverse effects on economic growth and policy makers should be cautious in doing this policy

real and nominal exchange rates in the long run an empirical investigation abstract this paper reports on econometric tests of the hypothesis that purchasing power parity holds as a long run relationship using data on eight industrialized countries during the flexible exchange rate period the empirical work proceeds by i testing whether nominal exchange rates and relative price levels are co integrated and ii conducting impulse response analysis of long run exchange rate and relative price level changes to explain the data keynesian models suggest that shocks during the estimation period were due principally to exogenous shifts in aggregate demand while equilibrium models suggest that monetary factors have been relatively more important

long memory and nonlinear mean reversion in japanese yen based real exchange rates abstract the extraordinary difficulty in uncovering parity reversion in yen based real exchange rates has often been ascribed to a missing trend variable this study identifies an alternative explanation and shows that the puzzling behavior of real yen rates may stem from long memory dynamics which undermine unit root tests in their ability to detect mean reversion the long memory findings are consistent with the long swings in yen exchange rates during the current float further analysis also reveals evidence of non monotonic reversion toward parity

long run purchasing power parity in the 1920s abstract this paper presents an empirical analysis of long run purchasing power parity ppp during the 1920s float using recently developed methodology on the cointegration of economic time series our results are generally supportive of ppp as a long run equilibrium condition on which exchange rates tended to converge over the period for dollar sterling however there is some evidence of a non stationary drift away from fundamentals during the last year or so before britain s return to the gold standard perhaps due to speculation our results also appear to reconcile some apparently conflicting evidence in the literature

markowitz revisited social portfolio engineering abstract in recent years socially responsible investing has become a popular subject with both private and institutional investors at the same time a number of scientific papers have been published on socially responsible investments sris covering a broad range of topics from what actually defines sris to the financial performance of sri funds in contrast to non sri funds in this paper we revisit markowitz portfolio selection theory and propose a modification allowing to incorporate not only asset specific return and risk but also a social responsibility measure into the investment decision making process applied in an a posteriori fashion the model results in a three dimensional capital allocation plane illustrating the complete set of feasible optimal portfolios it enables investors to custom tailor their asset allocations and incorporate all personal preferences regarding return risk and social responsibility in an empirical analysis with a data set of over 6000 international companies including the complete universe of social responsibility rated stocks we find that investors opting to maximize the social impact of their investments do indeed face a statistically significant decrease in expected returns however the social responsibility risk optimal portfolio yields a statistically significant higher social responsibility rating than the return risk optimal portfolio

comparison of alternative utility functions in portfolio selection problems this paper examines the effect of alternative utility functions and parameter values on the optimal composition of a risky investment portfolio normally distributed assets are the setting for the theoretical and empirical analyses the results agree well with the available theory and imply utility functions and parameter values that are appropriate for investors with particular risk bearing attitudes the results give strong empirical support to the proposition that utility functions having different functional forms and parameter values but similar absolute risk aversion indices have similar optimal portfolios these results suggest that over horizons up to one year one can safely substitute convenient surrogate utility functions for other utility functions for reasons of tractability or otherwise the results also provide guidance regarding the significance of the magnitude and change of particular numerical values of the risk aversion index moreover theoretical exact results are obtained using rubinstein s measure of global risk aversion

exploring the driving factors of global lng trade flows using gravity modelling abstract taking into account the attributes of the liquefied natural gas lng trade and the space time characteristics of trade flows this paper identifies the multiple dimensional factors that influenced the global lng trade between 2004 and 2015 following an analysis of the data via the application of gravity models the empirical results of this study indicate that these influencing factors possess both general and regional characteristics in contrast to general trade the lng trade is mainly affected by the economic magnitude of the demand side regionally pipeline natural gas has a significant substitute effect on the lng trade within the global model though not within the asian model additionally the lng trade in asia is more sensitive to the influence of import prices and research and development investment than in the global model our subsample analyses show that the results are robustness across different periods finally this paper discusses pertinent policy implications for the lng trade especially as related to asia

determinants of global natural gas consumption and import export flows abstract based on the data of the bp statistical review of world energy this paper constructs the consumption and import export of natural gas identities it discusses the drivers of changes in global natural gas consumption and trade flows from 2008 to 2015 using the extended logarithmic mean divisia index the results show that differences in the natural gas supply and demand across countries or regions as well as the distribution of energy between the domestic and international markets can be better explained when natural gas trade movements are considered by comparing the supply and consumption increment of natural gas this study finds that only the energy intensity economic growth and demographic effects are consistent with each other the changes in the impact of other effects mainly depend on storage variations and statistical errors in addition the primary drivers of the incremental changes in natural gas consumption vary in different countries they include production scale import scale export scale consumption structure proportion energy intensity economic growth and population and balance effects finally the consumption competitiveness of the liquefied natural gas significantly improved over the examined period

tri criterion inverse portfolio optimization with application to socially responsible mutual funds we present a framework for inverse optimization in a markowitz portfolio model that is extended to include a third criterion the third criterion causes the traditional nondominated frontier to become a surface until recently it had not been possible to compute such a surface but by using a new method that is able to generate the nondominated surfaces of tri criterion portfolio selection problems we are able to compute via inverse optimization the implied risk tolerances of given funds that pursue an additional objective beyond risk and return in applying this capability to a broad sample of conventional and socially responsible sr mutual funds we find that after the screening process there appears to be no significant di erence between how assets are allocated in socially responsible and conventional mutual funds which is likely to be di erent from what most sr investors would expect

grading the performance of market indicators with utility benchmarks selected from footsie a 2000 case study the suitable choice of a benchmark portfolio is a critical problem prior to using the information ratio as the performance ranking of funds depends on this choice in this paper a method to optimize benchmark selection taking account of the investor s preferences is proposed and applied to a case study of performance for 29 market indicators on stock exchanges throughout the world the method that relies on recent results in optimization theory requires defining the opportunity set to select the benchmarks this set being footsie in the case study the computational process and numerical results are presented through tables and figures the accuracy of the method being also numerically tested

multi objective stochastic programming for portfolio selection abstract generally in the portfolio selection problem the decision maker dm considers simultaneously conflicting objectives such as rate of return liquidity and risk multi objective programming techniques such as goal programming gp and compromise programming cp are used to choose the portfolio best satisfying the dm s aspirations and preferences in this article we assume that the parameters associated with the objectives are random and normally distributed we propose a chance constrained compromise programming model cccp as a deterministic transformation to multi objective stochastic programming portfolio model cccp is based on cp and chance constrained programming ccp models the proposed program is illustrated by means of a portfolio selection problem from the tunisian stock exchange market

re examination of the long run purchasing power parity further evidence from turkey in this article we re examine the empirical validity of the purchasing power parity ppp theory for the turkish economy for this purpose an empirical model is constructed using some contemporaneous estimation techniques such as multivariate co integration and vector error correction methodology our estimation results reveal that the ppp can strongly be supported as a long run stationary steady state relationship for the turkish economy

natural gas consumption and economic growth the role of foreign direct investment capital formation and trade openness in malaysia the objective of this paper is to reinvestigate the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth by including foreign direct investment capital and trade openness in malaysia for the period of 1971 2012 the structural break unit root test is employed to investigate the stationary properties of the series we have applied combined cointegration test to examine the relationship between the variables in the long run for robustness sake the ardl bounds testing method is also employed to test for a possible long run relationship in the presence of structural breaks we note the validity of cointegration between the variables natural gas consumption foreign direct investment capital formation and trade openness have positive influence on economic growth in malaysia the results support the presence of feedback hypothesis between natural gas consumption and economic growth foreign direct investment and economic growth and natural gas consumption and foreign direct investment the policy implications of these results are provided

openness to international markets and the diffusion of standards compliance in latin america a multi level analysis abstract this study contributes to the debate on the role of openness to international markets for the diffusion of compliance with international standards in developing countries relying upon aggregated data for 1995 2005 as well as upon firm level and secondary data from the chilean salmon farming industry the determinants of iso 9000 and iso 14001 diffusion at country industry and firm level in latin american are analysed our evidence suggests that openness to international markets acts at different levels at both the country and industry level it creates awareness and access to new knowledge therefore providing economic incentives or penalisations for evaluating certification this effect competes and complements the deliberated efforts and policies in explaining diffusion of certification at firm level however openness to international markets alone does not provide sufficient opportunities to acquire the knowledge required to comply with these standards in this case standards compliance depends on firm s capability to use relational and search assets as well as on national and industrial efforts and policies to spread standards usage

a fuzzy goal programming approach to portfolio selection abstract portfolio selection is a usual multiobjective problem this paper will try to deal with the optimum portfolio for a private investor taking into account three criteria return risk and liquidity these objectives in general are not crisp from the point of view of the investor so we will deal with them in fuzzy terms the problem formulation is a goal programming g p one where the goals and the constraints are fuzzy we will apply a fuzzy g p approach to the above problem to obtain a solution then we will offer the investor help in handling the results

purchasing power parity across mexican cities a panel data analysis this article presents three different unit root tests for panel data the main objective is to find the level of internal integration market through the purchasing power parity ppp evidence based in the balassa samuelson approach thus eight kinds of markets as tradable and nontradable goods for 16 main mexican cities during a 21 year period have been contrasted while two tests showed the ppp validity for seven markets the other rejected it the results obtained moreover feed the present controversy about which test is most appropriate to test the ppp as soon as it is highlighted new elements emerge to explain the half life analysis

interfuel substitution a meta analysis interfuel substitutability has been of longstanding interest to the energy economics and policy community however no quantitative meta analysis has yet been carried out of this literature this paper fills this gap by analyzing a broad sample of studies of interfuel substitution in the industrial sector manufacturing industry or subindustries or macro economy of a variety of developed and developing economies publication bias is controlled for by including the primary study sample size in the meta regression results for the shadow elasticities of substitution between coal oil gas and electricity for forty six primary studies show that at the level of the industrial sector there are easy substitution possibilities between all the fuel pairs with the exception of gas electricity and coal electricity substitution possibilities seem more constrained at the macro level and less constrained in sub industries estimates also vary across countries publication bias does not seem to be present but model and data specification issues very significantly affect the estimates derived by each individual study estimates from cross section regressions are generally largest fixed effects panel estimates intermediate in magnitude and time series estimates are mostly much smaller econometric research suggests that the fixed effects estimates are likely the best among the existing studies though biased downwards

technological gap scale economy and china s industrial energy demand abstract the industrial sector in china is energy intensive and accounts for more than 60 of the nation s total energy consumption demand narrating the story behind the growth of china s industrial energy consumption could help us understand the past and prepare for the future this paper aims to investigate the factors affecting china s industrial energy consumption in the 21st century by using an extended production theoretical decomposition approach pda with considering the technological gap and scale of the economy effects the new proposed decomposition framework includes four new factors namely the energy technological gap the output technological gap energy scale efficiency and output scale efficiency the results show that in the 21st century the energy consumption of china s industry increased by more than one billion tons of standard coal the expansion of the industrial economy is a dominant driver of china s industrial energy consumption while potential energy intensity energy technology and output technology are the three largest energy saving factors in addition to the conventional factors the newly proposed factors also have important effects on china s industrial energy consumption specifically output scale efficiency is an energy saving factor while the energy technological gap output technological gap and energy scale efficiency are drivers of energy consumption this suggests that china s industry is at the stage of returns to scale that is beneficial to output performance but harmful to energy performance meanwhile the widening of the industrial technological gaps has negative impacts on china s industrial energy conservation the proposed decomposition approach can provide information that cannot be obtained from traditional approaches and it can also be applied to many other cases for investigating feasible paths of energy saving and emissions reduction

analysis of the changes in the scale of natural gas subsidy in china and its decomposition factors abstract this paper applied the price gap approach to estimate natural gas subsidy in china during 2007 2015 and employed the lmdi method to analyze the influencing factors of the changes in the subsidy scale the results showed that the chinese government raised the domestic gas price in contrast to the slump in global gas price in 2009 which accelerated the huge decrease in the natural gas subsidy scale but the stagnation in price adjustment immediately led to a rebound in natural gas subsidy during 2010 2012 however the level of natural gas subsidy has declined substantially in the industrial and commercial sectors since the natural gas pricing mechanism reform began in 2013 but the level of residential natural gas subsidy still remained high because the city gate pricing mechanism was not extended to this sector the pricing mechanism was the most important decomposition factor of changes in the level of natural gas subsidy the contribution rates of competitive gas price pricing mechanism consumption structure and natural gas consumption on decrease in natural gas subsidy scale were 11 08 101 21 3 15 and 9 14 respectively during 2013 2015 a reasonable and well implemented pricing mechanism can prevent a rebound in natural gas subsidy therefore the government should seize the current opportunity of sufficient natural gas supply and relatively low gas price to deepen and advance the natural gas pricing mechanism reform

risks in global natural gas markets investment hedging and trade recent supply security concerns in europe have revived interest into the natural gas market we investigate infrastructure investment and trade in an imperfect market structure for various possible risks for both supply and demand we focus on three possible scenarios in a stochastic global gas market model i transit of russian gas via ukraine that may be disrupted from 2020 on ii natural gas intensity of electricity generation in oecd countries that may lead to higher or lower natural gas demand after 2025 and iii availability of shale gas around the globe after 2030 we illustrate how the timing of investments is affected by inter temporal hedging behavior of market agents such as when lng capacity provides ex ante flexibility or an ex post fallback option if domestic or nearby pipeline supply sources are low moreover we find that investment in lng capacities is more determined by demand side pull due to higher needs in electric power generation than by supply side push e g higher shale gas supplies needing an outlet we focus on europe north america and china that are the world s most important gas consuming and supplying regions

real exchange rate assessment in the gcc countries a trade elasticities approach this article adopts new panel econometric methods to assess real exchange rate alignment with economic fundamentals in the countries of the gulf cooperation council gcc using a theoretical approach popularized by paul krugman in the late 1980s results from panel econometric applications of the krugman model yield low levels of real exchange rate undervaluation in the gcc countries although indicating persistence of undervaluation albeit statistically low into the medium term they also show that the recent real exchange rate undervaluation could be characterized as due to short run frictions and adjustment costs associated with continued depreciation of the us dollar to which gcc countries currencies are pegged further failure to find supporting evidence for the marshall lerner condition underscores the propriety of using fiscal policy rather than exchange rate policy to address recent inflationary pressures and help resolve lingering global financial imbalances

validating energy oriented cge models although cge models have received heavy usage they are often criticized as being insufficiently validated key parameters are often not econometrically estimated and the performance of the model as a whole is rarely checked against historical outcomes as a consequence questions frequently arise as to how much faith one can put in cge results in this paper we employ a novel approach to the validation of a widely utilized global cge model gtap e by comparing the variance of model generated petroleum price distributions driven by historical demand and supply shocks to the model with observed five year moving average price distributions we conclude that energy demand in gtap e is far too price elastic over this time frame after incorporating the latest econometric estimates of energy demand and supply elasticities we revisit the validation question and find the model to perform more satisfactorily as a further check we compare a deterministic global general equilibrium simulation based on historical realizations over the 2001 2006 period during which petroleum prices rose sharply along with growing global energy demands as anticipated by the stochastic simulations the revised model parameters perform much better than the original gtap e parameters in this global general equilibrium context

the effect of natural gas shortages on the mexican economy abstract the mexican economy experienced a shortage of natural gas from the second quarter of 2012 through the second half of 2013 in order to deal with this problem the state owned national supplier of natural gas pemex implemented a system that restricts the amount of natural gas used by the manufacturing sector with this information we have constructed a shortage index that represents the percentage of natural gas restricted per month in each region we quantify the effect of natural gas shortages on the manufacturing sector and gdp using a panel data model with state and time fixed effects we estimate that the natural gas shortage reduced mexican gdp annual growth rate by 0 28 percentage points in the second quarter of 2013

natural gas consumption and economic growth nexus is the 10th malaysian plan attainable within the limits of its resource abstract the 10th malaysia plan 10mp is a strategic plan focused on attaining a level of economic growth that will enable the country to attain a developed nation status by 2020 as a result of this ambitious plan this paper aims to investigate empirically if the nexus between natural gas consumption exports capital and labour could provide a clue to the possibilities of reaching this target the study applied time series data from 1971 to 2012 and used dual structural break tests to ensure robust result the bayer hanck cointegration johansen cointegration and the ardl bounds tests were applied the findings of the study reveal that economic growth does not granger cause natural gas consumption in malaysia however the results show that capital and export contribute 29 18 and 41 46 to the country s gdp after 20 04 and 42 29 of natural gas consumption respectively also it suggests that natural gas consumption has an indirect effect to the malaysian economic growth wherewithal labour was on the other hand found to have a minimal contribution to gdp the study proposes the efficient exploitation of natural gas reserves of the country a concerted effort to develop the labour force and ensure a realistic time for the plan among others

multiple criteria decision aiding for finance an updated bibliographic survey finance is a popular field for applied and methodological research involving multiple criteria decision aiding mcda techniques in this study we present an up to date bibliographic survey of the contributions of mcda in financial decision making focusing on the developments during the past decade the survey covers all main areas of financial modeling as well as the different methodological approaches in mcda and its connections with other analytical fields on the basis of the survey results we discuss the contributions of mcda in different areas of financial decision making and identify established and emerging research topics as well as future opportunities and challenges

lng is linking regional natural gas markets evidence from the gravity model abstract evidence exists that global natural gas markets have become more integrated over time one possible explanation for this increased level of integration is that increased liquefied natural gas trade has increased the opportunity for price arbitrage by decreasing transport costs if this explanation is true then the natural gas market should become relatively more integrated because countries separated by large distances would be more willing to trade with each other we employ a gravity model to test whether trade in liquefied natural gas has helped to de regionalize the total natural gas market using trade in the compressed natural gas market as a comparison benchmark the results indicate that liquefied natural gas is indeed a global commodity whereas the compressed natural gas markets are more regional importantly we find that trade in liquefied natural gas has de regionalized the total natural gas market

the message and methods of ethical investment abstract this paper examines a high profile and often provocative segment of the financial industry that of ethical or socially responsible investment by offering an ethical or sustainable product which has the potential to influence so many stakeholders the financial industry is in a unique position to guide change towards corporate sustainability however what message is ethical investment really giving to companies and the financial industry are ethical investors and their rating agencies capable of effectively influencing corporations towards more sustainable patterns of production and consumption and are their approaches consistent with the principles of cleaner production this paper first gives an overview some of the definitions ethical investment and the scale of activities under this umbrella term then the actual screening methods and their application is examined a typology of the different ethical mutual funds is given and two cases of ethical funds are described robur s environmental fund and sustainable asset management s sustainability rating tool each are analysed in terms of their potential to either reveal or conceal cleaner production innovations by the firms they assess in order to ascertain where ethical investment might lead companies the effects of ethical investment on companies and back on the asset management companies themselves is explored a reflexive model of corporate and finance sector learning based on the ethical screens is proposed

energy efficiency and natural gas consumption in the context of economic development in the european union abstract our paper evaluates the relationship between energy efficiency which is the key issue of european climate policy consumption of the natural gas and economic development in the european union we employ the panel time series data from 1997 to 2011 that covers 26 eu member states represented by the countries of the eurozone we build and test a multivariate model originating from in the neoclassical growth model and amended to include gross fixed capital and total labour as our explanatory variables we use the panel cointegration tests and error correction modelling for determining whether there exists a long term causality between economic growth and natural gas consumption in the eu moreover we aim to derive the existence of the two way causality between natural gas consumption and economic growth in the eu member states our results show that the relationship between economic development and the consumption of the natural gas is positive while the relationship between the consumption of the natural gas and economic development in the eu appears to be negative our findings might be relevant for formulating the policy framework targeting and increasing energy intensity and efficiency

long run purchasing power parity with short run data evidence with a null hypothesis of stationarity abstract we investigate long run purchasing power parity with data from the current floating exchange rate period by using tests where stationarity and cointegration are the null rather than the alternative hypotheses in most cases we cannot reject either the null hypothesis of stationarity of the real exchange rate or the null of cointegration between the nominal exchange rate and the domestic and foreign price levels this constitutes evidence of long run purchasing power parity because using the same tests we can reject the null of stationarity for the nominal exchange rate confirmation of the results is provided by a monte carlo study

dea frontier improvement and portfolio rebalancing an application of china mutual funds on considering sustainability information disclosure abstract data envelopment analysis dea has been a widely used methodology for evaluating the relative performance of portfolios extensive work has appeared for realizing the role of dea in the aspect of assessing portfolio performance and deriving the relative rankings however the role of providing realizable benchmarks is not fully explored in the existing literatures most importantly the dea based portfolio performance evaluation methods developed in the existing literatures can hardly provide support for fund managers in pursuing sustainability performance in this paper we first propose a dea frontier improvement approach under the mean variance framework this approach provides investor with a rebalancing strategy as well as an improved dea frontier which approximates the portfolio efficient frontier better than the traditional dea model does then this approach is extended to a general return risk framework our in sample simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach for a wide range of applications in addition the out of sample tests show that the rebalancing investment strategies can achieve higher sharpe ratios and sortino ratios than those of the original ones finally we apply the proposed approach to evaluate mutual fund performance in china with the consideration of sustainability information disclosure we construct a disclosure index to indicate the extent of sustainable information disclosure of each mutual fund the results show that the proposed approach provides not only investment recommendations but also references for constructing sustainable green funds

dynamic translog and linear logit models a factor demand analysis of interfuel substitution in us industrial energy demand abstract we compare and contrast two popular dynamic flexible functional forms for cost functions the translog and the logit j bus econ stat 8 1990 347 353 using data on us industrial energy demand from 1960 to 1992 which has been analysed by previous studies energy econ 11 1989 89 94 appl econ 21 1989 931 945 j bus econ stat 13 1995 459 465 we show the crucial role played by different dynamic formulations of the translog in this analysis of factor demands with respect to rates of dynamic adjustment and substitution possibilities we conclude that the poor performance of the dynamic translog relative to the dynamic logit cannot be explained solely by dynamic model mis specification or the inclusion of price unresponsive non energy fuel use data our most robust empirical result is that coal and oil are substitutes

searching for stationarity purchasing power parity under the current float abstract using panel data methods we investigate long run purchasing power parity by testing for unit roots in real exchange rates of industrial countries under the current float the evidence against the unit root hypothesis is stronger for larger than for smaller panels for monthly than for quarterly data and when the german mark rather than the united states dollar is used as the base currency while we find that accounting for serial correlation considerably weakens the evidence against the unit root null the results as a whole are consistent with long run purchasing power parity

two illustrations of the quantity theory of money of two central implications of the quantity theory of money that a given change in the rate of change in the quantity of money induces i an equal change in the rate of price inflation and ii an equal change in nominal rates of interest the illustrations were obtained by comparing moving averages of the three variables in question using quarterly u s time series for the period 1953 77 readers may find the results of interest as additional confirmation of the quantity theory as an example of one way in which the quantity theoretic relationships can be uncovered via atheoretical methods from time series which are subject to a variety of other forces or as a measure of the extent to which the inflation and interest rate experience of the postwar period can be understood in terms of purely classical monetary forces the theoretical background of the study is reviewed very briefly as it is familiar material in the next section the data processing methods are described and rationalized in section ii the illustrations

an empirical examination of long run purchasing power parity using cointegration techniques this paper presents an empirical analysis of long run purchasing power parity ppp for five major exchange rates using recently developed econometric techniques on the cointegration of economic time series our empirical results are extremely unfavourable to the ppp hypothesis as a long run equilibrium condition even with an allowance made for measurement error and or tranportation costs in particular we are unable to reject the hypothesis of non cointegration of the exchange rate and relative prices for any of the countries concerned far from finding a stable long run proportionality between exchange rates and relative prices our results therefore suggest that they tend to drift apart without bound

the effect of industry delocalization on global energy use a global sectoral perspective abstract sectoral production technologies differ largely across countries so do sectoral energy intensities hence shifts in production locations within global sectors possibly caused by environmental regulations are likely to have an impact on aggregated energy usage and emissions applying a logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition we decompose changes of sectoral energy use from 2001 2011 into three effects sectoral value added energy efficiency and delocalization which in this paper is conceived as a structural effect within sectors between regions our results show that although economic activity and technological progress dominate global energy use developments for most sectors a delocalization towards less efficient production places is ongoing it contributes to annual increases in energy use in the range of 1 6 especially manufacturing sectors which are among the most energy consuming sectors reveal significant increases in energy usage due to delocalization since 2004 this development is accompanied by declining energy intensity improvement rates indicating that delocalization induces second order effects

real exchange rates under the recent float unequivocal evidence of mean reversion standard multivariate tests of long run ppp may reject nonstationarity when a single real exchange rate series is stationary we apply a test where the null hypothesis is violated only when all series are stationary and reject nonstationarity for real dollar rates

the national and international impacts of coal to gas switching in the chinese power sector abstract we evaluate the national and international impacts on energy consumption and production trade and economic activity of chinese coal to gas switching in the electric power sector we find that assumptions about growth rates in electricity generation from renewables are the key determinant in evaluating the economic consequences for coal to gas switching in china the ability to supplement natural gas generation with renewables leads to smaller reductions in chinese and global economic activity than the alternatives

the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money publisher summary this chapter discusses the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money in january 1969 issue of the review of economic studies karl borch and martin feldstein separately criticized the widely used mean variance analysis of portfolio selection borch contended that any system of upward sloping mean standard deviation e s indifference curves can be shown to be inconsistent with the basic axiom of choice under uncertainty he pointed out that one can always pick any two points on an upward sloping indifference curve to represent two bernoulli distributions with probability 1 p of gaining the same amount x in both the cases and probability p of gaining y1 in the case of one distribution and y2 in the case of the second distribution with y2 y1 if the second distribution represents the point to the northeast of the other point then by the dominance axiom the second distribution must be preferred to the first which contradicts the basic meaning of indifference curves feldstein by using a log utility function and a lognormal distribution for investment outcome showed that e s indifference curves for a risk averter need not be convex downwards though upward sloping they would change from convex to concave once the standard deviation of the outcome exceeds the mean multiplied by on the face of it this seems to suggest that risk aversion might decrease as risk is increased beyond a certain extent

real exchange rate behavior abstract using random simulations with artificial data with identical sample characteristics to the long sample exchange rate data employed by lothian and taylor lothian j r and taylor m p 1996 the recent float from the perspective of the past two centuries journal of political economy 104 488 509 we show that standard unit root tests have extremely low power over sample sizes corresponding to the recent float the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is false is extremely low with 20 years or even 50 years of data and only reaches an acceptable level over much longer spans

smooth breaks and non linear mean reversion post bretton woods real exchange rates the recent literature on purchasing power parity ppp has emphasized the role of two phenomena that may lead to the rejection of the ppp hypothesis structural breaks and non linear adjustment induced by transaction costs these two hypotheses are analyzed separately in the literature we develop tests for unit roots that account jointly for structural breaks and non linear adjustment structural breaks are modeled by means of a fourier function that allows for infrequent smooth temporary mean changes and is hence compatible with long run ppp nonlinear adjustment is modeled by means of an estar model our tests present good finite sample properties the tests are applied to a set of 15 oecd countries rers and are able to reject the null of a unit root in 14 cases the breaks are usually associated with the great appreciation and later depreciation of the dollar in the 1980s and the estar adjustment appears to play an important role

the role of natural gas consumption and trade in tunisia s output this paper examines the impact of natural gas consumption real gross fixed capital formation and trade on the real gdp in case of tunisia over the period of 1980 2010 we used auto regressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach to test the existence of long run relationship between the variables the vector error correction method vecm granger approach is applied to test the direction of causal relation between the series our findings indicate the existence of long run relationship among the variables natural gas consumption real gross fixed capital formation and trade add in economic growth natural gas consumption real gross fixed capital formation and real trade granger cause real gdp these findings open up new insights for policy makers to formulate a comprehensive energy policy to sustain economic growth for long run

natural gas consumption and economic growth in pakistan abstract natural gas is a dominant fuel in pakistan it offers the cheapest and a cleaner alternative source of energy this paper examines the relationship of natural gas consumption and economic growth in pakistan we include capital labor and exports in the model with multivariate framework the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration and innovative accounting approach are employed to investigate the dynamic causality relationships among the variables we find the existence of long run relationship among the variables natural gas consumption capital labor and exports are positively affecting economic growth in pakistan furthermore we support the natural gas consumption led growth hypothesis and suggest that natural gas conservation policies may retard economic growth

real exchange rate behavior the recent float from the perspective of the past two centuries using annual data spanning two centuries for dollar sterling and franc sterling real exchange rates we find strong evidence of mean reverting real exchange rate behavior using simple stationary autoregressive models estimated on prefloat data we easily outperform nonstationary real exchange rate models in dynamic forecasting exercises over the recent float such stationary univariate equations explain 60 80 percent of the in sample variation in real exchange rates although the degree of short run persistence may be high the econometric estimates imply a half life of shocks to the real exchange rate of about 6 years for dollar sterling and a little under 3 years for franc sterling

stochastic goal programming a mean variance approach abstract we propose a stochastic goal programming gp model leading to a structure of mean variance minimisation the solution to the stochastic problem is obtained from a linkage between the standard expected utility theory and a strictly linear weighted gp model under uncertainty the approach essentially consists in specifying the expected utility equation corresponding to every goal arrow s absolute risk aversion coefficients play their role in the calculation process once the model is defined and justified an illustrative example is developed

the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth in opec members the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth in 12 opec member countries for the period of 1980 2012 the paper adopts the panel granger causality test of dumitrescu and hurlin 2012 21 to assess the causal relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth the findings show the evidence of feedback relation between natural gas consumption and economic growth in opec members as a panel however diverse results are obtained when the member countries are individually examined the results provide evidence for growth hypothesis in iraq kuwait libya nigeria and saudi arabia but conservation hypothesis in algeria iran united arab emirates and venezuela further evidence suggests the existence of neutrality hypothesis in angola and qatar and feedback hypothesis in ecuador

natural gas consumption and economic development in china and japan an empirical examination of the asian context abstract this paper examined the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic development in two largest natural gas consumers in asia namely china and japan for the period of 1980 2012 it used the autoregressive distributed lags ardl method for the empirical analysis the findings revealed some similarities in the natural gas consumption and economic development nexus in china and japan thus a cointegration relationship between natural gas consumption and economic development was found to exist both in china and japan however there was an important difference in the findings in the case of china the findings indicated the existence of a unidirectional causality from natural gas consumption to economic development which was in line with the growth hypothesis in japan there was a bidirectional causality between natural gas consumption and economic development which supported the feedback hypothesis

safety first portfolio choice based on financial and sustainability returns the aim of this paper is to expand the methodological spectrum of socially responsible investing by introducing stochastic sustainability returns into safety first models for portfolio choice we provide a foundation of the notion of sustainability in portfolio theory and establish a general model for generalized safety first portfolio management with probabilistic constraints and three specifications of it moreover we prove theorems about conditions for unique optimal solutions and for the constraints of one model being more restrictive than those of another in an empirical part we calculate the costs of investing according to our approach in terms of less financial return

equilibrium relationships between money and other economic variables central to the quantity theory of money are a number of important propositions about the long run equilibrium effects of changes in the nominal stock of money on other economic variables a standard way of testing these propositions is to use quarterly or annual data explicitly model the lag structure and then derive the long run solution of the model from the empirical estimates an alternative is to use some type of smoothing procedure to approximate positions of equilibrium and then to use these transformed data directly in testing hypotheses the national bureau technique of averaging data over reference cycle phases is one such method robert lucas s application of fourier transforms in two illustrations of the quantity theory of money 1980 is another and john geweke s method 1982 of frequency decomposition is a third an entirely different way of approaching the problem is to use cross country average rather than time series data as the basic units of observation the advantage according to lucas is that since the two quantity theoretic laws that he examines are obtained as characteristics of steady states or limiting distributions of theoretical models the ideal experiment for testing them would be a comparison of long term average behavior across economies with different monetary policies but similar in other respects p 1006 in this paper i conduct such an experiment the data that i use are for 20 oecd countries over the period 1956 80 the specific relationships that i examine are those between money and the price level money and real income money and interest rates and money and exchange rates in the main the data accord well with the quantity theoretic model classical neutrality holds there is evidence of a fisher effect albeit a less than complete effect on interest rates finally the data are consistent with long run purchasing power parity and hence correspondingly with a long run monetary approach to exchange rate determination

a currency preferential approach to international equity investment we propose a timex strategy for reducing the foreign exchange risk associated with international equity investment pertaining to countries with currencies correctly or undervalued by the standard of ppp the performance of timex is examined from the perspectives of eight developed nations with long histories of free floating currencies based on the data from 1986 q1 to 2014 q4 we find unambiguous evidence for the superior performance of timex in the foreign exchange market compared with the passive diversification strategy and the morgan stanley capital international msci world index timex offers higher total returns and risk adjusted total returns when rebalanced every 6 or 12 months for investors based in all eight countries under study when rebalanced at a 3 year interval timex outperforms the passive diversification and the msci world index for five and all eight countries respectively

purchasing power parity revisited evidence from old and new tests for an oecd panel the objective of this article is to study long run purchasing power parity ppp for a panel of 21 organisation for economic co operation and development oecd countries from the end of the bretton woods era by applying a wide range of the econometric techniques available this will allow us to present a comprehensive up to date examination of the empirical validity of ppp covering the weak and strong versions of the hypothesis with individual and panel analysis including the absence or presence of cross dependency the linear or nonlinear behaviour of the real exchange rates and the degree of persistence overall the results provide evidence in favour of ppp

deviations from purchasing power parity under different exchange rate regimes do they revert and if so how abstract we propose an empirical model for deviations from long run purchasing power parity ppp that simultaneously accounts for three key features i adjustment toward ppp may occur via nominal exchange rates and relative prices at different speeds ii different exchange rate regimes may generate regime shifts in the structural dynamics of ppp deviations iii nonlinear reversion toward ppp in response to shocks this empirical framework encompasses and synthesizes much previous empirical research using over a century of data for the g5 countries we provide evidence that long run ppp holds the relative importance of nominal exchange rates and prices in restoring ppp varies over time and across different exchange rate regimes and reversion to ppp occurs nonlinearly at a speed that is fairly consistent with the nominal rigidities suggested by conventional open economy models

is the environmental performance of industrialized countries converging a sure approach to testing for convergence abstract in this paper we test for convergence in the environmental performance of a sample of oecd countries with data ranging from 1971 to 2002 first we use data envelopment analysis dea to compute two environmental performance indicators epis in the production theory framework second we propose the use of a sequential multivariate approach to test for convergence in environmental performance these tests allow us to reconcile the time series literature with the cross sectional dimension which is basic when testing for convergence in regional blocs the sure technique is used which allows for the existence of correlations across the series without imposing a common speed of mean reversion the empirical results show that the group of countries as a whole as well as the majority of countries considered on an individual basis results for some countries vary between epis are catching up with switzerland the benchmark country

synthetic indicators of mutual funds environmental responsibility an application of the reference point method abstract socially responsible investing sri is broadly defined as an investment process that integrates not only financial but also social environmental and ethical see considerations into investment decision making sri has grown rapidly around the world in the last decades in the last years given the causes of the 2008 financial crisis ethical social environmental and governance concerns have become even more relevant investment decision criteria however while a diverse set of models have been developed to support investment decision making based on financial criteria models including also social responsibility criteria are rather scarce the aim of this paper in which we focus on the environmental dimension is to assist individual investors in their investment decisions providing them with a synthetic indicator of mutual funds environmental responsibility which is by nature a multicriteria concept and therefore multicriteria techniques are to be used to measure it the proposed approach is based on the double reservation aspiration reference point method this scheme is applied to each fund of a randomly selected set of u s equity mutual funds in order to determine on the basis of a given set of indicators a pair of synthetic indicators that measure the weak and the strong environmental responsibility degree of each mutual fund relying on the particular preferences of the investor

income and co2 emissions evidence from panel unit root and cointegration tests abstract this paper re investigates the stationarity properties of per capita carbon dioxide co 2 emissions and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 109 countries within seven regional panel sets covering 1971 2003 we apply the recent unit root test of the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller suradf test developed by breuer et al 2001 misleading inferences from panel unit root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity review of international economics 9 482 493 2002 series specific unit root tests with panel data oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 64 527 546 the panel suradf test accounts for the presence of cross country correlations in the data and the parameters in the panel specification vary across countries more importantly this test allows us to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root overall our empirical results illustrate that real gdp and co 2 emissions in these countries are a mixture of i 0 and i 1 processes and that the traditional panel unit root tests could lead to misleading inferences as well as the conduct of cointegration analysis being perhaps inappropriate the results of our analysis carry critical implications for the modeling of co 2 emissions and gdp because of the different orders of integration for the two variables

determinants of changes in electricity generation intensity among different power sectors abstract this study analyzes the determinants of changes in electricity generation intensity in china and further uncovers the reasons for the differences between the changes in electricity generation intensity in the thermal and sustainable power sectors by developing a factorial intertemporal nested decomposition technique using the refined laspeyres index we demonstrate the contributions of electricity generation structure electricity generation to consumption ratio production electricity consumption intensity residential electricity consumption intensity and electricity consumption loss intensity effects although the electricity generation intensity of the thermal power sector has been lower than that of the sustainable power sector the latter has declined remarkably and has remained the key sector driving the overall changes in electricity generation intensity meanwhile the effect of electricity consumption intensity is the main factor that reduces electricity generation intensity moreover the impact of production electricity consumption intensity in the thermal power sector exceeds its impact in the sustainable power sector ultimately we find that the differences between the changes in electricity generation intensity in the thermal and sustainable power sectors are mainly due to their differences in production electricity consumption intensity

economic impacts of natural gas flow disruptions between russia and the eu abstract in this paper we use a non linear programming approach to predict the wider interregional and interindustry impacts of natural gas flow disruptions in the short run economic actors attempt to continue their business as usual and follow established trade patters as closely as possible in the model this is modelled by minimizing the information gain between the original pattern of economic transactions and the situation in which natural gas flows are disrupted we analyze four scenarios that simulate russian export stops of natural gas by means of a model calibrated on an international input output table with six sectors and six regions the simulations show that at the lower levels of aggregation considerable effects are found at the aggregate level of the whole economy however the impacts of the four scenarios are negligible for europe and only a little less so for russia itself interestingly the effects on the size of the economy as measured by its gdp are predominantly positive for the various european regions but negative for russia the effects on the welfare of the populations involved however as measured by the size of domestic final demand have an opposite sign with predominantly negligible but negative effects for european regions and very small positive effects for the russian population

mean reverting behavior of current account in asian countries abstract this paper adopted the series specific panel unit root test of breuer et al oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 64 2002 suradf 527 546 to test for the mean reverting behavior of current account for the panel of twelve asian countries the results illustrate that the current accounts in these countries are a mixture of i 0 and i 1 process and the commonly used panel root tests could lead to misleading inferences

hysteresis vs natural rate of unemployment new evidence for oecd countries abstract the paper tests hysteresis effects in unemployment using panel data for 19 oecd countries we apply a sequential procedure based in two multivariate augmented dickey fuller test adf type panel unit root tests in a sure framework we strongly reject the joint null of hysteresis and find that only seven countries present evidence of hysteresis

testing long run purchasing power parity under exchange rate targeting abstract the present paper exploits the idea that empirical estimates of the long run ppp relationship may compound two distinct influences coming from the behavior of market participants and policy makers when the latter are targeting the exchange rate this tends to bias tests of long run ppp against its acceptance the validity of the theoretical arguments is assessed by drawing on the experience of two european union countries greece and france for the post bretton woods period estimation biases due to the omission of policy effects are found to be significant only in the case of greece for france our test results provide evidence bearing on the effectiveness of the competitive disinflation strategy pursued by the french authorities

the overvaluation of purchasing power parity abstract recent panel studies of purchasing power parity have reported strong evidence of mean reversion in real exchange rates however these studies fail to control for cross sectional dependence in the data this failure has dramatic consequences raising the significance level of tests with a nominal size of 5 percent to as much as 50 percent it is shown in this paper that controlling for cross sectional dependence no evidence against the random walk null can be found in panels of up to 64 real exchange rates this finding cannot be attributed to low power as there is ample power in panels of this size to reject the unit root null