energy policy issues in developing countries lessons from asean s experience abstract this paper reviews the energy policy responses of the five countries originally composing the association of southeast nations asean indonesia malaysia the philippines singapore and thailand following the first price shocks of 1973 1974 it analyses the implications of the demand and supply management policies adopted especially those related to pricing and diversification it calls attention to the implications of these policies for structural changes in industries including the shift away from energy intensive to labour intensive technologies the role that technological change and technology transfer can play the role of the transport sector in conservation and the scope for oil to coal switching it raises policy and research questions on the allocative efficiency of demand and supply management policies

energy metrics for driving competitiveness of countries energy weakness magnitude gdp per barrel and barrels per capita abstract energy metrics is the development of a whole new theoretical framework for the conception and measurement of energy and economic system performances energy efficiency and productivity improvements with important political economy implications consistent with the best use of all natural and economic resources the purpose of this research is to present some vital energy indicators based on magnitude and scale of energy weakness gdp per barrel of oil that is an indicator of energy productivity and barrels of oil per capita that is an indicator of energy efficiency energy metrics can support the monitoring of energy and economic system performances in order to design effective energy strategy and political economy interventions focused on the competitive advantage increase of countries in modern economies

energy needs for morocco 2030 as obtained from gdp energy and gdp energy intensity correlations abstract we present forecasts of the energy consumption of morocco towards 2030 two models have been developed and their results compared one based on the energy intensity ie and another one on a link with the country urbanization rate urb the ie model allowed to segment energy consumption in four posts while the urb model only in two posts for the sensitivity analysis to economic growth three future gdp evolution scenarios are proposed the retrospective correlations of both models are excellent but their future extrapolations finish in slightly different results through their correlation to electricity consumption peak power forecasts are also presented a forecast of the country energy intensity is commented as the average yearly increase of electricity should still be between 4 9 and 7 1 during 2020 2030 the electric equipment program continuation after 2020 must soon be clarified and avoid the former implementation delays as the white combustibles needs should yearly increase between 6 3 and 7 8 in 2020 2030 electrical equipment programs should also make provisions for the case of deployment of electric cars butane subsidies widen the gap with other fuels and must be removed very soon possible to reduce the growth of its consumption and energy intensity

optimal environmental road pricing abstract an optimal first best road charge should not only be differentiated with respect to factors that affect the direct external environmental and time costs from the road user himself indirect effects such as the fact that others cars will be more polluting when congestion increases should also be taken into account

the contribution of nonhomothetic preferences to trade abstract this paper estimates the economic significance of preference nonhomotheticity in international trade tastes are assumed to be identical but budget shares depend on per capita income a linear expenditure system is estimated for 34 countries over 11 commodity aggregates a counterfactual exercise is conducted to estimate the volume of trade caused by deviations from homotheticity the results indicate that nonhomothetic preferences may account for as much as one quarter of interindustry trade flows

the invisible hand and externalities when economists contemplate the invisible hand at work they generally think of competitive markets but there are some circumstances in which markets are not supposed to operate well i e in which the invisible hand is thought to falter a leading cause of market failure many argue is the presence of significant externalities with such externalities the first welfare theorem does not apply and so competitive equilibrium if it exists at all is not typically pareto optimal in the tradition of a c pigou 1932 the typical response to this lack of optimality is for the government to step in and introduce corrective policy usually in the form of taxes or subsidies there is of course a strong antipigouvian tradition as well specifically proponents of the coase theorem ronald coase 1960 have contended that despite externalities unrestrained bargaining and contracting ought to be sufficient to generate an efficient outcome indeed coase s own celebrated example was a case of externalities thus even if formal markets themselves fail the invisible hand nevertheless succeeds and outside intervention or design is not required recently joseph farrell 1987 argued that even when free bargaining is permitted the laissez faire conclusion inherent in the coase theorem may founder if agents have incomplete information about one another s relevant characteristics i shall show however that the problem that farrell identified is due only to monopoly power and is not peculiar to externalities indeed in this paper i shall take a modified coasian stance i shall attempt to show that in spite of externalities and incomplete information private contractual agreements suffice to achieve efficiency as long as no agent is big enough to have significant market power this conclusion must be qualified however with the proviso that if the externality is nonexcludable i e no one can be excluded from its effects the government must intervene to prevent free riding on the agreements intervention in this case amounts to establishing the right of an agent providing a positive external effect to collect a fee for increasing the effect from all who enjoy it even if they are not parties to a contract with the provider symmetrically providers of a negative externality can collect a fee for diminishing the effect from all their victims in either case however the fee is set endogenously that is it is determined by the contractual arrangements rather than by the government this result for nonexcludable externalities which include pure public goods provides support for a fairly laissez faire stance toward externalities but turns on an important assumption namely that parties always write contracts so as to maximize their social surplus subject to incentive and individual rationality constraints i will return to this assumption in the final section

capital and the theory of productivity measurement the purpose of this paper is twofold to provide a brief survey of recent approaches to the measurement of total factor productivity and to comment on some of the special problems which are associated with capital thus in sections i iv below four approaches to the measurement of total factor productivity are outlined while section v compares and contrasts the approaches in section vi i consider how the various approaches have to be modified when welldefined rental markets for components of the capital stock do not exist the usual case

greenhouse gas emission and renewable energy sources for sustainable development in bangladesh abstract bangladesh is an energy starving country the country will be on one of the fast growing power markets with its population and growing energy demand per person its fast growing urbanization and its socio economic development at present the potential demand of power is 5569 mw and the supply is below 4000 mw the country is dependent on the imported petroleum that is big burden on the economy the per capita emission is only 0 2667 tonne per person still much below the world leading countries 19 8 tonne per person for usa however bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable to climate change effect in the world in this regard renewable energy resources appear to be the one of the most efficient and effective solution for clean and sustainable energy development in bangladesh biomass is the dominating source of energy in bangladesh biomass energy is used in a very traditional way biomass conversion to energy in the form of liquid gaseous and solid pellet or briquette could be a viable option to reduce the pressure on the conventional fossil fuel the geographical location of bangladesh has several advantages for extensive use of grid connected solar electricity and stand alone solar pv system this article presents a review of the potential and utilization of the renewable energy sources in bangladesh

energy consumption and gdp causality relationship in g 7 countries and emerging markets abstract the causality relationship between energy consumption and income is a well studied topic in energy economics this paper studies the time series properties of energy consumption and gdp and reexamines the causality relationship between the two series in the top 10 emerging markets excluding china due to lack of data and g 7 countries we discover bi directional causality in argentina causality running from gdp to energy consumption in italy and korea and from energy consumption to gdp in turkey france germany and japan hence energy conservation may harm economic growth in the last four countries

shipping the good horses out this paper formalizes the alchian allen 1964 theorem within a vertically differentiated goods general equilibrium model in contrast to the existing literature equilibrium prices depends on the transportation cost it shows that the eect of a xed transportation cost regardless of quality tilts the importing region s demand towards the consumption of higher quality goods the model extends the alchian allen theorem by showing that the strength of this eect depends on the importing region s endowment specically if the importing region is endowed with the imported goods of similar quality mix the eect is even stronger we also show that the importing region s market size and preferences matter to the strength of the eect using auction data of australian thoroughbred yearlings we conrm that better horses are shipped out further furthermore consistent with the model s prediction the strength of the alchian allen eect depends on the endowment of the importing regions

a cost benefit analysis of slowing climate change there are many conflicting views regarding the true dimensions of the climate change problem often these viewpoints are based on different estimates of key parameters with little indication as to why parameter estimates vary so much and which ones might be the more reliable the prospects for a co ordinated strategy to tackle climate change appear dim little consensus has emerged for example regarding the costs of abating carbon emissions some take the view that considerable improvements in energy efficiency are available at negative cost by setting minimum efficiency standards for vehicles and domestic appliances e g mills et al 1991 others regard the macroeconomic costs of even small reductions in carbon emissions as substantial manne and richels 1993 in the judgement of other researchers a proportion of carbon emissions arise purely as a result of institutional failings either at a regional level in the subsidies paid to fossil fuel energy producers in the erroneous belief that this promotes economic growth shah and larsen 1994 in failure to deal with air pollution glomsrod et al 1992 and vehicle congestion in urban areas hughes 1994 or at a global level in failing to make appropriate transfers to those countries whose forests contain rich biodiversity which we would wish to preserve pearce 1991

how product innovation in the north may immiserize the south a new look at the ricardian model with a continuum of goods abstract the paper proposes a theoretical model investigating the welfare consequences of technological shocks in a ricardian framework a la dornbush fisher and samuelson 1977 contrary to the existing literature the model incorporates a nonhomothetic demand function whose price and income elasticities are endogenously determined by technology nonhomothetic preferences are modeled as the result of the hierarchical consumption of luxury and necessity goods the nature of technical progress determines the consumption pattern and notably the magnitude of the substitution effect between necessities and luxuries the model is applied to the case of trade between two economies with different development levels it is shown in particular that the developing country can suffer a fall in utility as a result of technical progress in the developed country biased towards luxury goods this configuration depends on the size of the development gap and reflects the fact that southern goods are less attractive the higher the range of goods consumed this result suggests that there is an optimal level of development gap to avoid ldcs being harmed by technical progress in the north

the efficiency paradox bureaucratic and organizational barriers to profitable energy saving investments abstract the paradox of why profitable energy saving investments are not undertaken continues to provoke debate the underlying phenomenon might be called the efficiency paradox because it represents a case in which business firms which are often presumed or taken axiomatically to be economically efficient make decisions that do not maximize profits new data from one of the us environmental protection agency s voluntary pollution prevention programs enables this paradox to be explored statistically the data show that both the level and variation in returns to lighting upgrade investments cannot be explained by standard economic models substantial gains in energy efficiency can be achieved without sacrificing profitability both economic and organizational factors account for some of the variation in observed returns to these investments but the results suggest a need for improved and more comprehensive theories of the investment behavior of firms and other organizations

aggregation and the role of energy in the economy methods for investigating the role of energy in the economy involve aggregating different energy flows a variety of methods have been proposed but none has received universal acceptance this paper shows that the method of aggregation has crucial effects on the results of the analysis we review the principal assumptions and methods for aggregating energy flows the basic heat equivalents approach economic approaches using prices or marginal product for aggregation emergy analysis and thermodynamic approaches such as exergy we argue that economic approaches such as the index or marginal product method are superior because they account for differences in quality among fuels we apply various economic approaches in three case studies in the us economy in the first we account for energy quality to assess changes in the energy surplus delivered by the extraction of fossil fuels from 1954 to 1992 the second and third case studies examine the importance of energy quality in evaluating the relation between energy use and gdp first a quality adjusted index of energy consumption is used in an econometric analysis of the causal relation between energy use and gdp from 1947 to 1996 second we account for energy quality in an econometric analysis of the factors that determine changes in the energy gdp ratio from 1947 to 1996 without adjusting for energy quality the results imply that the energy surplus from petroleum extraction is increasing that changes in gdp drive changes in energy use and that gdp has been decoupled from between aggregate energy use all of these conclusions are reversed when we account for changes in energy quality 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

explaining import quality the role of the income distribution abstract we examine a generalized version of flam and helpman flam h helpman e 1987 vertical product differentiation and north south trade american economic review 77 810 822 in which consumption prices for quality differentiated goods are rising in household income we provide propositions for aggregating this relationship across heterogenous households to map cross country differences in income distributions to cross country differences in import price distributions the theoretical predictions are examined and confirmed using disaggregated data on prices of traded goods and micro data on household income from the luxemburg income study country pairs with more similar income distributions have more similar import price distributions whether similarity is measured by 1st 4th moment statistics population and consumption shares within world income and product price quantiles or income and price dis similarity indices

jevons paradox revisited the evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed

inequality and trade we incorporate demand side considerations in trade in a systematic but straightforward way we do so by focusing on the role of inequality in the determination of trade flows and patterns with nonhomothetic preferences when countries are similar in all respects but asset inequality we find that trade is driven by specialization in consumption n ot production these assumptions allow us to generate some interesting international spillover effects of redistributive policies we also look at the effects of combining inequality and endowment differences on trade flows and see that this has implications for the mystery of the missing trade we then study a model of monopolistic competition and find a novel vshaped relationship between the ratio of inter industry to intra industry trade and a country s inequality finally we look at how international differences in factor endowments affect this relationship between the ratio of inter to intra industry trade and inequality our theory formalizes as well as modifies linder s conjecture about the relationship between intraindustry trade and the extent of similarity between trading partners

a new data set measuring income inequality this article presents a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups income shares comparison of the new data set with existing compilations reveals that the data assembled here represent an improvement in quality and a significant expansion in coverage although differences in the definition of the underlying data might still affect inter temporal and international comparability based on this new data set the authors do not find a systematic link between growth and changes in aggregate inequality they do find a strong positive relationship between growth and reduction of poverty

the rise of mass consumption societies this paper studies mechanisms behind the rise of mass consumption societies the development process depicted follows the flying geese pattern in which a series of industries take off one after another as productivity improves in these industries each consumer good becomes affordable to an increasingly large number of households which constantly expand the range of goods they consume this in turn generates larger markets for consumer goods which leads to further improvement in productivity for such virtuous cycles of productivity gains and expanding markets to occur income distribution should be neither too equal nor too unequal with too much equality the economy stagnates in a poverty trap with too much inequality the development stops prematurely

measuring structural change and energy use decomposition of the us economy from 1997 to 2002 abstract the steadily increasing focus on energy production and consumption has led to growing research attention to patterns of energy use within economies of particular interest has been comparing the driving forces of increasing efficiency and economic structural change input output analysis ioa and decomposition analysis have become critical tools for performing such analyses this study analyzes aggregate energy use in the united states in 1997 and 2002 to discover the causes of changing energy usage and flows results show that rising population and household consumption acted to drive up energy demand but this driving force was offset by considerable structural change within the economy particularly related to a quickly increasing trade deficit in manufacturing goods thus while total energy intensity the ratio of energy use to economic output declined by approximately 12 between 1997 and 2002 changes in the structure of the economy explain this drop more than increased energy efficiency the level of aggregation at which decomposition analyses are run was identified as a crucially sensitive parameter for the determination of structural change and future studies should specifically address the amount of detail necessary to adequately measure changes in economic structure

a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes abstract this paper attempts to delineate a few key insights extracted from theoretical macroeconomic considerations of the rebound issue the goal has been to reduce these thoughts to a clear set of assertions that if true would be useful points of reference in the ongoing discussion despite their non empirical nature

energy consumption and gdp in tunisia cointegration and causality analysis abstract in this paper the johansen cointegration technique is used to examine the causal relationship between per capita energy consumption pcec and per capita gross domestic product pcgdp for tunisia during the 1971 2004 period in order to test for granger causality in the presence of cointegration among the variables a vector error correction model vecm is used instead of a vector autoregressive var model our estimation results indicate that the pcgdp and pcec for tunisia are related by one cointegrating vector and that there is a long run bi directional causal relationship between the two series and a short run unidirectional causality from energy to gross domestic product gdp the source of causation in the long run is found to be the error correction terms in both directions hence an important policy implication resulting from this analysis is that energy can be considered as a limiting factor to gdp growth in tunisia conclusions for tunisia may also be relevant for a number of countries that have to go through a similar development path of increasing pressure on already scarce energy resources

energy consumption and economic growth the case of oil exporting countries this paper examines the causal relationship between the per capita energy consumption and the per capita gdp in a panel of 11 selected oil exporting countries by using panel unit root tests and panel cointegration analysis the results show a unidirectional strong causality from economic growth to energy consumption for the oil exporting countries the findings have practical policy implications for decision makers in the area of macroeconomic planning in most major oil exporting countries government policies keep domestic prices bellow free market level resulting in high levels of domestic energy consumption the results imply that the energy conservation through reforming energy price policies has no damaging repercussions on economic growth for this group of countries

the world distribution of income falling poverty and convergence period we estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individual income distributions for 138 countries between 1970 and 2000 country distributions are constructed by combining national accounts gdp per capita to anchor the mean with survey data to pin down the dispersion poverty rates and head counts are reported for four specific poverty lines rates in 2000 were between one third and one half of what they were in 1970 for all four lines there were between 250 and 500 million fewer poor in 2000 than in 1970 we estimate eight indexes of income inequality implied by our world distribution of income all of them show reductions in global inequality during the 1980s and 1990s

promise and pitfalls in the use of secondary data sets income inequality in oecd countries as a case study this paper examines the role of secondary data sets in empirical economic research taking the field of income distribution as a case study we illustrate problems faced by users of secondary statistics showing how both cross country comparisons and time series analysis can depend sensitively on the choice of data after describing the genealogy of secondary data sets on income inequality we consider the main methodological issues and discuss their implications for comparisons of income inequality across oecd countries and over time the lessons to be drawn for the construction and use of secondary data sets are summarized at the end of the paper

true world income distribution 1988 and 1993 first calculation based on household surveys alone the paper derives world income or expenditure distribution of individuals for two years 1988 and 1993 it is the first paper to calculate world distribution for individuals based entirely on household survey data from 91 countries and adjusted for differences in purchasing power parity between the countries measured by the gini index inequality increased from an already very high 63 in 1988 to 66 in 1993 the increase was driven more by rising differences in mean incomes between the countries than by rising inequalities within countries the most important contributors were rising urban rural differences in china and slow growth of rural incomes in south asia compared to several large developed market economies

income induced expenditure switching abstract this paper shows that an income effect can drive expenditure switching between domestic and imported goods we use a unique latvian scanner level dataset covering the 2008 2009 crisis to document several empirical findings first expenditure switching accounted for one third of the fall in imports and took place within narrowly defined product groups second there was no corresponding within group change in relative prices third consumers substituted from expensive imports to cheaper domestic alternatives these findings motivate us to estimate a model of nonhomothetic consumer demand which explains two thirds of the observed expenditure switching estimated switching is driven by income not changes in relative prices jel e21 f14 f31 f32 i11 l81

factors shaping aggregate energy intensity trend for industry energy intensity versus product mix understanding the mechanisms of change of energy consumption in industry has attracted much attention since the 1973 world oil crisis a popular line of research has been to decompose changes in the aggregate energy intensity of industry to give the relative impacts arising from energy intensity change and product mix change using a decomposition technique many empirical studies covering a large number of countries have been reported the main objective of this paper is to put together the empirical results reported in these studies in a coherent framework and identify possible systematic features of particular interest are the basic trends in this line of research the relative importance of energy intensity change and product mix change possible variations over time and between country groups in the energy impacts of these changes and inconsistencies in findings among studies an overview of the decomposition technique including its strengths weaknesses and role in industrial energy consumption studies is also presented

polices for increasing energy efficiency thirty years of experience in oecd countries energy efficiency improvement was an important phenomenon in the global energy balance over the past 30 years without energy efficiency improvements the oecd nations would have used approximately 49 more energy than was actually consumed as of 1998 this paper first reviews energy intensity trends for the major oecd nations since 1973 considering how much of the overall reduction in e gdp was due to energy efficiency improvement and how much was due to structural change the bulk of the paper examines the energy efficiency policies and programs adopted in japan united states and western europe commenting on their effectiveness and energy savings impacts where possible the paper also reviews the energy efficiency policies and programs adopted in california this experience shows that well designed policies can result in substantial energy savings as demonstrated in the united states where nine specific policies and programs reduced primary energy use in 2002 by approximately 11 substantial energy savings also occurred in japan some european countries and in the electricity sector in california

inequality among world citizens 1820 1992 this paper investigates the distribution of well being among world citizens during the last two centuries the estimates show that inequality of world distribution of income worsened from the beginning of the 19th century to world war ii and after that seems to have stabilized or to have grown more slowly in the early 19th century most inequality was due to differences within countries later it was due to differences between countries inequality in longevity also increased during the 19th century but then was reversed in the second half of the 20th century perhaps mitigating the failure of income inequality to improve in the last decades jel d31 f0 n0 o0

energy efficiency fallacies a postscript a special issue of energy policy 28 2000 was devoted to a collection of papers edited by dr lee schipper these papers were addressed to various aspects of the debate on the role of raising energy efficiency as a contributor to meeting international obligations in the context of global warming the collection included a paper entitled energy efficiency fallacies revisited in which it was argued that economically justified measures to raise the productivity of energy increased the demand for it at the macroeconomic level 1 thus such measures had no part to play in meeting international obligations to reduce fuel consumption for environmental or other reasons it was claimed in that paper that an economic rather than an engineering definition of energy efficiency led to the conclusion that energy efficiency was simply part of general economic efficiency although the point was not pursued the following brief postscript to the paper offers a simple graphical justification for the claim and discusses the implications

review of the energy supply status for sustainable development in the organization of islamic conference abstract this review describes the situation and the varying potential of energy supply utilization of countries in the organization of islamic conference oic this exercise reveals that the increase in energy consumption is associated with economic growth and population expansion the interconnectivity between energy use and national level as well as the connection between energy utilization and gross domestic product gdp which is an indicator of economic development must be explained to determine the significance of national energy utility in these countries therefore alternative energy source utilization is necessary for the provision of an appreciable constituent of imminent energy requirements in sectors that utilize energy alternative energy source utilization is a crucial factor in ensuring the total capacity of energy sources in various growing economies of the world where clean energy is unavailable furthermore some of these countries also possess alternative energy sources such as hydropower solar wind geothermal and biomass this paper provides details on sustainable energy supply developments in oic countries these countries must sustainably develop energy despite their sufficient wealth in crude oil and natural gas the main purpose of this study is to determine economic growth in relation to energy supply to facilitate sustainable development in addition this paper suggests necessary requirements to sustain the energy development processes in oic countries and as well as some stages that must be adopted to enhance development at a sustainable rate

inequality nonhomothetic preferences and trade a gravity approach we construct the first direct classification of goods as luxuries or necessities that is compatible with international trade data we then use it to test an idea that has not been tested directly in the literature countries income distributions are important determinants of their import demand and in particular of the difference in their import demands of luxuries versus necessities we interpret this result with the aid of a model in which preferences are nonhomothetic thus relaxing a long held and standard but empirically dubious assumption in the theory of international trade our model is strongly borne out by the results imports of luxuries increase with the importing country s inequality and imports of necessities decrease with it our calculations imply that if income distribution in the united states became as equal as in canada the united states would import about 9 13 fewer luxury goods and 13 19 more necessities

market power and inefficiency a contracts perspective this paper surveys the economics of market power from the perspective of contract theory various practices that might be of competition policy concern including price discrimination quantity discounts bundling vertical integration and contracts with customers are discussed in terms of constraints on profit maximization chiefly arising from incomplete information and credible commitment problems first the exploitation of pure monopoly power over final consumers or downstream firms is discussed then motives for anticompetitive behavior towards rival firms are considered including avoidance of profit dissipation extraction of rival surplus and exploitation of customer disunity copyright 1996 by oxford university press

strategies for renewable energy applications in the organization of islamic conference oic countries abstract presently the demand of energy is met by fossil fuels combustion of fossil fuels has caused negative impacts to the environment globally the most significant ones are acid precipitation stratospheric ozone depletion and global climate change to overcome it sustainable clean and safe energy policies that would satisfy the energy demand of the 21st century have to be implemented renewable energy resources appear to be the one of the most efficient and effective solutions therefore be key energy sources for the future there is an intimate connection between renewable energy and sustainable development current status of renewable energy applications its implementation strategies and their obstacles for some of the selected islamic countries has been presented several strategies for enhancing of widespread application of renewable energy technology are described the strategies include establishing education and capacity building programs creating renewable energy market and financing mechanism improving appropriate energy policies and establishing database and international collaboration to promote renewable energy technologies

bilateral trade and similarity of income distributions the role of second moments this letter uses an augmented gravity model to revisit the effect of similarity in income distributions on bilateral trade flows we document a robust new empirical regularity while differences in average incomes between two countries increase trade differences in income dispersion reduce it our result sheds new light on the linder hypothesis and stresses the importance of demand based theories of international trade

assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies the non combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature the indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology availability of renewable sources efficiency of energy conversion land requirements water consumption and social impacts the cost of electricity greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source the social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development it was found that wind power is the most sustainable followed by hydropower photovoltaic and then geothermal wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs

market potential and economic development with non homotheticity abstract we investigate the relationship between gdp per capita trade costs demand and income inequality between 1996 and 2011 specifically we apply the aggregate aids based gravity model as developed in fajgelbaum and khandelwal 2016 to a panel of 40 countries to generate a new measure of market potential we then relate this measure of market potential to country level gdp per capita finding a significant positive relationship which performs better than ces based measures of market potential the aids model allows for non homotheticities in demand and the possibility that nations produce goods with higher or lower income elasticities income inequality and gdp per capita of trade partners matter for domestic incomes but interact with these elasticities our paper shows that ldcs that export products with low income elasticities like india and china rank much lower in market potential than in a ces or a translog specification

the greenhouse effect the fallacies in the energy efficiency solution abstract the view that widespread improvements in energy efficiency can by themselves do anything to halt the build up of greenhouse gases around the globe is fundamentally unsound it is based on the same fallacies that underlie the claim that energy savings from improving efficiency can substitute for new energy supply the paper by keepin and kats1 claiming that per tonne of coal not burned improvements in energy efficiency are more cost effective than substituting nuclear for coal fired power is therefore an irrelevancy as far as this debate is concerned reductions is energy intensity of output that are not damaging to the economy are associated with increases not decreases in energy demand at the macroeconomic level even within the boundaries of their own flawed approach their attempt2 to refute the critique of their thesis made by jones3 was little more than misdirected grape shot with no discernable connected thread of argument

a ricardian model with a continuum of goods under nonhomothetic preferences demand complementarities income distribution and north south trade this paper develops a ricardian model of trade in which goods are indexed according to priority and higher indexed goods are consumed only by richer households south north has a comparative advantage in lower higher indexed goods and hence specializes in goods with lower higher income elasticities of demand product cycles and a southern terms of trade deterioration result from faster population growth and uniform productivity growth in south and a global productivity improvement south s domestic income redistribution policy can improve its terms of trade so much that every household in south may be better off at the expense of north

energy sustainability from analysis of sustainable development indicators a case study in taiwan abstract as taiwan has a dense population and only limited natural resources the government began actively establishing a taiwan s sustainable development indicators tsdi system in 2003 which was developed with reference to the pressure state response psr framework to evaluate the progress towards sustainability energy is a very important factor in leading to sustainable development at the national level however there are only two indicators concerning the energy sustainability in the tsdi system this paper summarizes the current status of energy supply energy consumption carbon dioxide co 2 emissions and renewable energy production since the year 2000 the updated information on the tsdi was also addressed and analyzed to imply the progress towards energy sustainability during 2000 2008 finally the weighted sum method was proposed to make an analysis of energy sustainability from taiwan s renewable energy production showing that this country has experienced a significant progress toward energy sustainability in recent years

quantifying quality growth we introduce an instrumental variables approach to estimate the importance of unmeasured quality growth for a set of 66 durable consumer goods our instrument is based on predicting which of these 66 goods will display rapid quality growth using pooled cross relatively sections of households in the 1980 through 1996 u s consumer expenditure surveys we estimate quality engel curves for 66 durable consumer goods based on the extent richer households pay more for a good conditional on purchasing we use the slopes of these curves to predict the rate of quality upgrading just as if households are ascending these quality engel curves over time we find that the average price paid rises faster for goods with steeper quality slopes bls prices likewise increase more quickly for goods with steeper quality slopes suggesting the bls does not fully net out the impact of quality upgrading on prices paid we estimate that quality growth averages about 3 7 per year for our goods with about 60 of this or 2 2 per year showing up as higher inflation rather than higher real growth

energy efficiency fallacies revisited abstract a number of governments including that of the uk subscribe to the belief that a national program devoted to raising energy efficiency throughout the economy provides a costless indeed profitable route to meeting international environmental obligations this is a seductive policy it constitutes the proverbial free lunch not only avoiding politically unpopular measures like outlawing taxing or rationing offending fuels or expanding non carboniferous sources of energy like nuclear power but doing so with economic benefit the author of this contribution came to doubt the validity of this solution when it was offered as a way of mitigating the effect of the opec price hikes of the 1970 maintaining that economically justified improvement in energy efficiency led to higher levels of energy consumption at the economy wide level than in the absence of any efficiency response more fundamentally he argues that there is no case for preferentially singling out energy from among all the resources available to us for efficiency maximization the least damaging policy is to determine targets enact the restrictive measures needed to curb consumption and then leave it to consumers intermediate and final to reallocate all the resources available to them to best effect subject to the new enacted constraints and any others they might be experiencing there is no reason to suppose that it is right for all the economic adjustment following a new resource constraint to take the form of improvements in the productivity of that resource alone as many others have argued any action to impose resource constraint entails an inevitable economic cost in the shape of a reduction in production and consumption possibilities there would be no free lunch in the last few years debate about the validity of these contentions has blossomed especially under the influence of writers on the western side of the atlantic in this contribution the author outlines the original arguments for questioning whether raised efficiency leads to lower consumption reports more recent developments and offers some insights as food for further thought