an evaluation of technical progress and energy rebound effects in china s iron steel industry abstract as a pillar industry in china the iron steel sector have under through rapid growth and technical progress for decades however energy polices aiming at energy savings may not be as good as expected due to the existence of rebound effects the motivation of the paper is to analysis the nexus between technical progress and energy rebound effects based on a three input trans log cost function model we first estimate the share equation and the corresponding price elasticity for each input factor then the rebound effect in china s iron steel industry over 1985 2015 is evaluated through decomposing the energy prices empirical results show that 1 the price elasticities of input factors are negative 2 energy capital and energy labor show substitute relationships 3 the average energy rebound effect in the isi is as high as 73 88 4 the energy rebound effect shows a downward trend before the 11th five year period and then an upward trend after that therefore policies proposals of lowering the rebound effect should be placed not only on technical progress but also on energy price reform by reducing energy subsidies and thus accelerating energy price marketization so as to promote energy substitution reduce energy rebound effect and produce further economic and environmental benefits

which industry is greener an empirical study of nine industries in oecd countries abstract this study analyzed the relationship between the co2 emissions of different industries and economic growth in oecd countries from 1970 to 2005 we tested an environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis and found that total co2 emissions from nine industries show an n shaped trend instead of an inverted u or monotonic increasing trend with increasing income the ekc hypothesis for sector level co2 emissions was supported in the 1 paper pulp and printing industry 2 wood and wood products industry and 3 construction industry we also found that emissions from coal and oil increase with economic growth in the steel and construction industries in addition the non metallic minerals machinery and transport equipment industries tend to have increased emissions from oil and electricity with economic growth finally the ekc turning point and the relationship between gdp per capita and sectoral co2 emissions differ among industries according to the fuel type used therefore environmental policies for co2 reduction must consider these differences in industrial characteristics

allocative inefficiency and the capital energy controversy abstract the purpose of the paper is to estimate a system of input demands for greek manufacturing deviating from the standard practice of assuming strict cost minimization the study allows for the presence of price distortions and allocative inefficiency in the decision process this assumption affects parameter estimates and estimated elasticities materially and throws new light on the capital energy controversy in greek manufacturing

an analysis of the economic determinants of energy efficiency in the european iron and steel industry abstract the iron and steel industry has some of the highest levels of carbon emissions and energy consumption in europe at the same time this sector is of great economic importance for the european union in this paper we investigate the technological market and policy factors that are associated with a reduction in the specific energy consumption in iron and steel production in addition we analyze whether achieving more environmentally friendly production is accompanied by a decrease or an increase in production levels we base our analysis on technical information about cost factors of steel production routes historical data for prices of energy carriers on prices for the feedstock in the iron and steel sector on political framework conditions and the demand for steel as we find out higher energy prices tend to raise energy efficiency or tend to reduce specific energy consumption in the steel sector yet because lower specific energy consumption is related to higher total steel production energy price increases might cause a kind of rebound effect bringing about an increase in total production as a consequence of induced energy efficiency improvements taking this effect into account the negative relation between input prices and total steel production is not very strong in the short run the wages of employees in the steel sector tend to have the biggest influence on total steel production in the long run gdp and investment climate exert the biggest influence

estimates of inter fuel substitution possibilities in chinese chemical industry abstract the chemical sector is a key driver of china s remarkable growth record and accounts for about 10 of the country s gdp this has made the industry energy intensive and consequently a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions ghg and other pollutants this study has attempted to investigate the potential for inter fuel substitution between coal oil natural gas and electricity in chinese chemical sector by employing a translog production and cost function ridge regression procedure was adopted to estimate the parameters of the function estimation results show that all energy inputs are substitutes in addition the study produces evidence that the significant role of coal in the chinese chemical fuel mix converges over time albeit slowly these results suggest that price based policies coupled with capital subsidy programs can be adopted to redirect technology use towards cleaner energy sources like electricity and natural gas hence retaining the ability to fuel the chemical sector while also mitigating ghg emissions notwithstanding one must understand that the extent to which substituting electricity for coal will be effective depends on the extent to which coal or oil is used in generating electricity the findings of this study provide general insights and underscore the importance of chinese government policies that focus on installed capacity of renewable electricity energy intensity targets as well as merger of enterprises

the determinants of aggregate energy use in west germany factor substitution technological change and trade this paper examines the determinants of production related energy use in west germany over the period 1976 1994 the approach is to estimate a system of share equations for energy capital low skilled labor high skilled labor and materials in the west german production sector taking account of biased technological change and increasing trade orientation while technological change is found to be energy saving increased openness is energy using i e tends to increase the energy share factor substitution biased technological change and trade contribute to the year to year volatility of energy intensity in the proportion 66 30 4 the results are robust across several specifications examined

economic growth and interfactor interfuel substitution in korea this paper investigates the impact of increases in oil consumption and changes in wage rates on the interfactor interfuel substitution in korea a two stage translog cost function is estimated to incorporate the feedback effect between the interfactor and interfuel substitution empirical results show that the substitutability complementarity relationships among factors and fuels exhibit substantially different patterns before and after 1989

parametric approaches to productivity measurement a comparison among alternative models this paper deals with modeling total factor productivity tfp growth in a flexible manner using panel data several competing parametric models are used to explore whether there are any similarities in the estimates of tfp growth and technical change among these models using a primal approach we decompose tfp growth into different components the models are then used to measure productivity and technical change in the swedish cement industry in general the results are found to be model dependent and often conflicting although much less so for returns to scale and overall productivity growth

exploring the green total factor productivity of china s metallurgical industry under carbon tax a perspective on factor substitution abstract the characteristics of high emissions and high energy consumption in metallurgical industry have brought great challenges to the green and low carbon transition in china as a low carbon economic instrument carbon tax is generally considered to be an effective way to reduce co2 emissions through raising energy cost but whether it will promote the green total factor productivity gtfp of china s metallurgical industry is still unanswered under this background this paper uses provincial panel data over years 2000 2015 to investigate the impact of carbon taxation on gtfp of metallurgical industry from the perspective of inter fuel and inter factor substitution the lock in mechanism is also incorporated in the three stage estimation model to better reflect the asymmetric price response of factors and fuels the results reveal that the slow marketization process of energy price and the rigid demand for energy in china s metallurgical industry hinder the substitution effect of energy the implementation of carbon tax has limited effect on energy saving and co2 reduction in the metallurgical industry of china and levying a carbon tax has a negative effect on gtfp during the research period therefore the government should not achieve co2 reduction targets at the expense of green economic growth gtfp is suggested to be considered in future assessment criteria in the process of transforming to low carbon economy

technical efficiency and productivity change of china s iron and steel industry abstract the recent economic reform of china s iron and steel industry has resulted in its rapid expansion to become the largest in the world however the resultant increase in the use of energy and other resources has resulted in severe environmental degradation to further increase output while reducing emissions and waste will require increased productivity in this paper the technical efficiency and malmquist productivity indexes of a sample of 88 enterprises producing 72 percent of the industry s output were determined for the period 1989 1997 with the aim of gaining some insights into the policy options likely to achieve this

substitute or complement assessing renewable and nonrenewable energy in oecd countries the elasticity of interfuel substitution between renewable and nonrenewable energy is key to establishing effective climate change policy this is the first study to estimate the elasticity of substitution between different fossil fuels and renewable resources we used 12 manufacturing industry level datasets for the oecd countries from 1995 to 2009 we found a complementary relationship from nonrenewable energy to renewable energy in eight industries whereas a substitute relationship was maintained for four industries in particular the food and pulp industries had a strong complementary relationship

technical change inter factor and inter fuel substitution possibilities in pakistan a trans log production function approach abstract energy consumption in pakistan increased significantly over the last two decades primarily due to industrialization in order to meet the growing energy needs the government adopted short term policies by setting up thermal power projects which are more expensive both in terms of fiscal cost and environmental damages as compared to hydro power projects the former has exposed pakistan to international oil price shocks and environmental degradations this study therefore attempts to analyze technical change using trans log production function by employing non energy factors i e capital and labor and energy factors i e petroleum and natural gas to estimate elasticity of substitution the purpose of the study is to provide policy suggestions to the government on how to achieve high economic growth vis a vis improved energy security and environmental sustainability the results reveal that capital energy and labor energy are substitutes thereby suggesting the need for an increased focus on technological advancement and skilled employment generation to conserve energy and reduce co 2 emission a gradual elimination of energy subsidies which will make energy price reflects its true cost is required to further discourage increased energy consumption and promote capital intensive production methods a scenario analysis based on the elasticity of substitution between capital energy and petroleum gas shows the potential of energy conservation and emission mitigation the results further suggest the importance of a diversified energy supply mix characterized by abundant hydro and other renewable energy resources alongside natural gas

china s energy economy technical change factor demand and interfactor interfuel substitution with its rapid economic growth china s primary energy consumption has exceeded domestic energy production since 1994 leading to a substantial expansion in energy imports particularly of oil china s energy demand has an increasingly significant impact on global energy markets in this paper allen partial elasticities of factor and energy substitution and price elasticities of energy demand are calculated for china using a two stage translog cost function approach the results suggest that energy is substitutable with both capital and labor coal is significantly substitutable with electricity and complementary with diesel while gasoline and electricity are substitutable with diesel china s energy intensity is increasing during the study period 1995 2004 and the major driver appears to be due to the increased use of energyintensive technology

an almost ideal supply system estimate of us energy substitution abstract this paper introduces a linear almost ideal supply system laiss model to examine aggregate us energy demand based on the almost ideal demand system aids model the laiss model is a flexible functional form for imposing and testing properties of demand for the inputs of production own and cross price elasticities are derived for aggregate capital labor and energy and compared to the translog cost function both models reduce to estimating a system of input share equations on input prices and output with output normalized by the stone s input price index in the laiss model results indicate that all inputs are substitutes in both models but elasticities differ a log likelihood dominance criterion shows that the laiss model dominates the translog cost function for this dataset results suggest that inputs are substitutes and that an energy import tariff would increase demand for labor and capital

the impact of energy prices on the volatility of ethanol prices and the role of gasoline emissions abstract the contribution of renewable energy resources is vital for a country s economic growth by providing high efficiency in energy as well as an effective tool for the confrontation of climate change in particular concerning the eu an increase in the consumption of renewable energy resources as a proportion of the total energy consumption by its member states was set as an objective until 2020 ethanol has been widely used as a substitute to conventional energy like gasoline and oil the present paper surveys the role of alternative energy prices and gas emissions in the formation of the ethanol prices the results of the empirical survey confirmed the existence of a sole relationship among the variables employed according to the results obtained an increase in the volume of emissions or in gasoline prices results in an increase in ethanol prices while the opposite is confirmed in the case of crude oil he elasticity of ethanol prices to the increase of the emissions is another result worth mentioning indicative of the significant role of the emissions in the formation of ethanol prices

good subsidies or bad subsidies evidence from low carbon transition in china s metallurgical industry abstract since the metallurgical industry has become the main source of china s carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption in recent years low carbon transition in that industry is of great significance for achieving china s carbon reduction targets it is generally believed that phasing out fossil fuel subsidies is an effective way to reduce energy related co2 emissions since it can increase the energy prices and lower its consumption this paper aims to investigate whether the energy subsidy removal can promote the low carbon transition of china s metallurgical industry taking inter fuel and inter factor substitution effects as the link we calculate the co2 mitigation potential on the assumption that the subsidies for each category of fossil energy were eliminated we find that the metallurgical industry has a sluggish reaction to the changes in energy price supposing eliminating the energy subsidies in the period of 2003 2015 the amount of reduced co2 would be 487 286 million tons accounting for a slight proportion of the total emissions in the industry but it is meaningful for the global co2 mitigation since it approximates the whole co2 emissions in norway during the same period these findings can provide some new insights for the energy subsidy issue and suggest that the additional measures are required to promote the low carbon transition in china s metallurgical industry rather than just relying on the removal of fossil fuel subsidies

the path of technological progress for china s low carbon development evidence from three urban agglomerations abstract it is widely believed that technological progress is the key driving force for low carbon development based on a panel data of 50 cities during the period 2005 2014 in china s three urban agglomerations beijing tianjin hebei yangtze river delta and pearl river delta this paper presents a comprehensive analysis on the path of technological progress for the low carbon development specifically it firstly estimates the factor biased technological progress by using a translog production function model and then dynamic panel data models are used to investigate the impacts of three sources of technological progress including rd finally we introduce an index to measure the appropriate technical structure and analyze the technological improvement strategy to the low carbon development the main results indicate that technological progress of the three urban agglomerations is biased toward electricity thereby shows a electricity saving effect fdi shows electricity saving and carbon reduction effects but rd the impacts of import and export on the factor biased technological progress are weak furthermore the path of technological progress is highly related to the level of economy when gdp per capita is higher than 37 000 yuan indigenous innovation is the main driver for low carbon development

nonlinearities in the u s corn ethanol oil gasoline price system we use a smooth transition vector error correction model to assess price relationships within the u s ethanol industry monthly ethanol corn oil and gasoline prices from 1990 to 2008 are used in the analysis results indicate the existence of long run relationships among the prices analyzed strong links between energy and food prices are identified

dynamic impacts of high oil prices on the bioethanol and feedstock markets this study investigates the impacts of high international oil prices on the bioethanol and corn markets in the us between 2007 and 2008 the prices of major grain crops had increased sharply reflecting the rise in international oil prices these dual price shocks had caused substantial harm to the global economy employing a structural vector auto regression model svar we analyze how increases in international oil prices could impact the prices of and demand for corn which is used as a major bioethanol feedstock in the us the results indicate that an increase in the oil price would increase bioethanol demand for corn and corn prices in the short run and that corn prices would stabilize in the long run as corn exports and feedstock demand for corn decline consequently policies supporting biofuels should encourage the use of bioethanol co products for feed and the development of marginal land to mitigate increases in the feedstock price

impacts of technological change on factor substitution between energy and other inputs within us agriculture 1950 79 abstract past efforts to estimate elasticities of substitution between inputs both in and out of agriculture have usually made use of a single data set to provide the elasticities between the input pairs and have led to highly conflicting results particularly with respect to the substitution between capital or machinery and energy this study reveals that the elasticity of substitution between a number of input pairs in agriculture can vary by substantial amounts depending on the time period used for the estimation energy in agriculture which was a complement for machinery in the 1950s was a substitute by the 1970s

investigating co2 mitigation potentials and the impact of oil price distortion in china s transport sector abstract the transport sector is a major source of oil consumption and co2 emissions in china however due to the regulated pricing mechanism in china the end user oil price cannot reflect real market price and thus oil price distortion exists therefore the main aim of this paper is to study the affecting mechanism of oil price distortion on co2 emission mitigation firstly the level of oil price distortion is evaluated and a dynamic trans log cost function model is built to analyze the substitution relationship among energy products secondly the own price elasticity and cross price elasticity for fuel demand are calculated based on provincial panel data of china s transport sector over 2004 2016 finally co2 mitigation potentials are estimated by removing the impact of oil price distortion results show that 1 there is positive oil price distortion over 2004 2016 2 substitute relationship is observed between oil and coal oil and electricity and the substitution relationship is affected by factor substitution 3 removing oil price distortion will reduce co2 emissions of china s transport sector by 599 million tons in the studying period policies should focus removing the impact of oil price distortion promoting electricity oil substitution and promoting capital energy substitution to mitigate co2 emissions

assessing the impact of us ethanol on fossil fuel markets a structural var approach abstract despite the growing importance of biofuels the effect of biofuels on fossil fuel markets is not fully understood we develop a joint structural vector auto regression var model of the global crude oil us gasoline and us ethanol markets to examine whether the us ethanol market has had any impact on global oil markets the structural var approach provides a unique method for decomposing price and quantity data into demand and supply shocks allowing us to estimate the distinct dynamic effects of ethanol demand and supply shocks on the real prices of crude oil and us gasoline ethanol demand in the us is driven mainly by government support in the form of tax credits and blending mandates shocks to ethanol demand therefore reflect changes in policy more than any other factor in contrast ethanol supply shocks are driven by changes in feedstock prices a principle finding is that a policy driven ethanol demand expansion causes a statistically significant decline in real crude oil prices while an ethanol supply expansion does not have a statistically significant impact on real oil prices this suggests that even though us ethanol market is small the influence of us biofuels policy on the crude oil market is pervasive we also show that ethanol demand shocks are more important than ethanol supply shocks in explaining the fluctuation of real prices of crude oil and us gasoline

energy conservation in china s light industry sector evidence from inter factor and inter fuel substitution following the impressive economic achievements in the past decades china is faced with energy and environmental challenges to carry out more effective and targeted energy policies the heterogeneities of different industrial sectors are of great importance the energy consumption of china s light industry in 2012 was 316 million tons of coal equivalents which is about the energy consumption of south korea the paper explored the substitution relationships between various input factors and fuel sources and showed that electricity price reform is crucial for energy conservation in china s light industry then the dynamics of energy intensity change is examined by decomposing energy intensity into budget effect substitution effect output effect and technology advance effect the result revealed that the substitution effect between input factors is a key driving force however technology progress seems to contribute very little for future energy policy alternatives promoting the implementation of new conservation technology and electricity price reform may be effective measures

capital energy substitution evidence from a panel of irish manufacturing firms abstract we use a translog cost function to model production in the irish manufacturing sector over the period from 1991 to 2009 we estimate both own and cross price elasticities and morishima elasticities of substitution between capital labour materials and energy we find that capital and energy are substitutes in the production process across all firms we find that a 1 rise in the price of energy is associated with an increase of 0 04 in the demand for capital the morishima elasticities which reflect the technological substitution potential indicate that a 1 increase in the price of energy causes the capital energy input ratio to increase by 1 5 the demand for capital in energy intensive firms is more responsive to increases in energy prices while it is less responsive in foreign owned firms we also observe a sharp decline in firms responsiveness in the first half of the sample period

the impact of ethanol production on food prices the role of interplay between the u s and brazil abstract food prices have increased rapidly in recent years and so has ethanol production some studies have claimed that there is a connection between the two the main purpose of this paper is to add to this literature by examining the influence that the interplay between brazil and the u s in ethanol production has on food prices specifically and controlling for other variables which have been shown to affect food prices we investigate whether sugarcane ethanol and corn ethanol production have similar impacts on food prices and whether ethanol productivity affects food prices we find a positive significant effect of brazilian market share in world ethanol market on relative food prices we also find that an increase of brazilian cane ethanol area has a negative effect on relative food prices

output elasticities and inter factor substitution empirical evidence from the transportation sector of shanghai abstract as a major consumer of fossil fuels the transportation sector in shanghai presents a wide range of problems including air pollution noise and traffic congestion this study aims to explore the energy substitution effect based on a trans log production function to evaluate the contribution of each input factor to sectoral output and reveal the substitution possibilities between capital labor and energy to deal with a multicollinearity problem we adopt ridge regression to obtain the coefficient of each variable under the appropriate penalty value the bootstrap method is used for making statistical inferences and the 95 confidence interval is obtained with 1000 bootstrap samples the empirical results demonstrate the following 1 the output elasticities of capital 0 13 0 15 labor 0 24 0 25 and energy 0 43 0 48 are positive and show an increasing trend over the study period 2 the substitution elasticity between labor and energy is the highest among the input factors around 1 0095 with a slight decreasing trend 3 the substitution elasticity between energy and capital ranges from 1 0018 to 1 0021 and the substitution elasticity between capital and labor is infinitely close to 1

factor and fuel substitution in china s iron steel industry evidence and policy implications climate change which is induced from energy consumption and co2 emissions has got people s attention hence many strategies and ways are being adopted to mitigate co2 emissions energy substitution is crucial to the promotion of energy conservation and co2 emissions reduction the purpose of this paper is to estimate both inter factor and inter fuel substitution in china s iron steel industry during the period 1985 2011 empirical results show several conclusions for china s iron steel industry 1 own price elasticity of energy is negative so increase in energy price will reduce energy input 2 energy and capital and energy and labor are substitutes and the substitution in energy capital is relatively stronger 3 though coal oil and electricity are also substitutes the substitution effect is not so obvious because of pricing distortions in china the driving forces of energy efficiency change are further discussed and the results show that technology progress is the key factor determining energy intensity therefore market oriented reforms in terms of energy prices improvement in energy substitution including inter factor and inter fuel substation and promotion of energy saving technologies are important means for ensuring future energy conservation and co2 emissions reduction practices in china s iron steel sector

does factor market distortion inhibit the green total factor productivity in china abstract this article measures green total factor productivity gtfp to discuss whether factor market distortions inhibit the green development of china s economy meanwhile export and foreign direct investment fdi are taken into account based on a threshold model considering export and fdi are closely related to factor market distortion environment and the economy the result shows that the factor market distortion has negative influences on china s gtfp growth export and fdi s spillover effect significantly moreover factor market distortion was found to be the threshold of export and fdi s spillover effect leading to inferior export and fdi which further inhibit gtfp growth this article provides a supplement to the issue from the perspective of environment based on the widely confirmed proposition that factor market distortion inhibits tfp growth according to the results we suggest that the chinese government should reduce the control of factor market as much as possible leaving the factor resources allocation to the market this will not only promote an innovation driven development but also an energy saving and environment friendly economy in china the article provides a new perspective on the influence mechanism of export and fdi on gtfp growth by discussing the impact path of factor distortion and expands the empirical framework of the research direction as well