factor demand technical change and inter fuel substitution in africa abstract the translog production function has been widely used in applied production analysis due to its flexibility and superiority over other functional forms this study develops a translog production function for a group of african countries the random effects model is estimated using generalized least squares estimator the main findings are first output in africa is driven by a more intensive use of petroleum and electricity and to a lesser extent capital labor and coal relative to technological progress second african production technology exhibits increasing returns to scale suggesting a path towards market entry barriers third technical change is scale biased and factor augmenting albeit very slow fourth all energy inputs are substitutes indicating africa s potential to proportionally switch towards cleaner fuels without adversely affecting economic growth finally and perhaps more generally the study reinforces the assertion that imposing restrictions like homotheticity homogeneity or separability on the production technology is unrealistic and should rather be a testable hypothesis within any applied analysis in view of the documented findings relevant implications for africa are discussed

voter preferences and state regulation of smoking i introduction tobacco taxation and smoking restrictions are two areas of regulation for which states have maintained a high level of control relative to the federal government 1 given this flexibility states have established a wide range of restrictions on smoking in areas such as government workplaces restaurants bars shopping malls indoor arenas and hospitals 2 although most states restrict smoking in hospitals there is considerable variation among states in restrictions in other areas in the 1998 99 period of this study about two thirds of states restricted smoking in restaurants whereas only four states restricted smoking in bars what has led to variation in smoking restrictions across states in a democratic society one would expect voter preferences to play an instrumental role in determining which policies are enacted and which are not this article provides the first empirical exploration of whether state level smoking restrictions are consistent with preferences of the citizenry taking into account both voting behavior and the role of smoking status in influencing whether an individual votes specifically we examine whether voters preferences for smoking restrictions in restaurants bars malls indoor sporting events and hospitals are consistent with state level restrictions on smoking in each of these public areas 3 our research draws on public choice models of policy making by state and local governments voters preferences typically play a central role because voting affects legislators incentives to support regulations 4 public choice research also finds that nonvoter factors may influence state and local policy making 5 in the case of smoking regulations public health advocates or tobacco industry lobbyists might influence regulatory policies the specific building block of our analysis of state restrictions on smoking is information on individuals voting behavior which we link to their smoking status and preferences over smoking restrictions our analysis uses measures of political pressure that account for individual preferences as well as their voting behavior to examine the possible role of interest group pressures we also control for nonvoter influences on smoking regulation including the proportion of the state population who smoke measures of state ideology and size of the tobacco industry with the exception of smoking in bars there is majority support for smoking restrictions unsurprisingly smokers are less supportive of restrictions than are nonsmokers nonetheless even smokers demonstrate a high level of support for many restrictions smokers are also less likely to vote than are nonsmokers even after controlling for other demographic factors the lower voting rate diminishes voter opposition to antismoking regulation but is usually not critical in view of the substantial support that most smoking restrictions have among smokers the political pressure indices for restrictions on smoking in each public area are generally significantly related to the probability that a state restricts smoking in that public area the nonvoter factors such as the smoking rate in the state and tobacco s role in the state economy are rarely influential policy debates over the desirability of smoking restrictions emphasize possible health risks due to exposure to environmental tobacco smoke ets and effects on business profitability the primary argument for expanding smoking restrictions is to protect workers and customers from exposure to ets 6 as our results show voters are generally supportive of smoking restrictions in public areas which would thereby protect workers as well as themselves and other customers however there is a substantial controversy over the extent of health risks associated with exposure to ets the basis for the push by the u s occupational and safety health administration osha for increased smoking restrictions to protect workers is the highly controversial u

energy consumption and economic growth nexus in tanzania an ardl bounds testing approach abstract in this paper we examine the intertemporal causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in tanzania during the period of 1971 2006 unlike the majority of the previous studies we employ the newly developed autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach by pesaran et al 2001 bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 16 289 326 to examine this linkage we also use two proxies of energy consumption namely total energy consumption per capita and electricity consumption per capita the results of the bounds test show that there is a stable long run relationship between each of the proxies of energy consumption and economic growth the results of the causality test on the other hand show that there is a unidirectional causal flow from total energy consumption to economic growth and a prima facie causal flow from electricity consumption to economic growth overall the study finds that energy consumption spurs economic growth in tanzania

electricity consumption and economic growth in south africa a trivariate causality test abstract in this paper we examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in south africa we incorporate the employment rate as an intermittent variable in the bivariate model between electricity consumption and economic growth thereby creating a simple trivariate causality framework our empirical results show that there is a distinct bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in south africa in addition the results show that employment in south africa granger causes economic growth the results apply irrespective of whether the causality is estimated in the short run or in the long run formulation the study therefore recommends that policies geared towards the expansion of the electricity infrastructure should be intensified in south africa in order to cope with the increasing demand exerted by the country s strong economic growth and rapid industrialisation programme this will certainly enable the country to avoid unprecedented power outages similar to those experienced in the country in mid january 2008

the impacts of tourism energy consumption and political instability on economic growth in the mena countries using panel data of 24 countries in the middle east and north african mena region from 2001 to 2009 the purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of tourism energy consumption and political instability on economic growth within the neoclassical growth framework to address the objective of this study we utilise both the static panel data approach as well as the dynamic generalised method of moments gmm estimator to examine the impact of candidate variables our results show that energy consumption and tourism significantly contribute to the economic growth of countries in the mena region hence our study lends some support to the existence of the tourism led growth and energy led growth hypotheses in the region in line with our expectation our estimation results also reveal that political instability impedes the process of economic growth and development in the mena region therefore macroeconomic policies to promote expansion in tourism and energy consumption will directly stimulate economic growth additionally efforts to help the region overcome its history of political instability would attract more international tourist arrivals and further invigorate economic growth

energy consumption and economic development in sub sahara africa sub saharan african countries economic development is dependent on energy consumption this paper assesses total energy demand which is composed of traditional energy wood fuel and commercial energy electricity and petroleum in the central east south and west regions of sub saharan africa cross sectional time series data for 20 countries in 25 years are analyzed and the results of the study show that wood fuel accounts for 70 of energy consumption followed by petroleum with most industrial activities utilizing some form of wood fuel regression results suggest that energy demand is inversely related to the price of petroleum and industrial development but positively related to gdp population growth rate and agricultural expansion and that price elasticity is less than one the model results also show that there are regional differences in energy demand in addition the interaction of population growth rates by regions generates mixed results and there are regional differences in the use of commercial energy consumption and gdp growth the findings of this study suggest that countries must diversify their energy sources and introduce energy efficient devices and equipment at all levels of the economy to improve gdp growth rate and gdp per capita

energy consumption gdp nexus heterogeneous panel causality analysis abstract existing studies examining the granger causality relationship between energy consumption and gdp use a panel of countries but implicitly assume that the panels are homogeneous this paper extends the granger causality relationship between energy consumption and gdp by taking into account panel heterogeneity for this purpose we use a large panel of 79 countries for the period 1980 2007 specifically we examine four different causal relationships homogeneous non causality homogeneous causality heterogeneous non causality and heterogeneous causality the results show that roughly seven tenths of the countries exhibit bi directional granger causality two tenths exhibit no granger causality and one tenths exhibit uni directional granger causality

is renewable energy a model for powering eastern african countries transition to industrialization and urbanization abstract this study profiles a conversation on the appropriateness of renewable energy as a model for powering development in east african countries estimated output elasticities of nonrenewable energy 0 29 0 48 are by far larger than those of renewable energy 0 12 0 08 and as such highlights the relative importance of the former also the biased component of technical change shows higher technological progress for nonrenewable energy furthermore substitution elasticities are positive 0 77 0 92 suggesting huge potential for a transition towards renewable energy however inherent limitations in renewables documented in wesseh and lin 52 53 undermine the usefulness of east african countries reliance on renewable energy

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

electricity consumption and economic growth in algeria a multivariate causality analysis in the presence of structural change this article addresses the issue of electricity consumption petroleum price and economic growth in algeria the primary objective is to investigate and analyze the causal relationship between electricity consumption ec brent oil price bop and economic growth gdp for algeria over the period of 1971 2010 to examine short run long run and joint causality relationships we used a multivariate cointegration approach based on the recent advances in time series econometrics e g zivot andrews test gregory hansen cointegration test vector error correction models vecm the empirical results show that there is evidence of short run and a strong long run bi directional causal relationship between ec and real gdp in algeria findings indicate also the absence of causal relationship between bop and ec our empirical findings support the idea that there a link between electricity consumption and economic growth and disproves the neo classical assumption referred to as the neutrality hypothesis

causality analysis of diesel consumption and economic growth in cameroon abstract this study examines the causal relationship between diesel consumption and economic growth in cameroon by using a three step modern time series technique tests for unit roots cointegration and granger causality based on error correction model are employed on annual data covering the period 1975 2008 empirical results of the study confirm the presence of a long run equilibrium relationship between diesel consumption and economic growth the error correction model shows that an estimated 1 increase in economic growth causes a rise in diesel consumption of 1 30 in the long run the overall results show that there exists bidirectional causality in the long run relationship and no causality in the short run relationship between diesel consumption and economic growth at the 5 level of significance thus the energy policies in cameroon should place priority on the discovery of new oil field and building capacity additions of the refinery to increase production of petroleum products as this would propel the economic growth of the country

separability functional form and regulatory policy in models of interfuel substitution abstract counter intuitive results such as positive own price elasticities have been found in some studies of interfuel substitution this paper examines three possible reasons for this problem first including energy materials in petroleum and coal aggregates is found to contribute to incorrect signs second the mathematical properties of the translog function contribute to concavity violations in contrast the linear logit model of cost shares is found to provide more sensible estimates of own price elasticities across alternative model specifications finally natural gas curtailment policies and environmental regulations are found to be significant factors influencing us industrial fuel demand although omission of these factors does not directly contribute to curvature violations

energy consumption and economic growth in south africa reexamined a nonparametric testing apporach this paper is an effort to investigate claims concerning granger causality relationship from energy consumption to economic growth in south africa we adopt a nonparametric bootstrap method to reassess evidence supporting granger causality and unravel findings of long run unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to economic growth this implies that energy conservation policies will negatively impact economic growth in south africa in addition the results of this study have implications on co2 emissions in south africa given that coal accounts for about 72 of energy this suggests that energy use would have a long run effect of raising the country s co2 emission levels hence there might be a need to develop a more balanced energy structure which will include higher share of renewable energy a further monte carlo experiment performed reveals that asymptotic granger causality test suffers size distortion problem for south african data these findings provide support for use of a bootstrap methodology and also imply that the results presented in this study are likely to be more reliable

the cyclical behavior of the department of justice s antitrust enforcement activity abstract we study the cyclical behavior of antitrust enforcement as measured by the number of cases initiated by the us department of justice the key result is that antitrust case activity is countercyclical this finding is robust across alternate indicators of economic activity which include stock prices corporate profits and business cycles and across different types of cases the finding of countercyclical case activity does not appear to lend support to interest group theories that predict greater regulatory protection towards producers during economic contractions one interpretation of our result would be that antitrust violations tend to increase during economic downturns leading to an increase in the number of cases initiated the broad implication being that the antitrust division primarily acts as an antitrust law enforcement agency our results show that politics as measured by the party of the president and the republican versus democrat composition of the house and senate does not have a clear impact on case activity finally the number of cases initiated are significantly affected by the extent of funding

causal independence between energy consumption and economic growth in liberia evidence from a non parametric bootstrapped causality test abstract this contribution investigates causal interdependence between energy consumption and economic growth in liberia and proposes application of a bootstrap methodology to better reflect causality employment is incorporated as additional variable the study demonstrates evidence of distinct bidirectional granger causality between energy consumption and economic growth additionally the results show that employment in liberia granger causes economic growth and apply irrespective of the short run or long run evidence from a monte carlo experiment reveals that the asymptotic granger causality test suffers size distortion problem for liberian data suggesting that the bootstrap technique employed in this study is more appropriate given the empirical results implications are that energy expansion policies like energy subsidy or low energy tariff for instance would be necessary to cope with demand exerted as a result of economic growth in liberia furthermore liberia might have the performance of its employment generation on the economy partly determined by adequate energy therefore it seems fully justified that a quick shift towards energy production based on clean energy sources may significantly slow down economic growth in liberia hence the government s target to implement a long term strategy to make liberia a carbon neutral country and eventually less carbon dependent by 2050 is understandable

economic growth and electricity consumption in cote d ivoire evidence from time series analysis this paper examines the causal relationship between the electric power industry and the economic growth of cote d ivoire using the data from 1971 to 2008 a test was conducted for the cointegration and granger causality within an error correction model results from these tests reveal a bidirectional causality between per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp a unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to industry value added appears in the short run economic growth is found to have great effects on electricity consumption and a reverse causality from electricity to economic growth may also appear in the long run there is a unidirectional causality between electricity and both gdp and industry value added from these findings we conclude that the country will be energy dependent in the long run and must therefore secure the production network from shortfalls to ensure a sustainable development path accordingly government should adopt policies aimed at increasing the investment in the sector by stepping up electricity production from existing and new energy sources

the role of investment for energy conservation future japanese economic growth abstract this article describes a variant of the cobb douglas production function the rasche tatom model which explicitly includes an energy factor the model is applied to the japanese economy to investigate the role of investment for energy conservation first the impact of rising energy prices on potential gnp and productivity is shown second it is suggested that the japanese economy will achieve a high growth rate 5 0 5 5 in the coming five years through substitution of capital for energy ie investment for energy conservation an international comparison of the models is also discussed

energy consumption fuel substitution technical change and economic growth implications for co2 mitigation in egypt abstract energy consumption propels economic growth but the level of co2 emissions associated with a fossil dominated energy structure raises concerns for the fight against climate change to draw consensus this study develops a translog causality based model in order to study causation between electricity natural gas petroleum and economic growth in egypt in addition the models results are used to estimate the substitution possibilities between various energy pairs and to subsequently test the co2 mitigation benefits arising from fuel substitution results support a bidirectional relationship between all energy types and economic growth in egypt and suggest also that these energy types are substitutes although technical progress is estimated to be a bit slow varying between 4 5 and 7 5 there appears to be substantial co2 emissions mitigation benefits from fuel substitution amounting to reductions in the range of 1 5 and 2 2 million metric tons under a 5 investment scenario and 2 5 and 4 5 million metric tons under a 10 investment scenario these results have broader implications for energy conservation policies and industrial merger policies in developing countries moreover by studying technical change insights are provided on future co2 mitigation potential driven by energy efficiency

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from 11 sub sahara african countries abstract the paper examines the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for eleven countries in sub saharan africa using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds test the study finds that energy consumption is cointegrated with economic growth in cameroon cote d ivoire gambia ghana senegal sudan and zimbabwe moreover this test suggests that energy consumption has a significant positive long run impact on economic growth in ghana kenya senegal and sudan granger causality test based on vector error correction model vecm shows bi directional relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for gambia ghana and senegal however granger causality test shows that economic growth granger causes energy consumption in sudan and zimbabwe the neutrality hypothesis is confirmed in respect of cameroon and cote d ivoire the same result of no causality was found for nigeria kenya and togo the result shows that each country should formulate appropriate energy conservation policies taking into cognizance of her peculiar condition

natural gas consumption and economic growth nexus panel data analysis for gcc countries abstract this study investigates the relationship between natural gas energy consumption and economic growth by including trade openness total labor force and gross fixed capital formation as a major determinants of gdp growth within the multivariate framework model in gulf cooperation council gcc countries a panel gdp model is constructed taking the period of 1980 2012 the result revealed that natural gas energy consumption is cointegrated with gdp growth in the investigated countries in addition based on the panel dynamic ordinary least square dols and the fully modified ordinary least square fmols this study concluded that the natural gas energy consumption affects the gcc s countries gdp growth positively in the long run furthermore the results from the granger causality test revealed bidirectional causality between natural gas energy consumption and gdp growth which confirms the feedback hypothesis from the outcome of this research a number of policy implications were provided for the gcc countries

improvement of energy demand forecasts using swarm intelligence the case of turkey with projections to 2025 the energy supply and demand should be closely monitored and revised the forecasts to take account of the progress of liberalization energy efficiency improvements structural changes in industry and other major factors medium and long term forecasting of energy demand which is based on realistic indicators is a prerequisite to become an industrialized country and to have high living standards energy planning is not possible without a reasonable knowledge of past and present energy consumption and likely future demands energy demand management activities should bring the demand and supply closer to a perceived optimum turkey s energy demand has grown rapidly almost every year and is expected to continue growing however the energy demand forecasts prepared by the turkey ministry of energy and natural resources overestimate the demand recently many studies are performed by researchers to forecast the energy demand of turkey particle swarm optimization pso technique has never been used for such a study in this study a model is proposed using pso based energy demand forecasting psoedf to forecast the energy demand of turkey more efficiently although there are other indicators as well gross domestic product gdp population import and export are used as basic energy indicators of energy demand in order to show the accuracy of the algorithm a comparison is made with the ant colony optimization aco energy demand estimation model which is developed for the same problem

ghanaian energy economy inter production factors and energy substitution abstract industries in ghana depend highly on petroleum to fuel their operations which has brought immerse environmental threat from greenhouse emission gas ghg this study tried to investigate potential substitutability of factor inputs and fuel inputs among capital labor petroleum and electricity in ghana by adopting the translog production and cost function approach we used ridge regression technique to estimate the parameters after our data show possibility of multicollinearity our result shows that all inputs are substitutes with their relative technological progress also showing evidence of convergence this suggests that redirecting resources into the improvement of technology towards cleaner energy production like electricity will be a success over time and this will mean that the fueling of the economy will be done in a cleaner environment and mitigating mitigate co2 emissions as well the improvement of electricity production and the promotion of its use require government policies that will enable industries to adjust to the switch from one input to the other through capital subsidies and tax rebates also energy labor and capital energy being substitutes in our findings suggest that removal of all energy subsidies will reduce the use of energy and increase capital and labor intensiveness input switch by industries will promote merger of smaller firms with bigger firms that have cost advantage during the switch period and requires a clear government merger control policies in a nutshell our findings provide an insight into policies to promote the use of renewable energy energy intensity and merger policies

energy consumption political regime and economic growth in sub saharan africa abstract in this paper we examine the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth and how democracy moderates this relationship using panel data of 16 sub saharan african ssa countries for the period 1971 2013 employing a panel vector autoregressive model pvar in a generalized method of moments gmm framework the findings support the feedback hypothesis for energy consumption and growth second the interaction variable energy consumption and democracy is positively and significantly related to economic growth supporting the view that democracy moderates the energy consumption and growth nexus further the results provide strong evidence of a uni directional relationship from trade openness to energy consumption additionally impulse responses and variance decompositions also confirm positive feedback relationships between energy consumption and economic growth energy prices and economic growth

energy consumption prices and economic growth in three ssa countries a comparative study in this paper we examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in three sub saharan african countries namely south africa kenya and congo drc we incorporate prices as an intermittent variable in a bivariate setting between energy consumption and economic growth thereby creating a simple trivariate framework using the ardl bounds testing procedure we find that the causality between energy consumption and economic growth varies significantly across the countries under study the results show that for south africa and kenya there is a unidirectional causal flow from energy consumption to economic growth however for congo drc it is economic growth that drives energy consumption these findings have important policy implications insofar as energy conservation policies are concerned in the case of congo drc for example the implementation of energy conservation policies may not significantly affect economic growth because the country s economy is not entirely energy dependent however for south africa and kenya there is a need for more energy supply augmentations in order to cope with the long run energy demand in the short run however the two countries should explore more efficient and cost effective sources of energy in order to address the energy dependency problem

substitution possibilities and determinants of energy intensity for china abstract this paper measures technological change factor demand and inter factor and inter fuel substitutability measures for china we use individual fuel price data and a two stage approach to estimate total factor cost functions and fuel share equations both inter factor and inter fuel substitution elasticities are calculated and the change in energy intensity is decomposed into its driving forces the results suggest that energy is substitutable for capital regionally and for labor nationally capital substitutes for energy more easily than labor does energy intensity changes vary by region but the major drivers seem to be budget effect and the adoption of energy intensive technologies which might be embodied in high level energy using exports and sectors capital investment and even old technique and equipment imports whether the trend in rising energy intensity continues will be significant for china and the rest of the world

the public demand for smoking bans smoking bans are gaining widespread support in the united states and other countries while supporters argue that bans are necessary to resolve market failures associated with negative externalities the coase theorem predicts that under various conditions private markets internalize negative externalities we examine the smoking issue within the framework of the coase theorem and hypothesize that smoking bans misallocate air space resources shared by smokers and nonsmokers because smoking bans shift ownership of scarce resources they are also hypothesized to transfer income from one party smokers to another party nonsmokers supporting evidence for these hypotheses is provided by an examination of a comprehensive smoking ban imposed in san luis obispo ca

rentierism energy and economic growth the case of algeria and egypt 1965 2010 abstract the algerian economy is an example of a high level of rentierism while the egyptian economy shows a low moderate level of rentierism the ardl bounds test approach was used upon annual time series data from 1965 to 2010 the results suggest cointegration for both countries bi causality between energy consumption and growth in the long run was found for algeria there is a reversed negative energy growth nexus adding a new relationship to the traditional four causal hypotheses on the energy growth nexus for egypt we found positive elasticity both of oil price and energy which is in line with the mainstream

the effects of smoking laws on seating allocations of restaurants bars and taverns michael l marlow supporters of smoking laws often argue that they do not harm restaurants bars and taverns and may even raise their profits opponents argue that owners cater to customer preferences regarding smoking and that laws mandating specific smoking policies will therefore negatively impact profits of some firms this article tests hypotheses regarding how smoking laws affect seating allocations using data from a nationwide survey of restaurant and bar owners the empirical evidence indicates that smoking laws exert no significant effect on seating allocations firms are shown to allocate greater shares of seating to nonsmoking use when customers exhibit stronger preferences for such seating jel k2 h0 i introduction laws restricting smoking in restaurants have been enacted in 32 states supporters of these laws often argue that they do not harm firms and may even raise their profits 1 recent studies for instance argue that outright bans on smoking in eating and drinking places have not adversely affected these establishments suggesting that smoking bans either do not reduce demand or lower costs for firms which offsets sales losses thus leading to no adverse changes in profits opponents of smoking restrictions argue that owners cater to customer preferences regarding smoking some owners would find it profitable to allow smoking throughout their establishments others to forbid all smoking and still others to accommodate both smokers and nonsmokers by investing in partitions designating areas creating smoking patios or rooms and or investing in air filtration systems they argue that laws that mandate specific smoking policies will therefore negatively impact profits of some firms little economic research has been published on the effects of smoking laws on revenues of restaurants bars and taverns and none has been directed toward the issue of smoking nonsmoking seating allocations 2 this article provides a framework for examining how customer preferences influence smoking and nonsmoking seating allocations by owners the primary policy that firms unilaterally adopt in their attempts to deal with the issue hypotheses regarding how smoking laws affect seating allocations are then tested using data from a nationwide survey of 1 300 restaurant bar and tavern owners the empirical evidence indicates that smoking laws exert no significant effect on seating allocations ii economic model and testable hypotheses without legal restrictions policies adopted by restaurants bars and taverns toward smoking are determined in much the same manner as decisions regarding menus prices and hours of operation profit maximizing firms optimize on the basis of customer demand and costs decisions pertaining to smoking policies simply allocate the air space within firms between smoking and nonsmoking customers 3 the air space within an establishment is considered just like any other resource and owners decide to cater solely to smokers to nonsmokers or to both by providing patrons with rights to smoke while accommodating others through smoking nonsmoking areas and air filtration systems the choice depends on customer preferences and relative marginal costs 4 predictably market segmentation naturally evolves where firms cater more to smokers in markets dominated by smokers than in those markets dominated by nonsmokers there may also be broad differences between how owners of restaurants and bars or taverns allocate seating customers of restaurants are likely to prefer that owners adopt different accommodation strategies than would patrons of bars and taverns restaurant customers tend to dine in one location within firms and therefore it is possible for owners to designate sections for smokers and nonsmokers and this predictably leads to a relatively high allocation of nonsmoking seating in contrast customers of bars and taverns may prefer to participate in various activities dining drinking listening to music dancing and playing pool darts and billiards whereby they move to different locations within the establishment during their visit and interact with different patrons

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

energy consumption and economic growth revisited in african countries abstract the aim of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for 21 african countries over the period from 1970 to 2006 using recently developed panel cointegration and causality tests the countries are divided into two groups net energy importers and net energy exporters it is found that there exists a long run equilibrium relationship between energy consumption real gdp prices labor and capital for each group of countries as well as for the whole set of countries this result is robust to possible cross country dependence and still holds when allowing for multiple endogenous structural breaks which can differ among countries furthermore we find that decreasing energy consumption decreases growth and vice versa and that increasing energy consumption increases growth and vice versa and that this applies for both energy exporters and importers finally there is a marked difference in the cointegration relationship when country groups are considered

electricity consumption and economic growth a time series experience for 17 african countries abstract while the availability of electricity by itself is not a panacea for the economic and social problems facing africa the supply of electricity is nevertheless believed to be a necessary requirement for africa s economic and social development this paper tests the long run and causal relationship between electricity consumption per capita and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 17 african countries for the period 1971 2001 using a newly developed cointegration test proposed by pesaran et al 2001 and using a modified version of the granger causality test due to toda and yamamoto 1995 the advantage of using these two approaches is that they both avoid the pre testing bias associated with conventional unit root and cointegration tests the empirical evidence shows that there was a long run relationship between electricity consumption per capita and real gdp per capita for only 9 countries and granger causality for only 12 countries for 6 countries there was a positive uni directional causality running from real gdp per capita to electricity consumption per capita an opposite causality for 3 countries and bi directional causality for the remaining 3 countries the result should however be interpreted with care as electricity consumption accounts for less than 4 of total energy consumption in africa and only grid supplied electricity is taken into account

electricity consumption and economic growth in burkina faso a cointegration analysis abstract this study empirically establishes the direction of causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in burkina faso for the period 1968 2003 the bounds test yields evidence of cointegration between electricity consumption gdp and capital formation when electricity consumption and gdp are used as dependent variable causality results indicate that there is no significant causal relationship between electricity consumption and investment estimates however detect in the long run a bidirectional causal relationship between electricity use and real gdp there is also evidence of a positive feedback causal relationship between gdp and capital formation burkina faso is therefore an energy dependent country it is also a country in which electricity consumption is growing with the level of income all of this shows that electricity is a significant factor in socio economic development in burkina faso as such energy policy must be implemented to ensure that electricity generates fewer potential negative impacts

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

effectiveness of massachusetts comprehensive tobacco control program while massachusetts s comprehensive programme of excise taxes smoking bans and tobacco control has been argued to have significantly lowered cigarette consumption this is the first study to examine the comprehensive nature of its programme and to control for factors other than tobacco programmes themselves while examining effects on taxed cigarette sales examination indicates strong support for the hypotheses that taxed sales in massachusetts declined due to price increases changes in income and smuggling there is very limited support for the hypothesis that tobacco control spending or smoking bans contributed to falling cigarette sales possibilities are discussed that may explain why this study does not support most previous studies these include failure to control for numerous factors that probably also influenced sales that effects of tobacco control programmes might differ between states and that previous studies examined shorter time periods it is hoped that this article will foster further

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from the economic community of west african states ecowas access to modern energy is believed to be a prerequisite for sustainable development poverty alleviation and the achievement of the millennium development goals however theoretical models and empirical results offer conflicting evidence on the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth that we remain largely unsure of the cause and effect nature of this relationship if indeed a relationship exists at all this paper tests in a panel context the long run relationship between energy access and economic growth for fifteen african countries from 1980 to 2008 by using recently developed panel cointegration techniques we adopt a three stage approach consisting of panel unit root panel cointegration and granger causality tests to study the dynamic causal relationships between energy consumption energy prices and growth as well as relationship between electricity consumption prices and growth results show that gdp and energy consumption as well as gdp and electricity move together in the long run by estimating these long run relationships and testing for causality using panel based error correction models we found unidirectional long run and short run causality the causality is running from gdp to energy consumption in the short run and from energy consumption to gdp in the long run there is also evidence of unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to gdp in the long run this study thus provides empirical evidence of long run and causal relationships between energy consumption and economic growth for our sample of fifteen countries suggesting that lack or limited access to modern energy services could hamper economic growth and compromise the development prospects of these countries

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from the commonwealth of independent states abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for eleven countries of the commonwealth of independent states over the period 1991 2005 within a multivariate panel data framework based on pedroni 1999 pedroni 2004 heterogeneous panel cointegration test and corresponding error correction model cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and labor force with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the results of the error correction model reveal the presence of unidirectional causality from energy consumption to economic growth in the short run while bidirectional causality between energy consumption and economic growth in the long run thus the results lend support for the feedback hypothesis associated with the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth

effects of energy consumption on per worker output a study of kenya and south africa the paper investigates the long run cointegration relationship and energy elasticities for kenya and south africa over the periods 1978 2009 and 1971 2009 respectively using the ardl procedure developed by pesaran et al 2001 with recomputed critical bounds from narayan 2005 and the solow 1956 framework extended by rao 2010 we also conduct the toda and yamamoto 1995 test for granger non causality the regression results show that short run and long run energy elasticities are 0 50 and 1 71 respectively for kenya and 0 17 and 0 34 respectively for south africa the causality results indicate a unidirectional granger causality running from capital per worker and energy per capita to output per worker for both countries moreover in kenya we detect a strong unidirectional causality a on output from joint consideration of capital stock and energy and b on capital stock from joint consideration of energy and output in south africa the joint causations are neutral hence while energy and capital stock spurs growth in both countries kenya has a greater potential to harness growth and capital productivity via joint consideration of energy with capital and output respectively

determinants of state tobacco control expenditures while centers for disease control and prevention believe that most state governments under fund tobacco control programs little is known about why large variation in spending exists between state governments this study explores reasons for spending variation through an econometric model of per capita spending on tobacco control programs that explores the effects of smoking prevalence while holding constant tobacco settlement funds state budget deficits and other factors that might also be expected to influence spending variation empirical evidence indicates no support for the hypothesis that states with high smoking prevalence spend more on tobacco control than other states this finding may be quite surprising to those working in areas of public health and clearly leads to many important policy questions regarding why the data indicate that funding does not appear to bear any relation to perceived public health problems as would be predicted if policymakers were following a rational needs approach

income level and the energy consumption gdp nexus evidence from sub saharan africa this study tests the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in sub saharan africa using a panel co integration approach country level time series data of energy consumption and economic growth are pooled and used to estimate the model sub saharan african countries in the sample are classified into low income and middle income countries the findings support the neutrality hypothesis in the short run except for middle income countries and a strong causation running in both directions is found in the long run the different results for low and middle income countries provide evidence of the importance of income level in the causal relationship this study helps to explain the interdependence of energy consumption and economic growth in sub saharan africa results are critical in formulating sustainable development policies that are geared to the efficient allocation of resources which are expected to increase access to energy services in the study region

output and substitution elasticities of energy and implications for renewable energy expansion in the ecowas region abstract this study estimates output and substitution elasticities of renewable energy and nonrenewable energy for the economic community of west african states ecowas and discusses implications for expanding the former the results show that nonrenewable energy promises greater benefits for ecowas economic transition with output elasticities averaging between 0 052 0 579 and 0 055 to 0 223 for nonrenewable energy and renewable energy respectively overall estimated technological progress is low 0 5 to 2 6 the bulk coming from input efficiency substitution elasticities 0 02 0 94 suggest potential for switching towards renewable energy notwithstanding scale economics and sitting problems inherent in renewable power generation challenge the opportunities for energy substitution a sustainable policy solution therefore appears to be one favoring scaled and efficient electricity generation from fossil energy in the short run with a gradual switch towards renewable power in the long run in general the applied model provides insights that energy efficiency enhances sustainable growth by propelling technological advancement especially when technical change is scale biased and factor augmenting the study also provides insights that impacts of exogenous shocks to inputs are temporary and hence do not jeopardize efforts aimed at scaling output through increased and efficient use of labor capital and energy especially nonrenewable energy

can african countries efficiently build their economies on renewable energy abstract the translog production model is estimated to provide insights on the effectiveness of renewable energy for africa the analysis shows that capital labor renewable energy and nonrenewable energy drive output in african countries with renewable energy being a higher driver of growth than the conventional fossil fuels over the sample period this finding is reflective of the fact that renewable sources like wind hydro and solar account for a greater share of power generation in most african countries output elasticities computed for both energy types reaffirm the results and suggest that eastern and central african countries are more renewable energy dependent than the other three regions in addition technological progress is driven mainly by the efficiency with which various factors and energy inputs are used while africa has great potential of facing out conventional fossil energy the discussion provided in this study suggests that such transition is limited in practice due to issues of scale economics and sitting problems

competition economics and antitrust in europe this paper aims to assess the influence that economic analysis has had on competition policy in the european union over the last twenty years economists are increasingly used in antitrust cases the annual turnover of the main economic consultancy firms has increased by a factor of 20 since the early 1990s and currently exceeds 20 million this is about 15 of the aggregate fees earned on antitrust cases a proportion close to that in the us the economic resources mobilized by the eu commission are however an order of magnitude smaller and this imbalance is a source of concern the legal framework and the case decisions have also been influenced by economic analysis in important ways for instance the analysis of agreements between firms has increasingly focused on effects the analysis of the factors that determine effective competition has become more sophisticated the concept of collective dominance has been progressively developed in terms of the theory of collusion in repeated interactions and quantitative methods have become more important however enforcement has sometimes appealed to economic reasoning in flawed or speculative ways the paper discusses procedural reasons why this may have occurred this paper assesses the system of evidence gathering implemented by the commission in the light of the law and economics literature it is concluded that while the reforms recently implemented by the commission do address the main weaknesses of this system they may still not allow for the most effective development of economic theory and evidence in actual cases damien j neven

energy economic growth and causality in developing countries a case study of tanzania and nigeria the debate about the precise role of energy in economic development remains contentious existing empirical studies have produced varying results some have argued the complementarity between energy and other factors of production and others have indicated that energy can be substituted for other factors of production commonly these studies have focused primarily on the developed countries one explanation being that supply constraints and price rigidities render any study on factor substitutions in developing countries meaningless however the functional relationship between energy consumption and income in developing countries is constantly investigated with the use of regression techniques while such techniques are useful in empirical analysis no mechanism exists for indicating causal directions between variables this limits the scope for policy analysis and prescription the need to identify causal direction between energy consumption and income growth in developing countries is overwhelming apart from providing further insights into the role of energy in economic development it provides policy analysts with a clearer understanding of the likely impact of energy supply constraints on economic growth this article examines the causal directions between energy consumption and economic growth proxied by gdp and gnp for nigeria and tanzania the results show a simultaneous causal relationship between energy and economic growth for both countries the implication being that unless energy supply constraints are eased economic growth and development will remain elusive to these countries given similar economic characteristics and profiling the same energy scenario for other developing countries our finding supports the view that energy plays a key role in economic development

the consequences of the us doj s antitrust activities a macroeconomic perspective do the antitrust law enforcement activities of the us department of justice act as exogenous technology shocks or as markup shocks limiting market power and promoting economic growth we analyze annual time series data from 1947 to 2003 on three measures of federal antitrust intervention the ratio of the antitrust division s budgetary expenditures to gdp as well as the numbers of civil and criminal antitrust cases instituted we find that changes in the levels of these policy variables act like negative technology shocks and that the negative effects are transitory antitrust policy generates no subsequent offsetting increases in productivity

nigeria s electric power sector reform what should form the key objectives nigeria s electric power sector requires substantial reform if the country s economic development and poverty alleviation program is to be realised this understanding is behind the reform programme recently initiated by the nigerian government with the goal of privatising the national electric power monopoly nepa currently the country faces serious energy crisis due to declining electricity generation from domestic power plants which are basically dilapidated obsolete unreliable and in an appalling state of disrepair reflecting the poor maintenance culture in the country and gross inefficiency of the public utility provider building on an analysis of the major shortcomings of the current electric power company this paper presents the central issues that should form the key objectives of the proposed reform this include corporatization of the electric power industry increasing access and power delivery capacity constraining the costs of the power industry and increasing efficiency and share of renewables in energy generation as well as minimising environmental damage we conclude with the observation that efforts at reform will not yield the desired result if the current end user inefficiency is not constrained as nigeria implements its national utility privatisation programme it is hoped that this review will benefit policy makers and emerging managers and providers of electricity service in the country

cointegration and causality between electricity consumption and gdp empirical evidence from malawi abstract the granger causality gc and error correction ecm techniques were applied on 1970 1999 data for malawi to examine cointegration and causality between electricity consumption kwh and respectively overall gdp agricultural gdp agdp and non agricultural gdp ngdp cointegration was established between kwh and respectively gdp and ngdp but not with agdp the gc results detect bi directional causality between kwh and gdp suggesting that kwh and gdp are jointly determined but one way causality running from ngdp to kwh the ecm results detect causality running one way from gdp also from ngdp to kwh suggesting that a permanent rise in gdp may cause a permanent growth in electricity consumption

energy conservation policies growth and trade performance evidence of feedback hypothesis in pakistan this study investigates the relationship between energy consumption and trade openness in pakistan by using the annual time series data for the period of 1973 2011 our main results show i the presence of long run link between energy consumption and trade performance ii positive impact of gross domestic product exports and imports on energy consumption iii bidirectional causal relationship between exports and energy consumption and also be tween imports and energy demand and iv bidirectional causality between gross domestic product and energy consumption points to the presence of feedback hypothesis in pakistan we therefore note that energy conservation policies will reduce the trade performance which in turn leads to the decline in economic growth in pakistan the present study may guide policymakers in formulating a conclusive energy and trade policies for sustainable growth for long span of time

electricity consumption and economic growth bounds and causality analyses of opec members this paper investigates the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth for opec members the bounds test yields evidence of a long run relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth for all opec members causality results suggest that economic growth is dependent on electricity consumption in five countries less dependent in three countries and independent in three countries because these countries do not necessarily share similar political and economic traits no single universal policy implication can be inferred from the results the disparities across these causality results therefore stress the importance of formulating causality explanations while taking into account the particularities of individual countries rather than blindly applying the conventional interpretations

the demand for casino gaming with special reference to a smoking ban i introduction there is a sparse literature on the determinants of the demand for casino style gaming this study adds to that literature a major focus of this analysis is on the effect on gaming demand of the introduction of a smoking ban into an existing gaming market in this case the state of delaware a comprehensive statewide ban on smoking in public places was implemented in delaware on november 27 2002 the ban was titled the delaware clean indoor air act the act gaming facilities open to the public were one of the locations specifically cited by the act as subject to the ban the subjects of this analysis are the three delaware racinos over the period september 1996 through december 2004 a racino is a pari mutuel racetrack that has the statutory authority to offer electronic gaming devices slot machines to its customers in 1990 there was only one racino in the united states mountaineer park in west virginia by 2005 there were 13 states that permitted slot machine wagering at pari mutuel racetracks 1 in some states the electronic gaming devices at a racino are operated by the entity that owns the racetrack in other states the devices are operated under the auspices of the state lottery with the racetrack acting as a lottery agent in such cases the electronic gaming devices or slot machines are alternatively referred to as video lottery terminals vlts such is the case in the state of delaware 2 to show the importance of vlt gaming in delaware consider that in fiscal 2004 total state lottery revenue was 641 million video lottery revenue was 532 million or 83 of total state lottery revenue the remaining 17 of total lottery revenue came from traditional on line and instant lottery games delaware lottery 2004 a system of three demand equations was developed to examine the effect of a set of determinants on slot machine wagering handle at the three delaware racinos the system is described by the seemingly unrelated regressions sur model and was jointly estimated with the well known seemingly unrelated regression estimation technique vlt handle was found to be positively related to the number of vlts per capita personal income and population vlt handle at a racino was found to be negatively related to the number of vlts at the other delaware racinos this negative relationship of the number of vlts at other racinos to a particular racino s wagering demand indicates that they are substitutes gaming demand was found to decrease with the implementation of the delaware statewide smoking ban the study proceeds as follows section ii is a review of the literature on the demand for casino wagering also included is a review of the literature on the effect of a smoking ban on revenues of gaming and non gaming establishments section iii develops a three equation system demand model one equation each for the three delaware racinos section iv reports the estimated models and presents empirical results on the factors affecting the demand for casino wagering section v summarizes the findings and draws further conclusions ii previous studies only two studies have examined the determinants of the demand for casino gaming thalheimer 1998 investigated the determinants of the demand for slot machine wagering at the first racino in the united states mountaineer park a thoroughbred racetrack in west virginia during the study period 1990 1991 mountaineer park was permitted to offer a limited number of electronic gaming devices to its customers under the auspices of the state lottery on an experimental basis vlt wagering demand was found to be positively related to the number of vlts the price of vlt wagering did not vary over the study period and hence its relationship to the demand for wagering could not be ascertained thalheimer and ali 2003 investigated the determinants of slot machine wagering at 24 riverboat casinos and three racinos in the midwestern states of illinois iowa and missouri

carbon emissions energy consumption and output a threshold analysis on the causal dynamics in emerging african economies abstract following the recent global economic downturn attention has gradually shifted towards emerging economies which have experienced robust growth amidst sluggish growth of the world economy a significant number of these emerging economies are in africa rising growth in these economies is associated with surging demand for energy to propel the engines of growth with direct implications on emissions into the atmosphere further these economies are constantly being shaped by series of structural reforms with direct and indirect effects on growth demand for energy etc to this end this paper examines the causal dynamics among energy use real gdp and co2 emissions in the presence of regime shifts in six emerging african economies using the gregory and hansen 1996a j econ 70 99 126 threshold cointegration and the toda and yamamoto 1995 j econometrics 66 225 250 granger causality techniques results confirm the presence of regime shift effects in the long run inter linkages among energy use real gdp and co2 emissions in the countries considered thus indicating that structural changes have both economic and environmental effects hence integration of energy and environmental policies into development plans is imperative towards attaining sustainable growth and development

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from cameroon abstract the aim of this paper is to study the nature of the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in cameroon through a three step approach i study the stationarity of the chronic ii test of causality between variables and iii estimate the appropriate model the study concludes in a non stationarity of the series using the data in first difference the granger causality test yields a strong evidence for unidirectional causality running from oil to gdp cointegration tests also show that these two series are co integrated and the error correction model ecm reveals that every percentage increase in oil products consumption increases economic growth by around 1 1 this result confirms the intuition that an economic policy aimed at improving energy supply will necessarily have a positive impact on economic growth on the other side a lack of energy is a major bottleneck for further economic development in cameroon

real business cycles a new keynesian perspective the debate over the source and propagation of economic fluctuations rages as fiercely today as it did 50 years ago in the aftermath of keynes s the general theory and in the midst of the great depression today as then there are two schools of thought the classical school emphasizes the optimization of private economic actors the adjustment of relative prices to equate supply and demand and the efficiency of unfettered markets the keynesian school believes that understanding economic fluctuations requires not just studying the intricacies of general equilibrium but also appreciating the possibility of market failure on a grand scale

the electricity consumption and economic growth nexus evidence from greece abstract this paper attempts to cast light into the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in greece in a multivariate framework for this purpose we used cointegration techniques and the vector error correction model in order to capture short run and long run dynamics over the sample period 1970 2011 the empirical results reveal that in the long run electricity demand appears to be price inelastic and income elastic while in the short run the relevant elasticities are below unity we also argue that the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in greece is bi directional our results strengthen the notion that greece is an energy dependent country and well directed energy conservation policies could even boost economic growth furthermore the implementation of renewable energy sources should provide significant benefits ensuring sufficient security of supply in the greek energy system this evidence can provide a new basis for discussion on the appropriate design and implementation of environmental and energy policies for greece and other medium sized economies with similar characteristics

renewable energy electricity development in ghana observations concerns substitution possibilities and implications for the economy abstract can ghana build its economy on renewable energy is it possible to substitute nonrenewable for renewable energy what is the impact of renewable energy on the economy of ghana these questions are relevant and worth considering as far as the renewable energy development agenda in ghana is concern using the translog production function approach this study primarily investigates whether ghana can move away from nonrenewable electricity generation to renewable power generation in particular we provide estimates for the relationship between the two energy types and output the estimates are then used to calculate the output and substitution elasticities between renewable and nonrenewable energy our findings show that while the impact of nonrenewable energy on ghana s economy is negative that of renewable energy is insignificant with output elasticities for both energy types averaging 0 139 and 1 875 respectively even though substitution elasticity suggests the possibility of moving towards a renewable power generation system this study also highlights the limitations associated with such transition citing inherent problems such as scale cost and location based on the analysis done in the context of the findings this study recommends a policy that supports an optimal energy matrix with both renewable and nonrenewable sources

on the consistency of merger policy this paper presents a way to get around the information problem facing outside analysts who want to scrutinize competition authorities decisions a formal model of how decisions are taken is applied to infer information that is available to the authorities but not to the outside analyst if the information thus inferred from several decisions is incompatible it is claimed that the policy executed by the competition authorities is inconsistent a case study is presented of two recent decisions by the norwegian competition authority on proposed mergers in the norwegian insurance industry indicating they most likely were mutually inconsistent

an international literature survey on energy economic growth nexus evidence from country specific studies in this paper an extensive review of the rapidly growing in the literature on the nexus between economic growth and four types of energy consumption total energy consumption electricity consumption nuclear consumption and renewable consumption the various hypotheses associated with the causal interaction between these variables along with a survey of the empirical literature are also discussed the survey focuses on country coverage periods modeling techniques and empirical conclusions a general observation from these studies that results are found to be sensitive to methodology and type of energy considered the empirical results for the specific countries surveyed show that i for energy consumption growth nexus 29 supported the growth hypothesis 27 the feedback hypothesis 23 the conservation hypothesis and 21 the neutrality hypothesis ii for the electricity consumption growth nexus 40 supported the growth hypothesis 33 the feedback hypothesis and 27 conservation hypothesis iii for the nuclear consumption growth nexus 60 supported the neutrality hypothesis and 40 the growth hypothesis and iv for the renewable consumption growth nexus 40 supported the neutrality hypothesis 40 the conservation hypothesis and 20 the growth hypothesis these mixed results may be attributed to the different used data selected variables and econometric approaches undertaken

trivariate causality between economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption in angola cointegration and causality analysis abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption in the case of angola while utilizing the data over the period of 1971 2009 we have applied lee and strazicich 2003 the review of economics and statistics 63 1082 1089 2004 working paper department of economics appalachian state university unit root tests to examine the stationarity properties of the series using the gregory hansen structural break cointegration procedure as a complement we employ the ardl bounds test to investigate long run relationships the vecm granger causality test is subsequently used to examine the direction of causality between economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption our results indicate the existence of long run relationships we further observe evidence in favour of bidirectional causality between electricity consumption and economic growth the feedback hypothesis is also found between urbanisation and economic growth urbanisation and electricity consumption granger cause each other we conclude that angola is energy dependent country consequently the relevant authorities should boost electricity production as one of the means of achieving sustainable economic development in the long run

threshold cointegration and causality relationship between energy use and growth in seven african countries abstract the paper investigates the long run and the causality relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for seven sub saharan african countries during the period 1970 2007 using the gregory and hansen 1996a 1996b testing approach to threshold cointegration we find that energy consumption is cointegrated with economic growth in cameroon cote d ivoire ghana nigeria and south africa moreover this test suggests that economic growth has a significant positive long run impact on energy consumption in these countries before 1988 and this effect becomes negative after 1988 in ghana and south africa furthermore causality tests suggest bidirectional causality between energy consumption and real gdp in cote d ivoire and unidirectional causality running from real gdp to energy usage in the case of congo and ghana

energy consumption and economic growth the experience of african countries revisited abstract the aim of this paper is to re examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for seventeen african countries in a multivariate framework by including labor and capital as additional variables we apply the variance decomposition analysis due to pesaran and shin pesaran m h and shin y generalised impulse response analysis in linear multivariate models economics letters 1998 58 17 29 to evaluate how important is the causal impact of energy consumption on economic growth relative to labor and capital the results of our multivariate modified granger causality analysis due to toda and yamamoto toda h y and yamamoto t statistical inference in vector autoregressions with possibly integrated process journal of econometrics 1995 66 225 250 tend to reject the neutrality hypothesis for the energy income relationship in fifteen out of the seventeen countries in contrast results of our variance decomposition analyses show that in eleven out of the seventeen countries energy is no more than a contributing factor to output growth and not an important one when compared to capital and labor labor and capital are the most important factors in output growth in fifteen out of the seventeen countries however these results should be interpreted with care as they may not be sufficiently robust enough to support the inference that energy consumption plays a minor role in the economic growth of african countries

energy consumption pollutant emissions and economic growth in south africa article i nfo article history this paper examines the long run and the causal relationship between economic growth pollutant emissions and energy consumption for south africa for the period 1965 2006 in a multivariate framework which includes labour and capital as additional variables using the bound test approach to cointegration we found a short run as well as a long run relationship among the variables with a positive and a statistically significant relationship between pollutant emissions and economic growth further applying a modified version of the granger causality test we also found a unidirectional causality running from pollutant emissions to economic growth from energy consumption to economic growth and from energy consumption to co2 emissions all without a feedback the econometric evidence suggests that south africa has to sacrifice economic growth or reduce its energy consumption per unit of output or both in order to reduce pollutant emissions in the long run however it is possible to meet the energy needs of the country and at the same time reduce co2 emissions by developing energy alternatives to coal the main source of co2 emissions however the econometric results upon which the policy suggestions are made should be interpreted with care as they may not be sufficiently robust enough to categorically warrant the choice of an unpalatable policy option by south africa

the economic incidence of smoking laws although laws restricting smoking in restaurants are becoming commonplace most research has focused on either the health benefits that laws may provide customers and workers or whether laws harm owners but while smoking laws may directly alter profits owners may alter prices output and other business attributes in ways that affect the welfare of customers and workers this study examines whether restaurant and bar owners alter prices entertainment hours of operation and other business attributes in response to local smoking laws substantial support is found for these attribute changes in the wisconsin hospitality industry one implication is that an overall assessment of the desirability of smoking laws should consider economic effects imposed on owners customers and workers as well as health benefits that follow laws

oil price fluctuation volatility spillover and the ghanaian equity market implication for portfolio management and hedging effectiveness abstract this study attempts to contribute to the literature on stock markets and energy prices by examining the dynamic volatility and volatility transmission between oil and ghanaian stock market returns in a multivariate setting using the recently developed var garch var agarch and dcc garch frameworks in turn the models results are used to compute and analyze the optimal weights and hedge ratios for oil stock portfolio holdings for comparison purposes and to put the paper more in the perspective of west africa the nigerian stock market is also included in the analysis our findings point to the existence of significant volatility spillover and interdependence between oil and the two stock market returns while spillover effects are stronger for nigeria the transmission of volatility is much more apparent from oil to stock than from stock to oil in the case of ghana also the study demonstrates evidence of short term predictability in oil and stock price changes through time and reveals that conditional volatility changes more rapidly as result of substantial effects of past volatility rather than past news shocks for all market returns moreover we show that there is a slightly more effective hedge in the two stock markets under the dcc garch framework our preferred model compared to the other two models although hedging effectiveness is much greater for ghana on the whole our findings for optimal hedge ratios are consistent with other studies and particularly the view that oil assets should be an integral part of a diversified portfolio of stocks and suggest that a better understanding of volatility links is crucial for portfolio management in the presence of oil price risk finally the existence of multivariate asymmetric effects and dynamic conditional correlations as revealed by the var agarch and dcc garch models make it clear that the assumptions of symmetric effects and constant conditional correlations are not supported empirically

a meta analysis investigation of the direction of the energy gdp causal relationship implications for the growth degrowth dialogue abstract the complex relation between energy use and the economic process has long attracted attention issues such as the scarcity of energy resources energy theory of value degrowth and a growth approaches are closely related to the relationship between energy and development the present study traces the implications of the energy gdp causality dialogue for the context of the growth degrowth debate where the energy development link plays a decisive role in that context the present research investigates the possible existence of a fundamental macro direction of causality between energy use and economic growth that is not influenced by study specific characteristics and events towards this objective we perform a meta analysis that takes into account 158 studies on causality between energy and gdp covering the period 1978 2011 this is the first time to our knowledge that meta analysis has been applied to investigate the direction of the energy and gdp causal relationship the meta analysis results neither support the existence of a fundamental macro direction nor the so called neutrality hypothesis e gdp in the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth

towards an explanation of the productivity slowdown an acceleration deceleration hypothesis after two and a half decades of prosperous post war development western industrialised countries recently experienced a slowdown of economic growth and productivity advance together with an increase in the rates of inflation and unemployment in trying to explain this malaise we are looking at a diagnosis that could help us to identify early indicators of a future turnaround or some policy variables which deserve to be included in a therapeutic programme although we shall focus on what can be measured complying with the standards of the guild we shall not refrain from considering complex relationships which can be grasped only intuitively even if they include phenomena which lie beyond the limits of official statistics 2 the outcome may be soft economics but we find some consolation in the dictum that it is better to be vaguely right than to be precisely wrong

ant colony optimization approach to estimate energy demand of turkey abstract this paper attempts to shed light on the determinants of energy demand in turkey energy demand model is first proposed using the ant colony optimization aco approach it is multi agent systems in which the behavior of each ant is inspired by the foraging behavior of real ants to solve optimization problem aco energy demand estimation acoede model is developed using population gross domestic product gdp import and export all equations proposed here are linear and quadratic quadratic acoede provided better fit solution due to fluctuations of the economic indicators the acoede model plans the energy demand of turkey until 2025 according to three scenarios the relative estimation errors of the acoede model are the lowest when they are compared with the ministry of energy and natural resources menr projection

the effect of energy on output per worker in the balkan peninsula a country specific study of 12 nations in the energy community in this paper we explore the long run co integration relationship between output per worker capital per worker and energy per worker for 12 countries in the balkan peninsula albania austria bulgaria cyprus greece hungary italy macedonia romania slovakia slovenia and turkey which are part of the energy community in line with the current developments in energy economics 62 we add to the literature by reviewing the elasticity coefficients for the 12 countries using the augmented solow 63 framework and the ardl bounds procedure 57 the causality nexus is explored using the toda and yamamoto 1995 procedure the results show that output capital and energy in per worker terms are co integrated we note that all countries have positive and statistically significant long run energy elasticity coefficients except for macedonia we note that energy is statistically significant in the short run for all other countries the causality results support the conservation hypothesis for 7 countries albania bulgaria cyprus hungary italy romania and turkey the growth hypothesis for 2 countries austria and macedonia and the feedback hypothesis for 3 countries greece slovakia and slovenia respectively

fossil fuel flexibility in west european power generation and the impact of system load factors this paper analyzes short run interfuel substitution in west european power generation and the impact of system load factors on fossil fuel choice the problems are studied within a restricted translog cost share model the paper concludes that interfuel substitution in existing power plants is substantial especially that between oil and gas this is consistent with the notion that short run fuel substitution takes place in dual or multi fired plants by switching load between different single fired plants and by some conversions of power plants to be able to burn alternate fuels the empirical investigation also indicates that the system load factor is a notable determinant of fossil fuel choices in west europe and the paper ends with an assessment of the fuel consequences of some load management schemes in the region

delving into liberia s energy economy technical change inter factor and inter fuel substitution abstract the industrial energy mix of liberia is dominated by petroleum products this has generated serious environmental problems contributing immensely to co 2 emissions and other pollutants in the country this study has attempted to investigate the potential for inter factor and inter fuel substitution between capital labor petroleum and electricity in liberia by employing a translog production and cost function approach ridge regression procedure has been adopted to estimate the parameters of the function due to multicollinearity in the data estimation results show that all inputs are substitutes these suggest that price based policies coupled with capital subsidy programs can be adopted to redirect technology use towards cleaner energy sources like electricity hence retaining the ability to fuel the economy while also mitigating greenhouse gas ghg emissions substitution between energy and labor and energy and capital implies that removal of price ceilings on energy in liberia would tend to reduce energy use and increase capital and labor intensiveness notwithstanding the study seems to show no evidence of convergence in relative technological progress of the four inputs implying that petroleum will continue to play a dominant role in the energy consumption mix of liberian industry while labor investment will continue to outweigh capital inputs finally the findings of this study provide general insights and underscore the importance of policies that focus on installed capacity of renewable electricity energy intensity targets as well as merger of enterprises

output renewable energy consumption and trade in africa abstract we use panel cointegration techniques to examine the relationship between renewable energy consumption trade and output in a sample of 11 african countries covering the period 1980 2008 the results from panel error correction model reveal that there is evidence of a bidirectional causality between output and exports and between output and imports in both the short and long run however in the short run there is no evidence of causality between output and renewable energy consumption and between trade exports or imports and renewable energy consumption also in the long run there is no causality running from output or trade to renewable energy in the long run our estimations show that renewable energy consumption and trade have a statistically significant and positive impact on output our energy policy recommendations are that national authorities should design appropriate fiscal incentives to encourage the use of renewable energies create more regional economic integration for renewable energy technologies and encourage trade openness because of its positive impact on technology transfer and on output

renewable energy technologies as beacon of cleaner production a real options valuation analysis for liberia abstract the importance of energy consumption for growth and development calls for improved decision support for a sustainable energy transition given africa s dependence on fossil fuels the economic and environmental savings from research development and deployment of renewable energy technologies may be substantial although the benefits of renewable energy technologies research development funding may appear to be low assuming immediate deployment the uncertainty in the non renewable energy price and the flexibility over timing makes research development program more appealing this study develops different scenarios in order to quantify benefits provided by research development funding for renewable power generation in liberia by using real options pricing approach to estimate the value of renewable energy technologies while taking into account the uncertainty of fossil fuel prices and learning by doing in renewable energy technologies the optimal solution shows that renewable energy technologies are economically attractive especially when external costs are internalized however annual research development funding is low and should be raised significantly in order to guarantee the highest possible investment incentives with minimal expenditures the study also hypothesizes that with the likelihood of renewable energy to replace non renewable energy renewable power use in liberia can potentially reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 13 9 by 2015 compared to the 2008 levels the key insight provided by the real options analysis in this study is that while renewable energy may have inherent limitations such as seasonality of supply low energy content and capacity factor issues they still hold a significant amount of value which can only be detected when externalities are internalized thus underscoring the need for external costs related policies

antitrust public choice s antitrust legislation and enforcement has over the last few decades been increasingly informed by ever more sophisticated analysis while at the same time evidence has continued to mount that the results of antitrust remedies fall far short of the promises held out under still prevalent nirvana fallacy demsetz in journal of law and economics 12 1 1 22 1969 expectations i draw upon a recent supreme court decision as well as the results of young and shughart s public choice 2010 doi 10 1007 s11127 009 9531 y novel approach to the analysis of antitrust enforcement activities to discuss the extent to which public choice theory is vital in solving the puzzle regarding the unintended effects of antitrust public choices

valuing chinese feed in tariffs program for solar power generation a real options analysis newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1305 18257 national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013

a cross sectional analysis of energy output correlation abstract the nature of the correlation between energy consumption and output is examined based on cross sectional data for 100 countries the bias in the correlation due to the use of nominal income and to the convention adopted in measuring non commercial energy consumption is analysed it is found that when real income is used and non commercial energy consumption measured in commercial energy replacement value the cross sectional energy elasticity increases rapidly from about unity for the low income developing countries to between 1 6 and 1 8 for the high income developing countries and declines marginally thereafter in the industrial country income range the results show certain disparity on energy output ratio across countries with higher income countries consuming disproportionately more energy per unit of real output