market share and exchange rate pass through in world automobile trade abstract using a bertrand differentiated products model we show that pass through should be high for exporters based in a country with a very large share of total destination market sales for source countries with small and intermediate market shares the relationship is potentially nonlinear and sensitive to assumptions about demand and firm interactions the model is estimated using a panel data set of automobile exports from four source countries to 12 destination markets over the period 1970 1988 the relationship between pass through and market share is significantly nonlinear pass through is lowest when the source country s market share is around 40 percent and highest when market share approaches 100 percent

racial earnings disparities and family structure one explanation for the widening of racial earnings gaps among family heads during the 1980s is that black families were increasingly headed by females during that period this explanation is tested using data on black and white family heads in 1976 and 1985 from the institute for research on poverty s current population survey log earnings equations corrected for selection bias and for the endogeneity of labor force participation are estimated for blacks and whites in 1976 and 1985 if the impact of rising female family headship on labor force participation is ignored one finds support for the family structure explanation but support for alternative explanations is also found there are substantial impacts of within race gender discrimination and of market racial discrimination when the endogeneity of family structure is taken into account further support is found for the view that endowment differences only explain a modest portion of the rising gap in earnings between black and white family heads

assessment of the economic impacts of continuous energy intensity target constraint in china based on an analytical general equilibrium model abstract based on the framework of analytical general equilibrium model this study builds an energy intensity target eit constraint model and simulates the impacts of continuous eit constraint policy on the fossil fuel production ffp sector non fossil fuel production nffp sector household sector and price system in china the main findings of this paper are firstly the eit constraint can change the marginal products and the cross price elasticities of input factors secondly stricter eit constraint can transfer capital and labor inputs from the ffp sector to the nffp sector and lead to a contractionary effect in the ffp sector shown as declining inputs and output the contractionary effect will decline gradually or even fade away if the eit constraint is gradually reduced thirdly if the total capital and labor inputs in the whole economy continue to grow at certain rates along with the weakening of the eit constraint the reduction in energy input and the growth of capital and labor inputs in the nffp sector will slow down however the growth rates of output and intermediate input will increase continuously fourthly the eit constraint has negative impacts on the nffp sector price system and household consumption but these impacts are affordable to the whole economy if the eit constraint is loosened under a certain level it may not curb the growth of fossil fuel consumption anymore therefore other supporting policies for energy conservation must be in place

employment discrimination in northern ireland and the good friday agreement abstract the paper analyses employment differences between northern ireland s catholics and protestants and examines whether the good friday agreement signed in 1998 was followed by an improvement in the relative position of catholics

racial discrimination in the labor market theory and empirics we review theories of race discrimination in the labor market taste based models can generate wage and unemployment duration differentials when combined with either random or directed search even when strong prejudice is not widespread but no existing model explains the unemployment rate differential models of statistical discrimination based on differential observability of productivity across races can explain the pattern and magnitudes of wage differentials but do not address employment and unemployment at their current state of development models of statistical discrimination based on rational stereotypes have little empirical content it is plausible that models combining elements of the search models with statistical discrimination could fit the data we suggest possible avenues to be pursued and comment briefly on the implication of existing theory for public policy jel j15 j31 j64 j71

does market based electricity price affect china s energy efficiency abstract china is in a critical period of market oriented reform and energy transition as a crucial means to regulate supply and demand under the market oriented mechanism the electricity price can promote the development of energy efficiency by optimizing resource allocation with the gradual increase in electricity consumption the influence of its price on energy consumption is also gradually enhanced therefore this paper evaluated the process of electricity price marketization and conducted a spatial temporal comparative analysis of the effect of electricity price on energy efficiency by controlling economic policy and other price factors the results show that 1 the marketization degree of china s electricity price has improved with steady steps 2 market oriented electricity price has a stable positive correlation with energy efficiency in both the short and long term 3 marketization improves the promotion effect of electricity price on energy efficiency and the influence of electricity price is more significant in the eastern region with a high degree of marketization and the subsequent stage 4 the impact of market oriented electricity price on energy efficiency is asymmetric the impulse response under positive and negative shock is opposite and under the positive shock the response time is longer and the degree is greater

efficiency analysis of chinese industry a directional distance function approach two efficiency measures of chinese industry were estimated at the provincial level from 1994 to 2002 using a directional output distance function one is a traditional efficiency measure that considers only desirable output while the other considers both desirable and undesirable outputs simultaneously a comparison of the two measures revealed that efficiency levels are biased only if desirable output is considered five coastal provinces municipalities that have attracted a large amount of foreign direct investment are found to be the most efficient when only desirable output is considered and also when both desirable and undesirable outputs are considered however omitting undesirable output tends to lead to an overestimate of industrial efficiency levels in shandong sichuan and hebei provinces we also found that a province s industrial structure has significant effects on its efficiency levels

energy efficiency in china s iron and steel industry evidence and policy implications abstract currently the iron and steel industry isi accounts for more than 16 of china s total energy consumption improving energy efficiency ee and promoting energy savings in this industry have vital significance for china s further sustainable development using provincial panel data from 2000 to 2014 and meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper investigates ee and the energy saving potential ep of china s isi by considering regional technology heterogeneities the results show that 1 from 2001 to 2014 ee in china s isi achieved significant improvement technological progress is the most powerful driving factor while the declines in scale efficiency and pure technical efficiency are two obstructive factors 2 the sources of energy inefficiency ei show distinct spatial difference characteristics ei in the eastern region mainly stems from scale inefficiency and pure technical inefficiency while that in the central and western regions stems from three aspects of scale inefficiency pure technical inefficiency and technology gap and 3 there is considerable ep in china s isi which represents nearly 80 of isi s current total energy consumption because the sources of ep vary across regions the focus of future work for china s regional isi should also vary

changes in the u s wage structure 1963 1987 application of quantile regression the 1980 s witnessed rapid changes in the structure of wages in the united states in this study recently developed techniques for quantile regression are applied to every march current population survey since 1964 and changes in the return to schooling and experience at different points of the wage distribution are examined the quantile regression technique parsimoniously describes the entire conditional wage distribution this conditional distribution is used to examine changes in within group wage inequality as measured by the difference between conditional quantiles two linear models are considered a simple one group model and a 16 group model the results suggest that the returns to schooling and experience differ across quantiles of the wage distribution but their patterns of change are similar significant differences in wage inequality are also found across the various skill groups the paper also presents a new imputation method for cps data

the approach to realizing the potential of emissions reduction in china an implication from data envelopment analysis abstract by proposing a three hierarchy meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper first decomposes co 2 emissions efficiency and the potential for emissions reduction into the following three components structural technical and management based on these components we then conduct an empirical analysis of china s total factor co 2 emissions efficiency its potential for co 2 emissions reduction and its corresponding implementation path the results show that co 2 emissions efficiency in mainland china is relatively low because of structural inefficiency technical inefficiency and management inefficiency the chinese government is expected to realize a large quantity of co 2 emissions reduction potential nearly 40 of the current total co 2 emissions through adjusting the industrial structure narrowing the technology gap among regions promoting the reform of marketization and strengthening environmental regulation the causes of co 2 emissions inefficiency and the distribution of potential reductions in emissions show a distinct spatial difference characteristic therefore this paper also formulates emissions reduction strategies for china s 30 provinces according to their specific situations noting the direction of the industrial structure adjustment and the path to improving co 2 emissions efficiency

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

on the structural stability of trade equations the case of japan abstract this study examines the stability of japanese trade equations over the period 1976 1993 it finds evidence of parameter nondashconstancy in equations for both total and bilateral us japan trade in most of the equations the instability can be traced to changes in specific parameter estimates in the mid 1980s in these cases failure to account for the parameter changes leads to an underestimation of actual trade flows that in some instances is significant by implication standard trade equations estimated from historical data may not be applicable to the analysis of japanese trade in the late 1980s and beyond

does the popularization of agricultural mechanization improve energy environment performance in china s agricultural sector abstract environmental problems caused by the rapid popularization of agricultural mechanization and the increase of energy input in china s agricultural production have caused increasing concern based on the study sample of china s 30 provinces from 2000 to 2017 this paper estimates the energy environment performance of agricultural sector using the global dea method furthermore it applied a panel tobit model based on censored data to empirically analyze the impact of popularization of mechanization on energy environment performance in china s agricultural sector the main findings are as follows firstly the mean value of energy environment performance is 0 1842 and the values of national and regional performance showed a downward trend in the sample period indicating that most regions in china s agricultural sector did not perform well in terms of energy saving and pollution control secondly the development of agricultural mechanization has a significant negative effect on energy environment performance this result confirms the fact that the regions with high penetration rates of agricultural mechanization usually have a low energy environment performance finally in regard to the control variables energy price reservoir infrastructure construction and agricultural industrial structure negatively affect energy environment performance while the agricultural labor force and agricultural mechanization service organizations have a positive effect on china s energy environment performance

national research funding and energy efficiency evidence from the national science foundation of china abstract the enhancement of energy efficiency is crucial to saving energy and reducing pollution emissions increasing investment in basic research may promote innovative energy technologies that improve energy efficiency in this paper the authors employ a stochastic frontier analysis to evaluate the impact of government funded research programs on improving national energy efficiency using estimates of energy efficiency based on the shepherd energy distance function the analysis used panel data from 30 provinces in china over the 2006 2015 period using the number of research programs funded by the national natural science foundation of china nsfc as a proxy the results show that research funding has a significantly negative effect on energy inefficiency the average energy efficiency continually increased from 2006 to 2015 in china while the energy efficiency in the eastern region was higher than that in the central and western regions in most years moreover a robustness test further validates and supports these findings some policy implications are proposed based on the empirical results

do financial constraints hold back innovation and growth evidence on the role of public policy abstract this paper provides evidence that capital market imperfections hold back innovation and growth and that public policy can complement capital markets we deliver the evidence by studying the effects of government funding on the behavior of smes in finland by adapting the methodology recently proposed by rajan and zingales rajan r g zingales l 1998 financial dependence and growth american economic review 88 pp 559 587 to firm level data we show that government funding disproportionately helps firms from industries that are dependent on external finance we demonstrate that the result is economically significant and robust to a variety of tests

efficient energy saving targets for apec economies abstract energy saving target ratios estr for 17 apec economies during 1991 2000 are computed in a total factor framework all nominal variables are transformed into real variables by the purchasing power parity ppp at the 1995 price level the data envelopment analysis dea approach is used to find the energy saving target est for apec economies without reducing their maximum potential gross domestic productions gdps in each year energy labor and capital are the three inputs while gdp is the single output our major findings are as follows 1 china has the largest est up to almost half of its current usage 2 hong kong the philippines and the united states have the highest energy efficiency 3 the energy efficiency generally increases for apec economies except for canada and new zealand 4 chile mexico and taiwan have significantly improved their energy efficiency in the last 5 years 5 an inverted u shape relation exists between per capita est and per capita gdp 6 estr has a positive relation with the value added percentage of gdp of the industry sector and a negative relation with that of the service sector

estimation of a censored dynamic panel data model panel data models have a long history in econometrics and have become increasingly popular in empirical economics over the past two decades panel data expand our opportunities to study more complex economic relationships by for example allowing for individual heterogeneity and dynamic feedback these goals are often achieved by including in the model individual specific effects and lagged dependent variables these two features of the dynamic panel data model however often create difficulties in estimation although much progress has been made in the linear panel data model see among others hsiao 1986 baltagi 1995 and arellano and honore 2001 for review our knowledge of general nonlinear dynamic panel data models is very limited in most nonlinear models strict exogeneity of the explanatory variables is still the key assumption the main difficulty is that with nonlinearity it is not obvious how to difference away the individual specific effects and how to use instrumental variable type techniques 2 despite these difficulties some developments have been made on estimating certain nonlinear dynamic models using the fixed effects approach for example the censored regression models honore 1993 honore and hu 2001 the sample selection models kyriazidou 2001 the discrete choice models honor6 and kyriazidou 2000 and the models with multiplicative individual effects chamberlain 1992 wooldridge 1997

ecological total factor energy efficiency of regions in china most existing energy efficiency indices are computed without taking into account undesirable outputs such as co2 and so2 emissions this paper computes the ecological total factor energy efficiency etfee of 30 regions in china for the period 2005 2009 through the slack based model sbm with undesirable outputs we calculate the etfee index by comparing the target energy input obtained from sbm with undesirable outputs to the actual energy input findings show that china s regional etfee still remains a low level of around 0 600 and regional energy efficiency is overestimated by more than 0 100 when not looking at environmental impacts china s regional energy efficiency is extremely unbalanced the east area ranks first with the highest etfee of above 0 700 the northeast and central areas follow and the west area has the lowest etfee of less than 0 500 a monotone increasing relation exists between the area s etfee and china s per capita gdp the truncated regression model shows that the ratio of r d expenditure to gdp and the degree of foreign dependence have positive impacts whereas the ratio of the secondary industry to gdp and the ratio of government subsidies for industrial pollution treatment to gdp have negative effects on the etfee

fragmentation and east asia s information technology trade this article studies the growth and determinants of information technology it trade in the asia pacific region we argue that the rise of it trade must be understood within the context of increasing vertical fragmentation of production processes that has occurred over the past two decades to evaluate this empirically we estimate a set of pooled bilateral it export equations for eight asian countries the usa and the eu where foreign direct investment fdi inflows are introduced as a proxy for fragmentation we apply a panel cointegration approach that allows for heterogeneity in short run dynamics and in fixed effects consistent with production fragmentation we find that the evolution of it trade can be explained in part by traditional income and relative price effects but also by fdi inflows

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

male white black wage gaps 1979 1994 a distributional analysis 1 introductionnumerous studies show that during the 1980s the mean white black wage gap among new entrant 0 10 years of potential experience males expanded 1 juhn murphy and pierce 1991 jmp attribute the mean gap s expansion to a widening of the overall u s wage distribution caused by a host of economy wide race neutral changes that led to labor demand shifts toward better educated and better skilled workers regardless of race because african americans tend to be at lower levels of the overall skill distribution the shifts adversely impacted african american men more than white men leading to an expansion in the mean wage gap to arrive at this conclusion jmp decompose the expansion in the mean new entrant wage gap into four components the first two components measure the wage gap s increase because of a widening in observable racial differences in measured characteristics and their prices for example educational attainment and the returns to education the third component captures the contribution of growing racial discrimination and widening differences in unmeasured skills to the wage gap s expansion this term s contribution is measured by the drop in the mean percentile rank of blacks in the white residual wage distribution the fourth component identifies the role of increases in the prices of unmeasured skills and is measured by the increase in the variance of the white residual wage distribution when applied to the march annual demographic files of the current population survey jmp find that from 1979 to 1987 increases in the price of unmeasured skills explain all of the new entrant mean wage gap s expansion indicating that factors that adversely impacted less skilled workers regardless of race are the primary cause of the wage gap s expansion in related work reardon 1997 uses a national sample of white and african american men from the 1980 and 1990 decennial censuses and shows that the mean racial wage gap s expansion is caused by increased variance in the distribution of residual wages generated by labor demand shifts toward high skilled whites and away from medium skilled whites and high skilled african american men the wage gap expands because high skilled african american men earn wages that are similar to those of whites in the middle and upper third of their wage distribution the labor demand shifts led to a stretching or increased variance in the wage distribution that favored high skilled whites relative to high skilled african americans and medium skilled whites this paper makes several contributions to the literature on racial wage gaps and the technical literature on wage decompositions first i examine whether jmp s 1991 results hold up when the analysis is disaggregated by experience and educational attainment this is an important extension for two reasons bound and freeman 1992 rodgers 1997a and others have found that the racial wage gap among high school graduates and particularly among college graduates expanded significantly after the late 1970s over the same time period the variance of wages within these educational categories increased second it is important to determine the extent to which racial inequality that was generated while a cohort was a new entrant persists as it ages the paper s technical innovation is the development of a distribution or skill specific decomposition that identifies whether the stretching of the white wage distribution uniformly contributes to an expansion in racial inequality at all skill levels or quantiles of the wage distribution or whether the contribution of the wage distribution s stretching is specific to a skill level for example does the increase in the price of unmeasured skills explain a greater portion of the increase in the racial wage gap between high skilled african americans and whites than it does between medium skilled african americans and whites

human capital discrimination and the gender wage gap in bangladesh summary this paper investigates changes in the gender wage gap in bangladesh over the period 1999 2009 the gap in average wages between men and women decreased by 31 over this period this paper shows that a key driver of this change was an improvement in female educational qualifications it also demonstrates that the gender wage gap across the wage distribution narrowed much more at the lower end of the wage distribution than at the upper end it attributes this mainly to a decline in discrimination against women implications for policies aimed at more equal access to education and enforcement of equal pay legislation in bangladesh are also identified

the measurement and influences of china s urban total factor energy efficiency under environmental pollution based on the game cross efficiency dea abstract in recent years urban energy efficiency has received much attention from researchers however ignorance of the competitive relationships among regions results in inaccurate energy efficiency game cross efficiency data envelopment analysis dea which can account for the competitive relationships is a reliable method to measure energy efficiency first this paper applies game cross efficiency dea to analyze the urban total factor energy efficiency utfee of 26 chinese prefectural level cities from 2005 to 2015 under environmental constraints then a comparative analysis and a concrete analysis are conducted based on the urban energy efficiency finally a tobit model is used to examine the effects of 10 potential influence factors the measurement results show that the urban energy efficiency considering the competitive relationship is lower than the traditionally calculated efficiency additionally the urban energy efficiency did not improve during the research period furthermore regression analysis suggests that economic development and city scale can promote urban energy efficiency while government expenditure industrial structures energy prices foreign investments research investments and production endowment have negative impacts on urban energy efficiency according to our results some implications of theory and practice are discussed for researchers and policy makers

trucking deregulation and the black white wage gap the only previous study of the effect of product market deregulation on the black white wage gap found that this gap in the trucking industry declined after trucking deregulation in 1978 that study did not however estimate the separate effects of deregulation on union and nonunion members or on black and white drivers this study does so through an analysis of individual worker information from the march and may cps files for the years 1973 through 1988 the authors find that deregulation is associated with significantly declining black white wage gaps among both union and nonunion drivers this wage pattern is attributable to significant reductions in the real wages of white drivers the real wages of black drivers did not change with deregulation

what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate 1997 2006 abstract china is the second largest energy consumer in the world during 1997 2002 china s energy intensity declined by 33 however it rose by 10 7 over 2003 2005 and declined by 1 2 in 2006 what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate so drastically industry accounts for approximately 70 of the total energy consumption in china in this paper we decompose china s industrial energy intensity changes between 1997 and 2002 into sectoral structural effects and efficiency effects measured by sectoral energy intensities at two digit level and including the shifts of product mix in the sub sector or firm level using tornqvist and sato vartia index methods the results show that in this period efficiency effects possibly contributed to a majority of the decline while the contribution from structural effects was less during 2003 2005 the excessive expansion of high energy consuming sub sectors and the high investment ratio were foremost sources of the increasing energy intensity attributed to the government efforts the energy intensity has started to decline slightly since july 2006 in future to save more energy in addition to technical progress china should attach more importance to optimizing its sectoral structure and lowering its investment ratio

total factor energy efficiency of regions in china abstract this paper analyzes energy efficiencies of 29 administrative regions in china for the period 1995 2002 with a newly introduced index most existing studies of regional productivity and efficiency neglect energy inputs we use the data envelopment analysis dea to find the target energy input of each region in china at each particular year the index of total factor energy efficiency tfee then divides the target energy input by the actual energy input in our dea model labor capital stock energy consumption and total sown area of farm crops used as a proxy of biomass energy are the four inputs and real gdp is the single output the conventional energy productivity ratio regarded as a partial factor energy efficiency index is computed for comparison in contrast to tfee our index is found fitting better to the real case according to the tfee index rankings the central area of china has the worst energy efficiency and its total adjustmentof energy consumption amount is over half of china s total regional tfee in china generally improved during the research period except for the western area a u shape relation between the area s tfee and per capita income in the areas of china is found confirming the scenario that energy efficiency eventually improves with economic growth

semiparametric censored regression models aregression model is censored when the recorded data on the dependent variable cuts off outside a certain range with multiple observations at the endpoints of that range when the data are censored variation in the observed dependent variable will understate the effect of the regressors on the true dependent variable as a result standard ordinary least squares regression using censored data will typically result in coefficient estimates that are biased toward zero traditional statistical analysis uses maximum likelihood or related procedures to deal with the problem of censored data however the validity of such methods requires correct specification of the error distribution which can be problematic in practice in the past two decades a number of semiparametric alternatives for dealing with censored data have been proposed in a semiparametric approach part of the functional form of the model usually the regression function is parametrically specified by the researcher based upon plausible assumptions while the rest of the model is not parameterized 1 while the theoretical literature has produced several semiparametric estimators for the censored data model published applications of these estimators to empirical problems in economics have lagged far behind this paper reviews the intuition and computation of a handful of semiparametric estimators proposed for the censored regression model the various estimators are used to examine changes in black white earnings inequality during the

energy savings potential in china s industrial sector from the perspectives of factor price distortion and allocative inefficiency abstract china s industrial energy consumption accounted for 70 82 of national and 14 12 of world energy usage in 2011 in the context of energy scarcity and environmental pollution the industrial sector in china faces unsustainable growth problems by adopting the stochastic frontier analysis sfa framework this paper analyzes the factor allocative efficiency of china s industrial sector and estimates the energy savings potential from the perspective of allocative inefficiency this paper focuses on three issues the first is examining the factor allocative inefficiency of china s industrial sector the second is measuring factor price distortion by the shadow price model the third is estimating the energy savings potential in china s industrial sector during 2001 2009 major conclusions are thus drawn first factor prices of capital labor and energy are distorted in china due to government regulations moreover energy price is relatively low compared to capital price while is relatively high compared to labor price second the industry wide energy savings potential resulted from energy allocative inefficiency was about 9 71 during 2001 2009 the downward trend of energy savings potential implies the increasing energy allocative efficiency in china s industrial sector third a transparent and reasonable pricing mechanism is conducive to improving energy allocative efficiency

the effects of trade liberalization on imports in selected developing countries abstract this paper analyses the impact of the reduction of tariff and nontariff barriers on the imports of 22 selected developing countries utilizing dynamic panel data techniques domestic income and relative prices are found to be significant determinants of import growth in addition the results indicate that import duties reduce import growth but the effect varies according to the region and the type of trade policy regime existing in the country the results also show that the elimination of trade policy distortions has a strong positive impact on import growth finally it is found that income and price elasticities are higher as a result of trade policy reform

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

racial and ethnic differences in wealth in the health and retirement study this paper examines wealth data in the health and retirement study hrs in comparison with asset data in other major surveys the quality of hrs asset data is high missing asset data does remain a problem however to which future hrs analysts must remain sensitive evidence is presented showing that it is no accident that asset data are missing and solutions for imputing missing data are developed finally racial and ethnic wealth disparities are large these minority wealth disparities are due in part to differential inheritances and desired bequests as inequities perpetuate themselves across generations the disparities are also due to lower minority incomes poorer health and an excessively narrow definition of wealth that excludes social security and employer pensions authors

separate and unequal in the labor market human capital and the jim crow wage gap competing explanations for the long standing gap between black and white earnings attribute different weight to wage discrimination and human capital differences using new data on local school quality we find that human capital played a predominant role in determining 1940 wage and occupational status gaps in the south despite entrenched racial discrimination in civic life and the lack of federal employment protections the resulting wage gap coincides with the higher end of the range of estimates from the post civil rights era we estimate that truly separate but equal schools would have reduced wage inequality by 29 48

decomposition of energy efficiency and energy saving potential in china a three hierarchy meta frontier approach abstract considering both regional heterogeneity and industrial heterogeneity this paper proposes a three hierarchy meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea to decompose energy efficiency and energy saving potential into three components i e industrial structure regional balance development and management based on this approach the paper then analyses the historical evolution and current status of energy efficiency in china the results show the following 1 from 2001 to 2015 mainland china s energy efficiency increased by a factor of 2 48 primarily because of technological progress and the optimization of its industrial structure 2 nonetheless the current energy efficiency in mainland china remains very low and energy inefficiency is as high as 0 5922 indicating that 59 22 of total energy consumption is invalidly used severe industrial structure inefficiency and regional balance development inefficiency are the two main factors responsible for the very low energy efficiency 3 by promoting industrial restructuring regional balance development and management improvement mainland china is expected to save respectively 13 67 24 54 and 61 73 of its current total invalid energy consumption based on the estimation results this paper formulates strategies to improve energy efficiency and save energy for china s provinces based on their specific situations considering not only the direction of industrial restructuring in both the short and long terms but also the path to improved energy efficiency in addition a brief discussion about the applicability and the preconditions for an application of the multi hierarchy meta frontier approach is given at the end of the paper

the impact of industrial structure efficiency on provincial industrial energy efficiency in china abstract regional disparity in terms of industrial energy efficiency is noticeable in china due to the unbalanced economic progress in past decades analyzing the provincial industrial energy efficiency and its influencing factors is of great significance to formulate differentiated policies to date the influence of many social economic factors on the industrial energy efficiency have been examined but the impact of the inter industry structure has almost been ignored in this paper the slacks based measure model incorporating undesirable output is applied to evaluate the industrial energy efficiency both at the provincial level and the sectoral level in china for the period 2010 to 2016 then industrial structure efficiency is introduced which reflects the inter industry structure and takes the sectoral level energy efficiency into consideration and the impact of the industrial structure efficiency on provincial industrial energy efficiency is tested by tobit regression model the results show that huge discrepancies of provincial industrial energy efficiency exist and the industrial structure efficiency is confirmed to be a determinative factor to the provincial industrial energy efficiency with the coefficient of 0 525 policy recommendations are provided for adjusting the provincial inter industry structure and improving the industrial energy efficiency

an investigation into sexual orientation discrimination as an explanation for wage differences this study explores the effects of sexual orientation on earnings it is found that ceteris paribus men living with male partners tend to earn less than other men and women living with female partners tend to earn more than other women these earnings differentials tend to vary by region they also vary by education and occupation for men and with the presence of minor children for women in addition the age earnings profiles of women living with female partners tend to be higher flatter and less concave than those of other women

the intergenerational transmission of generosity abstract this paper estimates the correlation between the generosity of parents and the generosity of their adult children using regression models of adult children s charitable giving new charitable giving data are collected in the panel study of income dynamics and used to estimate the regression models the regression models are estimated using a wide variety of techniques and specification tests and the strength of the intergenerational giving correlations is compared with intergenerational correlations in income wealth and consumption expenditure from the same sample using the same set of controls we find the religious giving of parents and children to be strongly correlated as strongly correlated as are their income and wealth the correlation in the secular giving e g giving to the united way educational institutions for poverty relief of parents and children is smaller similar in magnitude to the intergenerational correlation in consumption parents religious giving is positively associated with children s secular giving but in a more limited sense overall the results are consistent with generosity emerging at least in part from the influence of parental charitable behavior in contrast to intergenerational models in which parental generosity towards their children can undo government transfer policy ricardian equivalence these results suggest that parental generosity towards charitable organizations might reinforce government policies such as tax incentives aimed at encouraging voluntary transfers

total factor energy efficiency in developing countries this paper uses a total factor framework to investigate energy efficiency in 23 developing countries during the period of 1980 2005 we explore the total factor energy efficiency and change trends by applying data envelopment analysis dea window which is capable of measuring efficiency in cross sectional and time varying data the empirical results indicate that botswana mexico and panama perform the best in terms of energy efficiency whereas kenya sri lanka syria and the philippines perform the worst during the entire research period seven countries show little change in energy efficiency over time eleven countries experienced continuous decreases in energy efficiency among five countries witnessing continuous increase in total factor energy efficiency china experienced the most rapid rise practice in china indicates that effective energy policies play a crucial role in improving energy efficiency tobit regression analysis indicates that a u shaped relationship exists between total factor energy efficiency and income per capita

regional energy efficiency evaluation in china a super efficiency slack based measure model with undesirable outputs abstract with the rapid development of global economy the demand for energy has increased significantly therefore energy efficiency improvement is essential for global energy and economic transformation in the chinese context study on the energy efficiency of various provinces can contribute to better understand china s energy utilization status and provide policy implications for improving china s energy utilization efficiency in this study based on the super efficiency slack based measure model with undesirable outputs the energy efficiency of china s 30 provinces in 2013 and 2014 was investigated then the energy efficiency of the eastern central and western china was compared and further discussed finally according to the results the relevant policy implications were put forward the results showed that china s overall energy efficiency had decreased while taking the undesirable outputs into consideration in addition eastern china had the highest energy efficiency and the energy efficiency of western china was relatively low the energy efficiency gap among china s provinces was still large therefore it was necessary to improve china s overall energy efficiency by developing targeted policies considering regional conditions

the effect on black white wage differences of differences in the quantity and quality of education using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth for the years 1979 88 the author examines the extent to which black white differences in educational attainment educational quality and unmeasured individual ability can explain black white wage differences an analysis that corrects for both selectivity and ability biases inherent in estimating the education wage relationship shows that the main source of the black white wage differential is the racial difference in the quality rather than quantity of schooling in fact the author concludes closing the racial gap in the basic skills learned in school could reduce the wage differential by two thirds

black white earnings ratios since the civil rights act of 1964 the importance of labor market dropouts published median earnings of wage and salary workers by race and sex are based on distributions that exclude those without earnings and those not employed as wage and salary workers at the time of the survey it has been argued that the changing importance of these exclusions rather than any improvement in the distribution of offered wages for blacks accounts for the apparent increase in black white relative median earnings this paper presents a new method for correcting the published medians for such censoring the apparent improvement in relative earnings is reduced but not eliminated by the correction

estimation of semiparametric censored regression models an application to changes in black white earnings inequality during the 1960s building on the work of chay 1995 this study examines the impact of civil rights policies on black economic progress using individual level panel data many earnings records are censored and the degree of censoring changed during the period of interest consequently valid estimates of the program effects must account for this censoring maximum likelihood estimation can be used if the error terms of the model are identically normally distributed we investigate the value of using weaker assumptions on the error process to estimate the laws impact the analysis shows that there was significant black white earnings convergence in the south during the 1960s we also find that semiparametric estimation methods are informative in pinpointing which parts of the model are mis specified

industrial energy efficiency and driving forces behind efficiency improvement evidence from the pearl river delta urban agglomeration in china abstract improving energy efficiency of industrial sectors is essential to achieve energy conservation in the pearl river delta urban agglomeration prdua in china this study adopted stochastic frontier analysis sfa to evaluate the industrial total factor energy efficiency tfee of nine cities in prdua during 2004 2016 and then to decompose the growth of tfee into technical change tc technical efficiency change tec and economies of scale sc effects results show that the tfee of industrial sectors of prdua had an overall downward trend during the study period and that technical change was the major driving force behind the growth of tfee the tobit model was then adopted to further investigate the determinants of energy efficiency improvement and test the robustness of empirical results the main contributions of this study to the existing literature lie in showing that 1 the degree of openness local government spending foreign direct investment factor input structure environmental regulation strength and gdp per capita have positive impacts on the industrial tfee 2 enterprise scale and energy consumption structure have a negative impact on industrial energy efficiency finally we address policy implications for energy management regarding their economic and environmental aspects in industrial sectors of the prdua

the impact of the great migration on mortality of african americans evidence from the deep south the great migration the massive migration of african americans out of the rural south to largely urban locations in the north midwest and west was a landmark event in u s our paper shows that this migration increased mortality of african americans born in the early twentieth century south this inference comes from an analysis that uses proximity of birthplace to railroad lines as an instrument for migration

economic inequality new methods for new trends two positions dominate the debate over the recent increases in economic inequality in the united states the job skill mismatch thesis attributes rising inequality to growth in the number of high skill high wage jobs that leaves less skilled workers behind the polarization thesis in contrast argues that the service shift generates growth in the number of both high wage and low wage jobs and declines in the middle standard summary measures of distributional inequality cannot discriminate between these depictions of where job growth is occurring we propose new methods for measurement that provide both summary and detailed information about the distributional shifts in earnings and aframework for statistical inference using data from the curent population survey cps on yearly earnings from 1967 to 1987 we show that the trends in distributional inequality vary considerably by race gender and time while the evidence provides more support for the polarization argument this thesis needs refinement if it is to account for the variations in changing inequality observed here

metafroniter energy efficiency with co2 emissions and its convergence analysis for china this paper measures the energy efficiency performance with carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 30 provinces in china during the period of 1997 2011 using a meta frontier framework with the improved directional distance function ddf we construct a new environmental production possibility set by combining the super efficiency and sequential data envelopment analysis dea models to avoid discriminating power problem and technical regress when evaluating efficiency by ddf then it is used in a meta frontier framework to reflect the technology heterogeneities across east central and west china the results indicate that eastern china achieved the highest progress inefficiency relative to the metafrontier followed by western and the central china by focusing on technology gaps we offer some suggestions for the different groups based on group frontier and meta frontier analyses the inefficiency can be attributed to managerial failure for eastern and western china and technological differences for central china the convergence analysis shows that energy and co2 emission governance will produce negative effects on economic growth and it is suitable and acceptable to introduce rigorous environmental measures in eastern china

the strength of a weak agency enforcement of title vii of the 1964 civil rights act and the expansion of state capacity 1965 1971 this article analyzes the anomalous case of early title vii enforcement to challenge the standard political institutional pi account of state capacity title vii prohibited employment discrimination but the equal employment opportunity commission was granted scant enforcement resources yet the early eeoc aggressively enforced and developed title vii to solve the anomaly the authors integrate insights from the literatures on social movements and the sociology of law in the absence of conventional administrative resources apparently weak state agencies can expand their capacity through the legal strategy of broad statutory construction this strategy is more likely with the presence of social movement pressure from below the authors argue that state capacity is a moving target with state and societal actors building on legal as well as administrative resources to construct and transform capacity by reconceptualizing state capacity the authors contribute to nuanced explanations of state policy

industrial energy efficiency with co2 emissions in china a nonparametric analysis abstract global awareness on energy security and climate change has created much interest in assessing economy wide energy efficiency performance a number of previous studies have contributed to evaluate energy efficiency performance using different analytical techniques among which data envelopment analysis dea has recently received increasing attention most of dea related energy efficiency studies do not consider undesirable outputs such as co 2 emissions in their modeling framework which may lead to biased energy efficiency values within a joint production framework of desirable and undesirable outputs in this paper we construct both static and dynamic energy efficiency performance indexes for measuring industrial energy efficiency performance by using several environmental dea models with co 2 emissions the dynamic energy efficiency performance indexes have further been decomposed into two contributing components we finally apply the indexes proposed to assess the industrial energy efficiency performance of different provinces in china over time our empirical study shows that the energy efficiency improvement in china s industrial sector was mainly driven by technological improvement

a review of optimal energy policy instruments on industrial energy efficiency programs rebound effects and government policies abstract industrial energy efficiency programs ieeps are defined as one of the most popular government policies that aim to reduce energy consumption in industrial energy intensive sectors in this paper we review and classify the most important academic studies that have addressed the environmental and economic aspects of ieeps using a systematic review the classification of energy policy instruments has been developed based on an analytical approach we discuss also the outputs benefits and barriers of ieeps besides a comprehensive argument about the restrictive policies on the rebound effects made after the implementation of these programs the results disclose that china usa and sweden are the most addressed countries on ieeps and their applications in this regard incentive energy policies e g voluntary agreements and subsidies have been applied more than others in the last decade furthermore most of the reviewed studies emphasize energy price reform as an effective practical policy while a few analytical methods can be seen to help policy makers determine the optimal levels of decision variables finally according to the state of the art analysis the authors provide some novel recommendations to improve the performance of ieeps using some restrictive policies on the negative impacts of rebound effects

how does administrative pricing affect energy consumption and co2 emissions in china despite reforms china still largely applies the cost plus pricing mechanism for the energy sector government administrative energy pricing leads to energy price distortions which could result in not only the excessive and wasteful energy consumption but also environmental deterioration thereby undermining energy conservation and emission abatement using fossil fuel subsidies as a proxy for the level of energy price distortions this paper estimates the subsidy of 22 chinese departments during the period 2006 2010 and adopts the price gap approach to analyze the impacts of subsidy removal on energy consumption and co2 emissions for the various sectors and energy types the results demonstrate that removing energy subsidies would reduce energy consumption and emissions by 3 77 and 2 85 respectively but the effects vary across sectors the transport storage and post sector and the electricity gas and water supply sector are much more affected by energy subsidies removal than other sectors with respect to energy types fuel oil and natural gas are sensitive to subsidies indicating the magnitude of their consumption this suggests that removing subsidies on these fuel types could significantly reduce co2 emissions finally we comprehensively discuss relevant policy issues on energy price formation reform

total factor carbon emission performance of fossil fuel power plants in china a metafrontier non radial malmquist index analysis article i nfo this paper proposes the metafrontier non radial malmquist co2 emission performance index mnmcpi for measuring dynamic changes in total factor co2 emission performance over time the mnmcpi method allows for the incorporation of group heterogeneity and non radial slack into the previously introduced malmquist co2 emission performance index mcpi we derive the mnmcpi by solving several non radial data envelop ment analysis dea models we decompose the mnmcpi into an efficiency change ec index a best practice gap change bpc index and a technology gap change tgc index and based on the proposed indices we examine the dynamic changes in co2 emission performance and its decomposition of fossil fuel power plants in china for the 2005 2010 period the empirical results show a 0 38 increase in total factor co2 emission performance as a whole and a u shaped mnmcpi curve for the sample period because companies owned by the central government lack innovation and technological leadership the results suggest a missing link in the role of the central government in promoting co2 emission performance

are regional trading partners natural a central statement of the theory of natural trading partners is that preferential trading with regional trading partners is less likely to be trade diverting and therefore geographically proximate partners are to be considered natural partners for preferential arrangements this paper examines this question empirically the analytical framework involves a general equilibrium model of preferential trade and an econometric model with tight links to this theory this framework is used to implement tests of the natural trading partners hypothesis using u s trade data for the years 1964 95 welfare changes that would result from preferential tariff reductions by the united states against various trading partners are first estimated and correlations with bilateral distance measures with and without controls for income levels are then examined since the argument for natural trading partners is based on the greater likelihood of geographically proximate countries to be more significant trading partner

poverty in eastern europe in the years of crisis 1978 to 1987 poland hungary and yugoslavia eastern europe experienced an economic crisis between 1978 and 1987 declining income led to substantial increases in poverty rates in poland and yugoslavia while poverty in hungary remained at about the same level as before the crisis in all three countries urban poverty increased as the economic condition of state sector workers deteriorated to a much greater extent than that of agricultural and mixed households the increased poverty was entirely explained by declining income because the overall income distribution did not change or in some cases improved

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

analysis of energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors abstract because industrial sectors in china are energy intensive improving energy efficiency and promoting energy savings in these sectors are of great importance for the further sustainable development of china s economy using a proposed meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper analyzes the total factor energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors for the years 2000 2014 from three perspectives namely the technology gap management and scale the results indicate that 1 driven by technological progress energy efficiency during the sample period was greatly improved though the expansion of technology gaps between regions and the decline in scale efficiency represented two significant handicaps 2 the current energy efficiency in china s industrial sectors remains extremely low indicating that there is considerable potential for energy efficiency improvement and energy savings and 3 the sources of energy inefficiency and energy savings potential in china s industrial sectors exhibit spatially distinct characteristics accordingly it is determined that most of china s eastern provinces should focus on improving scale and management efficiency whereas most of its central and western provinces should concentrate on three factors narrowing the regional technology gap improving management efficiency and optimizing the industrial scale

the econometrics of elasticities or the elasticity of econometrics an empirical analysis of the behavior of u s imports fifty years of econometric modeling of u s import demand assumes that trade elasticities are autonomous parameters that both cross price effects and simultaneity biases are absent and that expenditures on domestic and foreign goods can be studied independently of each other to relax these assumptions the paper assembles a simultaneous model explaining bilateral u s import volume and prices spending behaves according to the rotterdam model which by design embodies all the properties of utility maximization and does not treat trade elasticities as autonomous parameters pricing behaves according to the pricing to market hypothesis which recognizes exporters incentives to discriminate across export markets parameter estimation relies on the full information maximum likelihood fiml approach and uses bilateral price data for 1965 1987 according to the evidence treating trade elasticities as autonomous parameters and ignoring the statistical implications of simultaneity and optimization biases the structural estimates and undermines our effectiveness in addressing questions relevant to economic interactions among nations