rent seeking with asymmetric valuations this paper analyzes tullock s rent seeking game with asymmetric valuations for a variable range of the returns to scale parameter a necessary and sufficient condition for a unique pure strategy nash equilibrium is established equilibrium effort and expected profits are determined and subjected to comparative statics analysis increasing the underdog s valuation induces both players to increase their efforts increasing the favorite s valuation increases his effort but decreases the effort of the underdog expected profits increase with a player s valuation but decreases with the valuation of the competitor the impact of the returns to scale parameter is also analyzed

strategic behavior in contests comment almost by definition contests involve strategy this is especially true in contests between unevenly matched contenders in a recent article avinash dixit 1987 explored strategic commitment in contests between a favorite and an underdog the favorite is defined as the player whose chance of victory exceeds one half at the nash equilibrium an underdog s chance is less than one half dixit concludes that if the favorite has the opportunity to move first then he will overcommit effort compared with the nash equilibrium an important implication of the favorite overcommitting effort is that strategic behavior leads to greater social costs see gordon tullock 1980 the opposite holds if the underdog has the opportunity to move first this paper demonstrates that the favorite will never overcommit effort given endogenous order of moves the favorite finds it advantageous to wait until the underdog moves surprisingly the underdog s best strategy is not to wait but to make the first move throwing the first punch the equilibrium order of play is for the underdog to move before the favorite in this equilibrium one never observes overcommitment of effort consequently extending dixit s model to allow for endogenous order of moves suggests that strategic behavior in contests will lead to undercommitment compared with nash behavior

the solution to the tullock rent seeking game when r 2 mixed strategy equilibria and mean dissipation rates in tullock s rent seeking model the probability a player wins the game depends on expenditures raised to the power r we show that a symmetric mixed strategy nash equilibrium exists when r 2 and that overdissipation of rents does not arise in any nash equilibrium we derive a tight lower bound on the level of rent dissipation that arises in a symmetric equilibrium when the strategy space is discrete and show that full rent dissipation occurs when the strategy space is continuous our results are shown to be consistent with recent experimental evidence on the dissipation of rents

defining the rebound effect abstract this paper gives rigorous definitions of the rebound effect not only in the well described single commodity case khazzoom 1980 the energy journal 1 4 21 40 but also for a multiple commodity case it is shown that the familiar laws for the single case do not hold for the multiple case the paper describes the state of the art of empirical estimation of the rebound effect with special focus on the estimates done for the netherlands we conclude that according to every definition empirical evidence shows that the re is probably small between 0 and 15

effort levels in contests with two asymmetric players a contest is a situation in which players compete with one another by expending effort to win a prize examples abound firms compete by spending rd 26 krueger 14 posner 20 rogerson 23 appelbaum and katz 1 hillman and riley 12 hirshleifer 13 ellingsen 8 nitzan 18 and baik 2 3 have studied rent seeking contests lazear and rosen 15 o keeffe viscusi and zeckhauser 19 and rosen 24 have examined performance incentives associated with reward schemes riley 22 has analyzed the war of attrition and auctions dixit 7 has considered strategic commitments in contests with different applications these are only a part of the literature on the theory of contests despite the vast literature however the effects of asymmetries between players have not been clarified except by harris and vickers 11 who analyze in a patent race model the strategic consequences of asymmetries the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of asymmetries between two players on individual and total effort levels in a model with a logit form probability of winning function effort levels expended by the players deserve attention effort in a rent seeking contest is interpreted as social costs and thus total effort level is a measure of economic efficiency effort in an r d contest is interpreted as r d expenditures and thus effort levels determine the expected date of invention we focus on asymmetries between the players resulting from their different valuations of the prize their different abilities to convert effort into probability of winning or both such asymmetries are common in contests for example people in different locations may receive different

a multi dimensional analysis on microeconomic factors of china s industrial energy intensity 2000 2017 abstract reducing energy intensity is the key point to solve the contradiction among economic development energy constraints and environmental pressure in china considering microeconomic factors this paper extends decomposition and attribution models and analyses the drivers of china s industrial aggregate energy intensity aei at the regional sectoral level the results show that aei decreased by 49 during 2000 2017 at the regional level most provinces presented negative contribution on regional energy intensity effect the aei decline was attributed to the drop of greatest negative effect of r d efficiency in liaoning the increase in investment intensity and r d intensity lead to an increase in aei largely owning to shandong and liaoning respectively at the sectoral level the aei decline can be mainly explained by the inhibition effect of energy intensity and r d efficiency however this negative contribution was greatly offset by the r d intensity effect the investment intensity showed a positive impact in aei increase and smelting and pressing of ferrous metals sector was the main contributor regional and sectoral investment structure effect shifted from increasing to decreasing aei over the study period based on the results targeted policy recommendations are proposed to further decrease the china s industrial aei in the 14th fyp period

efficient rents 2 free entry and efficient rent seeking in the competition for a monopoly right in which the number of bidders is fixed tullock and others have found the value of the resources spent in the aggregate to capture the transfer to be sometimes less than and sometimes greater than the value of the monopoly we think this approach to be incomplete since it leaves unanswered the question of what determines the number of individuals who will vie for the right to be the monopolist it is unsatisfactory to imagine for example that the franchisor sets the number of contestants one could then foresee that rent seeking would arise to influence the permissible number of bidders and this merely moves the rent seeking dissipation question one step back

the evolution of chinese industrial co2 emissions 2000 2050 a review and meta analysis of historical drivers projections and policy goals the emissions of the chinese industrial sector alone comprise 24 1 of global emissions 7 8 gtcyr 1 in 2015 this makes chinese industrial emissions of unique national and international relevance in climate policy this study reports a literature survey that quantitatively describes the evolution of these emissions from 2000 to 2050 in the context of policy goals the survey reveals that 1 the major historical factor contributing to the decrease in industrial co2 emissions has been the reduction in energy intensities however that decrease has been more than compensated for by increases in industrial activity 2 an ensemble of projections shows that china s industrial emissions will likely peak in 2030 in alignment with china s commitment to the paris agreement the timing of the peak varies across industrial sub sectors with ferrous metals and non metallic products sectors peaking first and the electricity sector later 3 the assumptions underlying optimistic scenarios broadly match the drivers of recent decreases in historical emissions energy intensity industrial structure and energy mix furthermore these factors feature prominently in china s policy portfolio to both develop and decarbonize the chinese industrial sector the industrial carbon intensity targets of 2020 and 2025 are close to the median predictions in the medium scenarios from studies 2019 the authors

using latent variable approach to estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the energy rebound effect has been a significant issue in china which is undergoing economic transition since it reflects the effectiveness of energy saving policy relying on improved energy efficiency based on the ipat equation and brookes explanation of the rebound effect this paper develops an alternative estimation model of the rebound effect by using the estimation model and latent variable approach which is achieved through a time varying coefficient state space model we estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the results show that the rebound effect evidently exists in china as a result of the annual average of 39 73 over 1954 2010 before and after the implementation of china s reform and opening up policy in 1978 the rebound effects are 47 24 and 37 32 with a strong fluctuation and a circuitously downward trend respectively indicating that a stable political environment and the development of market economy system facilitate the effectiveness of energy saving policy although the energy saving effect of improving energy efficiency has been partly realised there remains a large energy saving potential in china

rational expectations in microeconomic models an overview abstract this paper is an expository introduction to several topics of current research in the general equilibrium theory of rational expectations more specifically we discuss the existence of exact and approximate rational expectations equilibria the implementation of equilibria the behavior of learning and smoothing processes by which traders construct expectations from repeated observations of the market and the lagged use of the information revealed by prices in an intertemporal sequence of markets the purpose of this discussion is to introduce papers on these topics appearing in the journal of economic theory symposium on rational expectations in microeconomic models

strict rational expectations equilibria with diffuseness abstract for smooth static pure exchange economies under uncertainty it is shown that a diffuseness condition on the distribution of traders characteristics as the state of the world varies permits one to use only a weak dimensionality restriction in the proof of the genericity of existence of strict rational expectations equilibria a generic result on the amount of information conveyed by equilibrium price functions and comparisons with some examples of nonexistence are given

decoupling economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions in china a sectoral factor decomposition analysis china is facing the dilemma of how to coordinate economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions reduction this paper investigates the decoupling effect of economic growth from co2 emissions in china during the period 1992 2012 using the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method we decompose the driving forces of the decoupling of economic growth from co2 emissions in china s five major economic sectors into several factors and measure the contribution of each factor to the decoupling of china s overall economy from co2 emissions the results show that china performed the weak decoupling of economic growth from co2 emissions during 1992 2012 and so did all its five major sectors such a state did not occur smoothly and presented five different stages energy intensity and economic activity level were the most important factors affecting the decoupling in china energy intensity decreased in all sectors indicating a large acceleration for the sectoral decoupling states this finding is applicable to process carbon intensity in industrial sector and energy emission factor in agricultural industrial construction and service sectors in terms of sectoral effects on the decoupling in china industrial sector played a dominant role while construction sector had the most marginal influence the economic activity level and economic share of industrial sector exerted the most negative effects on the decoupling the energy intensity of industrial sector played a key role in promoting the national decoupling state while the energy emission factor of agricultural sector contributed the least

decoupling co2 emissions and industrial growth in china over 1993 2013 the role of investment abstract since industrial sector is a leading energy consumer and co 2 emitter in china the degree of the decoupling of co 2 emissions and industrial growth plays a critical role in realizing the energy conservation and emission reduction goals of china this is the first study to present a specific investigation on the decoupling of co 2 emissions and industrial growth in china from 1993 to 2013 using an extended logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model focusing on both energy related and process related co 2 emissions and introducing three novel investment factors i e investment scale investment share and investment efficiency we highlight and explore the remarkable role of investment in the mitigation and decoupling of co 2 emissions with industrial growth the results show that china s industrial sector experienced the weak decoupling during 1993 2013 the investment scale is the most important factor responsible for the increase in co 2 emissions and the inhibition of the decoupling the investment efficiency effect has a volatile trend and overall it plays the most significant role in reducing co 2 emissions followed by the energy intensity effect and process carbon intensity effect whereas the energy mix carbon coefficient and investment share have marginal effects among 36 industrial sub sectors the seven factors of rcmcp raw chemical materials and chemical products nmp nonmetal mineral products and spfm smelting and pressing of ferrous metals have significant effects on the decoupling thus the three sub sectors should be among the top concerns for abating co 2 emissions finally we provide policy recommendations considering both conventional and investment factors for china s industrial sector to realize emission reduction targets

energy research and r d indicators an lmdi decomposition analysis for the iea big 5 in energy research abstract the literature has always shown that there are two important factors in the improvement of a country s research output gross domestic product gdp and r d expenditures taking the discussion a step further and in an effort to provide policy recommendations on what is needed to boost research capacity this paper aims at decomposing the change in energy research papers of five countries australia canada germany uk and us into four factors gdp r d intensity ratio of total r d to gdp energy r d rate of return or productivity number of energy related papers per unit of energy r d expenditure and energy r d priority share of energy r d to total r d expenditure the findings show a general trend in the sign of the four effects on research for all five countries energy r d productivity energy r d priority and gdp are mostly found to be positive contributors while the r d intensity a negative one this pattern has exceptions that are more prominent during periods where economic growth is constrained for example during 2008 09 the results have policy implications not only for these five countries but also for developing countries low gdp that aim at contributing more to the energy related research output globally

dissipation of contestable rents by small numbers of contenders the theory of rent seeking with its origins in the observations of gordon tullock 1967 or to use jagdish bhagwati s 1982 proposed term the theory of directly unproductive profit seeking activities is concerned with the potentially adverse effects on resource allocation of incentives to cap ture and defend artificially contrived rents and transfers the scope for so cial loss proposed by the theory derives from the relation between the value of a contestable prize and the value of the resources attracted into the con test to determine the beneficiary of the prize underlying this social loss is a specification of how rational behavior by optimizing agents links the value of the prize sought to the resources expended it has been traditional to assume competitive behavior in describing the activities of lobbying and influence seeking then if some further condi tions are satisfied l the total value of the resources expended precisely equals the value of the prize sought so dissipation is complete 2 conse quently the social cost associated with contestability of a rent can be in ferred from the value of the rent itself and the detailed and hard to come by information on individual outlays made in the course of the contest be comes unnecessary by basing their analyses on competitive dissipation contributors to the rent seeking literature see the review by robert tollison 1982 have been able to presume that the observed value of a contested rent is an exact measure of the associated social cost of monopoly power or regu lation similarly in the trade theoretic literature where the rights contested are to quota premia or revenues from trade taxes krueger 1974 bhagwati

free entry and efficient rent seeking this paper concerns rent seeking and the extent to which rents are dissipated under various circumstances gordon tullock s 1967 insight that expenditures made to capture an artificially created transfer represent a social waste suggested that the cost to the economy of monopoly and regulation is greater than the simple harberger 1954 deadweight loss indeed under tullock s original formulation and in the extensions of his work by krueger 1974 and posner 1975 rents are exactly dissipated at the social level 1 is spent to capture 1 so that the total welfare loss from such activities is equal to the harberger triangle plus the rectangle of monopoly profits

decomposition analysis of co2 emissions from electricity generation in china abstract electricity generation in china mainly depends on coal and its products which has led to the increase in co2 emissions this paper intends to analyze the current status of co2 emissions from electricity generation in china during the period 1991 2009 and apply the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi technique to find the nature of the factors influencing the changes in co2 emissions the main results as follows 1 co2 emission from electricity generation has increased from 530 96 mt in 1991 to 2393 02 mt in 2009 following an annual growth rate of 8 72 coal products is the main fuel type for thermal power generation which accounts for more than 90 co2 emissions from electricity generation 2 this paper also presents co2 emissions factor of electricity consumption which help calculate co2 emission from final electricity consumption 3 in china the economic activity effect is the most important contributor to increase co2 emissions from electricity generation but the electricity generation efficiency effect plays the dominant role in decreasing co2 emissions

indirect carbon emissions of urban households in china patterns determinants and inequality abstract the urban household sector is considered to be an essential source of climate change in order to obtain detailed information concerning the description of household consumption activities this paper combined consumer lifestyle approach and input output analysis to estimate indirect carbon emissions of urban household from 2002 to 2012 besides we further analysed the driving forces and inequality of indirect carbon emissions the results showed that the total indirect carbon emissions during the study period increased rapidly rising from 894 08 mtco2 to 1957 03 mtco2 more than 58 of carbon emissions were from 40 of the high income population the highest income group 10 of total urban households deduced 21 of urban indirect carbon emissions the per capita carbon emissions of different households showed a remarkable disparity and the per capita carbon emissions of high income groups decreased from 2011 to 2012 the effective mitigation efforts should focus on reducing carbon intensity and shifting consumption structure for high inequality consumption activities caused by rich households rich urban households should consume less goods and services from this consumption activities for high inequality consumption activities caused by low income households the redistribution of income from rich to poor and low carbon intensity lifestyles may be better options to reduce carbon emissions and inequalities of urban households

drivers of intersectoral metal consumption intensity in china a combined input output and sensitivity analysis abstract as a country with a high level of metal consumption china must urgently formulate effective policies to improve its metal use efficiency this article identifies the key sectors with the highest metal consumption intensity mci and investigates the effect of the pure technical and final demand coefficients on the mci of key sectors using a combined input output and sensitivity analysis the results show that the average mci of key industries increased from 7 37 tonnes per ten thousand yuan to 32 13 tonnes per ten thousand yuan during the period from 2002 to 2012 and the manufacturing and processing of the metals sector n14 revealed the greatest mci moreover the elasticity of the mci in terms of the pure technical and final demand coefficients of key sectors also increased rapidly from 2002 to 2012 and the number of corresponding transactions leading to the increase in key sectoral mci significantly increased in terms of the elasticity of the technical coefficients their sensitivity exceeded that of the pure technical coefficients in most cases due to the influence of the demand structure and direct transactions between sectors had important impacts on the mci in most key industries meanwhile almost all the sectors exerted direct or indirect effects on the mci of the mining of metal ores industry n4 in addition the manufacturing of general and special purpose machinery n16 manufacturing of electrical machinery and apparatus n18 and construction n22 exerted influences on most sectors concerning the final demand coefficient elasticity the gross fixed capital formation of most sectors induced the greatest elasticity in the corresponding sectors and the greatest elasticity of all the sectors was related to the gross fixed capital formation of n22

is there really a green paradox abstract in the absence of a co2 tax the anticipation of a cheaper renewable backstop increases current emissions of co2 since the date at which renewables are phased in is brought forward and more generally future emissions of co2 will decrease the effect on global warming is unclear green welfare falls if the backstop is relatively expensive and full exhaustion of fossil fuels is optimal but may increase if the backstop is sufficiently cheap relative to the cost of extracting the last drop of fossil fuels plus marginal global warming damages as then it is attractive to leave more fossil fuels unexploited and thus limit co2 emissions we establish these results by analyzing depletion of non renewable fossil fuels followed by a switch to a clean renewable backstop paying attention to timing of the switch and the amount of fossil fuels remaining unexploited we also discuss the potential for limit pricing when the non renewable resource is owned by a monopolist finally we show that if backstops are already used and more backstops become economically viable as the price of fossil fuels rises a lower cost of the backstop will either postpone fossil fuel exhaustion or leave more fossil fuel in situ thus boosting green welfare however if a market economy does not internalize global warming externalities and renewables have not kicked in yet full exhaustion of fossil fuel will occur in finite time and a backstop subsidy always curbs green welfare

using an extended lmdi model to explore techno economic drivers of energy related industrial co2 emission changes a case study for shanghai china although investment and r d activities can exert significant effects on energy related industrial co2 emissions eice related factors have not been fairly uncovered in the existing index decomposition studies this paper extends the previous logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition model by introducing three novel factors r d intensity investment intensity and r d efficiency the extended model not only considers the conventional drivers of eice but also reflects the microeconomic effects of investment and r d behaviors on eice furthermore taking shanghai as an example which is the economic center and leading co2 emitter in china we use the extended model to decompose and explain eice changes also we incorporate renewable energy sources into the proposed model to carry out an alternative decomposition analysis at shanghai s entire industrial level the results show that among conventional macroeconomic factors expanding output scale is mainly responsible for the increase in eice and industrial structure adjustment is the most significant factor in mitigating eice regardless of renewable energy sources the emission reduction effect of energy intensity focused on by the chinese government is less than the expected due to the rebound effect but the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies its mitigating effect partly resulting from the transmission from the abating effect of industrial structure adjustment the effect of energy structure is the weakest although all the three novel factors exert significant effects on eice they are more sensitive to policy interventions than conventional factors r d intensity presents an obvious mitigating effect while investment intensity and r d efficiency display an overall promotion effect with some volatility the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies the promotion effect of r d efficiency as a result of the green paradox effect finally we propose that co2 mitigation efforts should be made by considering both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors in order to achieve a desirable emission reduction effect

integrated weighting approach to carbon emission quotas an application case of beijing tianjin hebei region abstract the coordinated development of beijing tianjin hebei region has been included in the chinese 12th five year plan as a national strategy accordingly the cooperation of energy saving and environmental protection is an important part at the present stage establishing carbon emission trading market in china is regarded as an effective measure to reduce and control carbon dioxide emission meanwhile it is an important task for government to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions in order to explore the cross provincial carbon trading market mode of china this paper aims to construct a comprehensive index and use the integrated weighting approach to simulate the carbon quota allocation of beijing tianjin hebei region the results show that firstly the indicator of responsibility which is about 0 56 is given relatively more weight among the three indicators by comparison the weights of capacity and potential are 0 13 and 0 30 secondly the provinces with strong economic ability and lower carbon reduction potential may get fewer proportions of carbon emission quotas such as beijing thirdly since undertaking the function transfer and dispersal of beijing and tianjin hebei should have a relatively high carbon emission quotas in the future carbon trading market these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in beijing tianjin hebei region of china

decoupling sectoral economic output from carbon emissions on city level a comparative study of beijing and shanghai china abstract cities do play significant roles in tackling global environmental changes decoupling economic growth from environmental pressures is critical for global sustainable development however few studies pay attention to the decoupling analysis at city level this paper conducts a comparative study of the decoupling performance of economic output from co2 emissions between beijing and shanghai the top two cities in china in this paper the decoupling trends and the decoupling effects are explored from a sectoral perspective by combining the tapio decoupling elasticity and the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model the results show that beijing and shanghai both experienced weak decoupling in construction expansive negative decoupling in transport expansive coupling in trade and weak decoupling in others over the period 2000 2015 moreover agriculture appeared strong decoupling in beijing and recessive decoupling in shanghai industry showed strong decoupling in beijing and weak decoupling in shanghai the decoupling effects showed different magnitudes and patterns in industrial sectors between beijing and shanghai overall per capita gdp and population growth inhibited the decoupling while energy intensity industrial share energy mix accelerated the decoupling process

rent seeking contest when the prize increases with aggregate efforts the objective of this article is to investigate contests in which efforts are productive tullock s standard rent seeking model is extended by making the rent itself increase with the aggregate efforts a positive externality is thereby introduced into the contest because a contender s private effort in quest of the rent generates a benefit for other contenders coupled with a negative externality presented in the standard rent seeking model the net effect on the social efficiency of the contest is a priori ambiguous it is shown that the extended contest generates socially wasteful excessive aggregate efforts

the lmdi approach to decomposition analysis a practical guide in a recent study ang energy policy 32 2004 compared various index decomposition analysis methods and concluded that the logarithmic mean divisia index method is the preferred method since the literature on the method tends to be either too technical or specific for most potential users this paper provides a practical guide that includes the general formulation process summary tables for easy reference and examples

collective rent dissipation the theory of rent seeking was initiated by tullock 1967 1980 followed by krueger 1974 and posner 1975 and more recently extended in various directions by allard 1988 appelbaum and katz 1986a b c gradstein and nitzan 1989 hillman and katz 1984 1987 hillman and samet 1987 hillman and riley 1989 katz et al 1990 long and vousden 1987 ursprung 1990 and varian 1989 the purpose of this paper is to extend this theory by introducing the possibility of collective group rent seeking with voluntary individual decisions regarding their extent of participation in the collective rent seeking efforts

the impacts of removing energy subsidies on economy wide rebound effects in china an input output analysis abstract facing with the increasing contradiction of economic growth energy scarcity and environmental deterioration energy conservation and emissions abatement have been ambitious targets for the chinese government improving energy efficiency through technological advancement is a primary measure to achieve these targets however the existence of energy rebound effects may completely or partially offset energy savings associated with technological advancement this paper adopted a modified input output model to estimate the economy wide energy rebound effects across china s economic sectors with the consideration of energy subsidies the empirical results show that the aggregate rebound effect of china is about 1 9 in 2007 2010 thus technological advancement significantly restrains energy consumption increasing removing energy subsidies will cause the aggregate rebound effect declines to 1 53 specifically removing subsidies for coal and nature gas can reduce the rebound effects signifcantly while removing the subsidies for oil products has a small impact on rebound effect the existence of rebound effects implies that technological advancement should be cooperated with energy price reform so as to achieve the energy saving target in addition the government should consider the diversity of economic sectors and energy types when design the reform schedule

sector decomposition of china s national economic carbon emissions and its policy implication for national ets development abstract uncovering the contributions of each sector s driving factors to the growth of national economic carbon emissions has great significance for china in developing its nationwide emission trading scheme ets the paper applies the index decomposition analysis ida and logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi model to discuss the underlying drivers behind china s national economic carbon emissions during the period 1996 2012 from both sector and factor decomposition perspectives and accordingly offers policy proposals for china s national ets development major conclusions include 1 six heavy industry sectors the transport storage post sector and the construction sector are the largest contributors and hence proposed for incorporation into the ets s coverage 2 the rapid expansion of economic output dominantly increases carbon emissions the design of cap on emissions should allow for a proper increment and establish a new entrant reserve to coordinate economic development 3 as the dynamics of carbon emissions vary markedly across sectors allowance allocation needs to consider the changing sectoral structure of emissions 4 the combined effects of sectoral energy intensity and structure changes largely offset carbon emissions benchmarking is suggested as an ideal allocation mechanism and the setup of sectoral carbon intensity benchmark should synthetically evaluate the potential impacts of related factors 5 manufacturer based manner and carbon offset mechanism are respectively recommended for the initial implementation of carbon trading in the transport storage post sector and the construction sector

self fulfilling mechanisms in bayesian games abstract amechanismfor a bayesian gamegis a mapping from the set of states of nature to the set of players actions isself fulfillingif players are truthful at the communication stage and given the information revealed by no player can gain in unilaterally deviating from the action prescribed by the mechanism we investigate the properties of self fulfilling mechanisms and we show in particular that they correspond to inert solutions of the infinitely repeated game generated byg we also discuss applications to market games regulation and r d games journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d82 c72

decomposition analysis of debt s impact on china s energy consumption abstract debt can influence the energy consumption of private sectors and public agencies by changing their fiscal budget constraints from 1996 to 2016 china has had rapid debt growth and become the second largest borrower in the world additionally china has been the largest energy consumer since 2009 the impact of debt growth on its energy consumption however is not much addressed in the literature using an extended lmdi model we investigate the impact of china s debt on its energy consumption from 1996 to 2016 in a new way the results show that 1 among the closed set of debt related factors and other conventional variables studied private debt per capita makes the strongest contribution to china s energy consumption and population has a moderate impact on the growth of energy consumption 2 energy efficiency improvement output efficiency of government debt debt structure adjustment and increased tertiary industry share are mitigating forces of energy consumption these results provide a new holistic perspective for the chinese government to formulate synergistic policies of risk control and pollution control

examining the multiple impacts of technological progress on co2 emissions in china a panel quantile regression approach abstract whilst a plethora of literature has viewed technological progress as one of the critical influencing factors in relation to energy consumption and co2 emissions little effort has been made to identify the sectoral differences in the relationship between technological progress and co2 emissions thereby this paper remedies the inadequacies in the extant literature by empirically investigating the impact of technological progress on co2 emissions specifically taking into account its heterogeneous effect in various economic sectors this paper first decomposes the effect of technological progress as taking place in heavy industry in light industry in construction industry and in service industry a panel quantile regression approach and a balanced city panel data model are then applied covering the period 2001 2013 in china the empirical results show that technological progress in heavy industry and light industry surprisingly facilitates a higher level of co2 emissions despite its prominent contribution to energy efficiency improvement meanwhile as distinct from the effect it shows in the heavy and light industries technological progress in construction and service industries exerts a negative effect on co2 emissions additionally this paper further discovers that the strength of the multiple impacts of technological progress also varies with the level of emitters by studying the heterogeneous effect brought about by technological progress in different economic sectors and emitters this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between co2 emissions and technological progress

would you trust lobbies we consider the regulatory problem to approve or to ban a new product technology in the context of scientific controversy about its detrimental environmental and or health effects we formalize the regulator s decision making process as a tullock contest towards a theory of the rent seeking society texas a m university press texas 1980 the contestants being an industrial lobby representing the economic agents who have developed the new product technology and an environmental lobby representing the economic agents who will be harmed by the product or technology assuming that the industrial lobby has private information about the unfavorable environmental and or health effects but can be held liable for damage ex post we derive the equilibrium properties of the contest in particular we derive conditions under which it is socially preferable for the regulator to decide according to the contest s outcome rather than according to an ex ante cost benefit analysis using his prior beliefs we find that the contest outperforms the ex ante cost benefit analysis only if the risk of judgment proofness is not too high

reexamining efficient rent seeking in laboratory markets given millner and pratt s 1989 finding of behavior inconsistent with theory we reexamine efficient rent seeking in experimental markets we show that a when r 3 no nash equilibrium exists and therefore behavior has no theoretical benchmark to judge consistency and b when r 1 with a new experimental design utilizing an explicit expected payoff matrix rent seeking behavior is consistent with both nash equilibrium and dissipation hypotheses

examining the influencing factors of co2 emissions at city level via panel quantile regression evidence from 102 chinese cities ascertaining the influencing factors of carbon dioxide emissions in chinese cities is an important issue for policy makers this paper investigates the effect of several determinants on carbon emis

information aggregation in debate who should speak first abstract privately informed individuals speak openly in front of other members of a committee about the desirability of a public decision each individual wishes to appear well informed for any given order of speech committee members may herd by suppressing their true information with individuals of heterogeneous expertise optimizing over the order of speech can improve the extraction of information but not perfectly so it is not always optimal to use the common anti seniority rule whereby experts speak in order of increasing expertise a committee with more able experts may be afflicted by greater herding problems yielding a worse outcome

on the optimality of the patent renewal system the patent system is mainly a renewal system the patent life is chosen by the patentee in return for fees i ask whether such a system can be justified by asymmetric information on costs and benefits of research in such a model i show that renewal mechanisms possibly with subsidies are equivalent to direct revelation mechanisms and therefore cannot be improved on regardless of the objective function under plausible circumstances patents should have a uniform life rather than varying in length as typically occurs under a renewal system

rigging the lobbying process an application of the all pay auction textabstractin a world where a politician can explicitly auction off a prize to the high bidder the standard auction literature can be used to analyse political behavior the justice system however precludes politicians from explicitly selling the prize to the highest bidder thus politicians cannot let it become public knowledge that they are in the business of selling political favors an institution has emerged in political markets to overcome this constraint which are termed as lobbying lobbyists make implicit payments to the politician through campaign contributions if these up front payments were rebated to those failing to receive the prize it would be clear that the politician was selling favors this article has examined an interesting principle arising in all pay auctions this principle states that a politician wishing to maximize political rents may find it in his best interest to exclude certain lobbyists from participating in the lobbying process particularly lobbyists valuing most the political prize

ex post regret and the decentralized sharing of information abstract firms reveal private information about the value of investment through their investment decisions as a consequence they may have ex post regret once they see other firms investments we define a notion of rational expectations equilibrium for games which imposes a no regret property in this equilibrium all firms make the same investment decision but despite the absence of ex post regret the investment herd can be inefficient in addition equilibrium might not exist we introduce a notion of probabilistic existence and identify conditions under which if the number of firms is large enough information comes out so that investment herds are first best efficient with high probability and equilibrium exists with high probability journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c7 d8

decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions growth in the united states the role of research and development abstract the united states has achieved economic growth compatible with carbon reduction since 2007 this work is addressed to understand the eight effects especially effects related to research development rd whereas economic scale was the primary inhibitor to the drop of carbon emission followed by investment intensity population size and sectoral energy structure the results of decoupling efforts analysis uncover that energy intensity r d intensity r d efficiency and sectoral carbon intensity contributed to decoupling economic growth from carbon emission whereas investment intensity population size and sectoral energy structure did not contribute to the decoupling finally some policy implications are proposed

us biofuels subsidies and co2 emissions an empirical test for a weak and a strong green paradox abstract using energy data over the period 1981 2011 we find that us biofuels subsidies and production have provided a perverse incentive for us fossil fuel producers to increase their rate of extraction that has generated a weak green paradox further in the short run if the reduction in the co 2 emissions from a one to one substitution between biofuels and fossil fuels is less than 26 percent or less than 57 percent if long run effect is taken into account then us biofuels production is likely to have resulted in a strong green paradox these results indicate that subsidies for first generation biofuels which yield a low level of per unit co 2 emission reduction compared to fossil fuels might have contributed to additional net co 2 emissions over the study period

how to promote the growth of new energy industry at different stages abstract china is currently the world s largest emitter of carbon dioxide co2 vigorously developing new energy sources has become an important way to reduce co2 emissions therefore more and more scholars have studied effective ways to promote the development of new energy industry however most of the existing research use single equation linear models or static models to study the driving forces of the new energy industry this not only ignores the large number of dynamic relationships between economic variables but also produces endogeneity problems in order to overcome the shortcomings of existing research this paper uses vector autoregressive model to study the new energy industry the results show that energy consumption structure has a positive effect on the new energy industry in the short run but the effect is limited in the long run the impact of the agriculture industry is gradually narrowing over time due to the gradual reduction of crop acreage however the influence of economic growth is positive both in the short and long run this is due to the gradual optimization of industrial structure technological progress produces a similar impact owing to continued investment in research and development funding as well as research and development personnel

a general analysis of rent seeking games in this paper we reconsider the basic model of efficient rent seeking we stress the importance of the shape of the players reaction curve in order to understand the impact of the technology of rent seeking on the structure of the outcome of the game we give a complete characterization of the pure strategy equilibria moreover the possibility of preemption by a stakelberg leader is discussed according to the nature of the technology of rent seeking available to the agents

efficient rents 1 rent seeking behavior in the long run we have analyzed long run behavior in rent seeking under several conditions and behavioral hypotheses the question of interest is whether or not the long run expenditures will exactly equal the value of the rents our results depend on the type of competitive response which is assumed to exist in the long run and on the r value governing the probability of winning

rent seeking for pure public goods in this paper we present a formal analysis of rent seeking for public goods by two or more groups with different numbers of individuals we begin by considering equally wealthy groups under risk neutrality a case which constitutes our basic model several surprising and interesting results emerge from the analysis of this basic case the problem is then extended to deal with a groups with different wealth levels and b risk aversion this last extension brings about a further crop of interesting and useful results

stackelberg rent seeking in this paper i present a formal analysis of rent seeking games in which the players do not move simultaneously i consider rent seeking situations where the players are risk neutral and may value the prize differently the subgame perfect equilibrium outcome in this stackelberg game provides several surprising and interesting results i extend the problem to deal with cases of in complete information concerning the value a player has for the politically contestable rent

rebound effect of transportation considering additional capital costs and input output relationships the role of subsistence consumption and unmet demand abstract the anticipated carbon mitigation through energy saving technology progress might be partially or even totally offset due to rebound effect a better understanding of rebound effect especially the underling mechanisms has important implications for energy efficiency policies to achieve the goal of sustainability previous studies usually ignore additional capital costs for adopting energy efficient equipment and indirect carbon emissions for providing new consumption bundles also the precise mechanisms of how living standard affects rebound effect are unknown using almost ideal demand system aids model and input output relationships among sectors this paper builds a method to estimate the rebound effect that allows for additional capital costs and carbon emission changes of all other goods and services due to backward forward linkages we find that rebound effect is over 100 for transportation in rural china even though additional capital costs would indeed reduce the magnitude and the results are quite robust to alternative settings as for the mechanisms rebound effect is divided into substitution and income channels by slutsky decomposition here we show that both of these two channels are dependent on living standard because of subsistence consumption and unmet demand carbon emissions of poor households will rebound more through income channel of unmet demand while rich households usually do not restricted by subsistence consumption and thus through substitution channel rebound of carbon emissions would be larger for rich households the opposite directions of mechanisms dig more information about the nonlinearity of rebound effect to income levels furthermore given the estimating results this paper gains several insights in terms of welfare benefits rather than just focuses on carbon reduction

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

information revelation and strategic delay in a model of investment we model investment as an n player game with a pure informational externality each player s payoff depends only on his own action and the state of nature however because a player s action reveals his private information players wait to see what other players will do equilibrium is inefficient because delay is costly and information is imperfectly revealed we characterize the unique symmetric perfect bayesian equilibrium and study the robustness of delay which turns out to be sensitive to the reaction speed and the number of players we establish the following results i when the period length is very short the game ends very quickly and there is a form of herding or informational cascade which results in a collapse of investment ii as the period length increases the possibility of herding disappears iii as the number of players increases the rate of investment and the information flow are eventually independent of the number of players adding more players simply increases the number who delay iv in the limit the time profile of investment is extreme a period of low investment followed either by an investment surge or a collapse

energy related ghg emission in agriculture of the european countries an application of the generalized divisia index abstract sustainable agriculture food security and welfare of the farmers require an integrated analysis of the performance of the agricultural sector in this paper we follow the energy environment economy framework and focus on decomposition of changes in the energy related greenhouse gas ghg emission in agricultural sectors of the selected european union eu countries the research relies on country level data from fao and eurostat describing economic activity energy use and ghg emission in the agricultural sectors of the european countries during 1995 2012 the main drivers carbon factor of energy consumed in agriculture energy intensity of agricultural production and growth in agricultural production and their impacts on the energy related ghg emissions in agriculture are analysed for selected countries the generalized divisia index is applied to decompose the changes in the energy related ghg emissions france latvia and belgium appeared as the only countries with increase in ghg emissions during 1995 2012 in the case of france energy intensity went up along with increase in the scale of agricultural production in latvia and belgium an increase in carbon factor appeared as the major factor driving an increase in ghg emissions the appropriate policies need to be employed in these countries seeking to reduce ghg emissions from energy consumption in agriculture improvements in energy efficiency appear to be a more feasible mean for ensuring further reductions in ghg emission

lobbying and concessions comparing nash to stackelberg games we analyze how the standardresults in lobbying theory change when one side has asecond instrument at its disposal we look at theeffect concessions by one side have on the outcome ina nash and a stackelberg game

electricity consumption and ict in the french service sector the paper documents the evolution of electricity use and the development of information and communication ic technologies in the french service sector to that purpose we put together two data sets documenting electricity consumption and the diffusion of ic capital goods using a simple factor demand model we estimate the structural parameters of the model using both the time series and the cross sectional dimension of the data and allow for a specific effect of ic capital goods on the efficiency of electricity in production we obtain robust results showing that once controlled for technical progress prices and heated areas electricity intensity of production increases with computers and software while it decreases with the diffusion of communication device

lottery versus all pay auction models of lobbying i first provide a complete characterization of the unique equilibrium of the lottery game by n lobbyists with asymmetric valuations and then compare the lottery and the all pay auction models of lobbying i show that the exclusion principle discovered by baye kovenock and de vries 1993 for all pay auction does not apply to lottery i also show that the perverse effect that an exogenous cap may increase the total lobbying expenditure in a two bidder all pay auction discovered by che and gale 1998 does not apply to lottery

on the existence of rational expectations equilibrium abstract we prove a theorem on the existence of rational expectations general economic equilibrium when agents condition on prices as well as on private information and maximize the expectation of a state dependent utility function the key to the result is a new idealization of what it means for a set of empirical distributions to support agents expectations this idealization depends on the notion that agents compare their expectations with continuous versions of the random empirical distributions that are generated by the workings of the economy the existence theorem covers all strictly concave utility functions arbitrary distributions of the state variable and situations in which the dimension of the state variable is large relative to the number of commodities

the abatement of carbon dioxide intensity in china factors decomposition and policy implications to deal with the challenges brought about by climate changes china decided to reduce the carbon dioxide co2 intensity by 40 45 per cent from 2005 to 2020 using the decomposition technique this study finds that energy intensity is the most important force to drive the decline of co2 intensity between 1980 and 2008 followed by structural factors such as the adjustment of energy and industrial structure therefore any environmental policy to promote energy efficiency will play the biggest role in achieving the target of abating co2 intensity in 2020

comparative statics of contests and rent seeking games this paper develops the comparative statics properties of a contest encountered in patent races and rent seeking games the author shows that symmetric equilibrium expenditure and profit per player decrease with the number of competitors and the discount rate but increase with the value of the prize a fundamental lemma established in the paper shows that a stability condition usually imposed on the model is automatically satisfied the author identifies a class of likelihood or hazard rate functions for which aggregate expenditure increases with the number of competitors and total profits converge to zero copyright 1997 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

ambiguous political power and contest efforts when there is incomplete information on the source of power in a contest the contestants may divide their lobbying efforts between the potential centers of power only one of which determines the contests winning probabilities our analysis focuses on the effect of ambiguity regarding the source of power on the contestants aggregate effort in a symmetric simple lottery contest with two potential centers of power specifically we examine the effects of varying the informativeness of the contestants private signals i e the probability that a signal is correct and the degree of correlation between them our benchmark case is the standard tullock s model in which the source of power is known i e the contestants signals are perfectly informative we show that the level of aggregate effort in this case is reached also when the signals are perfectly uninformative however in any intermediate case the contestants aggregate effort is lower provided that the signals are not perfectly correlated in other words there is a u shape relationship between the informativeness of the signals and the aggregate effort in the contest the lowest level of effort is spent when the signals are independent and the probability that a signal is true is about 0 85 in this case efforts are reduced by about one fifth in comparison with the benchmark case from a rent dissipation of 50 to slightly over 40