optimal taxation and finite horizon abstract within the blanchard blanchard o 1985 debt deficits and finite horizons journal of political economy 93 2 223 247 model we determine optimal capital and labor income taxation we discuss the conditions for non zero capital income taxation in the long term we make explicit the conditions for time consistent capital income taxation we clarify the role of finite horizon regarding second best optimal taxation

modelling income effects on long and short haul international travel from japan abstract international travel and tourism are among the most dynamic sectors in the modern economy the phenomenal growth in international tourist arrivals has significantly outpaced global economic growth over the previous five decades with particularly strong growth in the asia and pacific regions among other factors changes in aircraft technology economic prosperity and international air service liberalization in the late 1970s have contributed to the growth in the japanese long haul outbound travel demand the prolonged economic recession in japan in the 1990s has changed japanese outbound tourist preferences for travel to short haul destinations income in the origin country is arguably the most widely used explanatory variable in the extant empirical tourism demand literature this paper examines the dynamic relationship between travel demand and real income in japan using linear and nonlinear models in order to distinguish between travel demand to taiwan and new zealand which are two short and long haul markets for japan the empirical findings that new zealand has a higher income elasticity of demand as compared with taiwan should be useful for tourism authorities in developing better informed policies and to manage tourism resources efficiently in destination marketing

cointegration analysis of german and british tourism demand for greece abstract germany and great britain are traditionally two of the most important sources of tourism for greece the purpose of this paper is to investigate changes in the long run demand for tourism to greece by these two countries in order to explain the demand for tourism we are using a number of leading macroeconomic variables including income in origin countries germany and great britain tourism prices in greece and transportation cost and exchanges rates between the three countries annual data from the three countries covering the period from 1960 to 2000 are employed augmented dickey fuller test for unit root is examined in the univariate framework and johansen s maximum likelihood procedure is used to test the cointegration method and to estimate the number of cointegrating vectors of var model error correction models are estimated to explain german and british demand for tourism to greece

oil depletion what does this mean for scottish tourism over the next 10 years scottish tourism is expected to grow by 50 one of the keys to that growth is transport which is a sector that is dependent upon oil this paper considers oil and the global economy and its relationship to scottish tourism consideration is given to the key variables such as oil forecasts security of supply cost of production world demand alternative forms of energy including renewables and nuclear power the combination of these facts means that high oil prices are here to stay two scenarios are constructed called energy inflation and paying for climate change these were developed using a triangulation of methods including the use of systems thinking models to construct the scenarios to computable general equilibrium modelling to analyse the impact of oil and energy price rises on scottish tourism the energy inflation scenario presumes mass belief in the plenitude of available oil reserves and the failure to respond quickly enough to alter demand this triggers a sudden and prolonged period of economic shocks political instability and environmental disasters the paying for climate change scenario assumes rising energy prices combined with conservation measures such as carbon taxes both scenarios raise a number of policy issues for the future including oil and fossil fuels being the main sources of energy as there is no real alternative renewables and nuclear power will continue to grow and countries will try to reduce further their reliance on oil rising oil prices are also noted as a positive feature driving innovation and new technologies which will become more economic as oil prices rise for scottish tourism the impact of rising oil prices could mean a bumpy ride with carbon taxes more wind farms and the possible end of the low cost carrier

oil vulnerability index of oil importing countries abstract this paper assesses the relative oil vulnerability of 26 net oil importing countries for the year 2004 on the basis of various indicators the ratio of value of oil imports to gross domestic product gdp oil consumption per unit of gdp gdp per capita and oil share in total energy supply ratio of domestic reserves to oil consumption exposure to geopolitical oil market concentration risks as measured by net oil import dependence diversification of supply sources political risk in oil supplying countries and market liquidity the approach using the principal component technique has been adopted to combine these individual indicators into a composite index of oil vulnerability such an index captures the relative sensitivity of various economies towards developments of the international oil market with a higher index indicating higher vulnerability the results show that there are considerable differences in the values of individual indicators of oil vulnerability and overall oil vulnerability index among the countries both inter and intraregional

output based allocations and revenue recycling implications for the new zealand emissions trading scheme abstract the new zealand emissions trading scheme nz ets is more comprehensive in its coverage of emissions than schemes introduced or proposed to date in any other country in that it includes agricultural greenhouse gases which account for half of new zealand s total emissions but motivated by concerns for the international competitiveness of emissions intensive trade exposed industrial and agricultural activities current legislation provides for substantial ongoing free allocations to such activities linked to their output here we use a computable general equilibrium model to analyse the impacts of output based allocation given the possibility of recycling net revenues to reduce prior distorting taxes unlike previous modelling studies of alternative nz ets designs we allow for a more realistic modelling both of capital and labour supply we find that as suggested by theoretical results interactions between the ets and existing taxes are important given any level of output based allocation the negative macroeconomic impacts can be reduced by recycling net revenues as efficiently as possible less obviously we find that there may be an optimal non zero level of output based allocation this optimal level increases as the carbon price and or factor supply elasticities increase but decreases if revenues are recycled with greater efficiency

analysis of attendees expenditure patterns to recurring annual events examining the joint effects of repeat attendance and travel distance abstract this study examines the changes in expenditure patterns of attendees to recurring annual events with specific emphasis on the effects of repeat attendance and travel distance this study utilizes a unique dataset accumulated from six consecutive years at a recurring annual event hosted in miami united states by using the almost ideal demand system aids we estimate price elasticities and cross price elasticities among tourist expenditure categories while jointly examining the effects from the trip characteristics of repeat attendance and travel distance from the econometric analysis we find expenditure own price and cross price elasticities that conform to the literature and confirm the strong inter relationship among the respective categories of the overall travel budget in addition our results confirm a significant difference in expenditure patterns between first time and repeat attendees as well as between long haul and short haul travelers

impacts of exchange rate volatility and international oil price shock on china s regional economy a dynamic cge analysis abstract a multi regional dynamic computable general equilibrium model is constructed in this paper to explore the macroeconomic effects of international oil price shocks and rmb exchange rate changes on china the results show that 1 in terms of regional development differences the decrease in international oil prices and depreciation of rmb are both conducive to economic growth although the impact of rmb devaluation is more obvious increases in international oil prices will further widen the output gap between the rich and the poor regions whereas oil price decreases and rmb devaluation will narrow the regional development differences 2 in terms of employment the depreciation of the exchange rate and the decline in international oil prices will help increase the employment rate in most regions but oil price hikes will be most beneficial for improving oil industry employment in the northeast 3 the impact of oil price volatility is asymmetric compared with rising oil prices falling oil prices have significantly greater effects on gdp industrial output employment and other aspects furthermore the impacts of exchange rate fluctuations and oil price changes on the regional economy exhibit a time lag

conscientious vs ambivalent consumers do concerns about energy availability and climate change influence consumer behaviour abstract energy availability and climate change are interrelated concerns with economic components they need to be addressed by policy makers and they require changes in energy consumption this study examines whether concerns about energy availability and climate change influence consumer behaviour policy perceptions and beliefs about future energy consumption this question is investigated by analysing data from the eurobarometer 75 4 a comprehensive survey of citizens from all countries of the european union that was conducted in june 2011 n 26 840 the regression results show that people concerned about climate change were significantly more likely to take action to mitigate climate change and to be more favourably disposed towards energy policies and future changes in energy consumption than people who were not concerned about climate change on the other hand people who were concerned about energy availability undertook fewer actions and neither supported energy policies nor believed in future changes in energy consumption this surprising finding raises questions regarding the adequate communication of energy availability and policies to the public in the european union

a general equilibrium analysis of climate change impacts on tourism this paper studies the economic implications of climate change induced variations in tourism demand using a world cge model the model is first re calibrated at some future years obtaining hypothetical benchmark equilibria which are subsequently perturbed by shocks simulating the effects of climate change we portray the impact of climate change on tourism by means of two sets of shocks occurring simultaneously the first set of shocks translate predicted variations in tourist flows into changes of consumption preferences for domestically produced goods the second set reallocate income across world regions simulating the effect of higher or lower tourists expenditure our analysis highlights that variations in tourist flows will affect regional economies in a way that is directly related to the sign and magnitude of flow variations at a global scale climate change will ultimately lead to a welfare loss unevenly spread across regions 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

optimal fiscal policy in a business cycle model this paper develops the quantitative implications of optimal fiscal policy in a business cycle model in a stationary equilibrium the ex ante tax rate on capital income is approximately zero there is an equivalence class of ex post capital income tax rates and bond policies that support a given allocation within this class the optimal ex post capital tax rates can range from close to independently and identically distributed to close to a random walk the tax rate on labor income fluctuates very little and inherits the persistence properties of the exogenous shocks thus there is no presumption that optimal labor tax rates follow a random walk most of the welfare gains realized by switching from a tax system like that of the united states to the ramsey system come from an initial period of high taxation on capital income

optimal taxation in life cycle economies abstract we use a very standard life cycle growth model in which individuals have a labor leisure choice in each period of their lives to prove that an optimizing government will almost always find it optimal to tax or subsidize interest income the intuition for our result is straightforward in a life cycle model the individual s optimal consumption work plan is almost never constant and an optimizing government almost always taxes consumption goods and labor earnings at different rates over an individual s lifetime one way to achieve this goal is to use capital and labor income taxes that vary with age if tax rates cannot be conditioned on age a nonzero tax on capital income is also optimal as it can imperfectly mimic age conditioned consumption and labor income tax rates journal of economic literature classification numbers e62 h21

household biogas development in rural china on policy support and other macro sustainable conditions abstract as a fuel rural biogas is a promising renewable energy source policy support is a key initial impetus for industry development this study explores household biogas development in rural china based on policy support found in literature relevant policies which mainly include directive and guiding policies economic inspiring policies research policies market policies and other constructive policies are gradually issued moreover the national people s congress has enacted five relevant laws including the agricultural law renewable energy law animal husbandry law energy conservation law and the act on the development of circular economy the energy law is currently under revision relational rules and regulations have also been formed in response to the national policies and laws which have already produced significant effects the development of rural household biogas in china is growing steadily and the technology standard projects have been established the number of household biogas digesters and biogas annual output in 2010 was double of that in 2005 the offered financial incentive increased from 47 million dollars in 2002 to 760 million dollars in 2011 policy supports play an important role in rural biogas development and thus additional national policy supports are necessary in the fields of scientific research technological development and biogas use model

redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model abstract we investigate the redistributive potential of capital taxation in an intertemporal maximizing model of capital formation first even unanticipated redistributive capital taxation is severely limited in its effectiveness since it depresses wages second under any convergent redistributive tax policy which maximizes a paretian social objective the capital income tax will converge to zero independent of the factor supply elasticities these results are independent of workers holdings of capital

global oil gas depletion an overview abstract the world s production of conventional hydrocarbons will soon decline hydrocarbon shortages are inevitable unless radical changes occur in demand or in the supply of non conventional hydrocarbons the details are as follows global conventional oil supply is currently at political risk this is because the sum of conventional oil production from all countries in the world except the five main middle east suppliers is near the maximum set by physical resource limits should middle east suppliers decide to substantially curtail supply the shortfall cannot be replaced by conventional oil from other sources world conventional oil supply will soon be at physical risk the middle east countries have only little spare operational capacity and this will be increasingly called upon as oil production declines elsewhere large investments in middle east production if they occur could raise output but only to a limited extent a partial exception is iraq but even here there would be significant delays before prospects are confirmed and infrastructure is in place if demand is maintained and if large investments in middle east capacity are not made the world will face the prospect of oil shortages in the near term even with large investments resource limits will force middle east production to decline fairly soon and hence also global conventional oil production the date of this resource limited global peak depends on the size of middle east reserves which are poorly known and unreliably reported best estimates put the physical peak of global conventional oil production between 5 and 10 years from now the world contains large quantities of non conventional oil and various oil substitutes but the rapidity of the decline in the production of conventional oil makes it probable that these non conventional sources cannot come on stream fast enough to fully compensate the result will be a sustained global oil shortage for conventional gas the world s original endowment is probably about the same in energy terms as its endowment of conventional oil since less gas has been used so far compared to oil the world will turn increasingly to gas as oil declines but the global peak in conventional gas production is already in sight in perhaps 20 years and hence the global peak of all hydrocarbons oil plus gas is likely to be in about 10 or so years

oil prices tourism income and economic growth a structural var approach for european mediterranean countries abstract in this study a structural var model is employed to investigate the relationship among oil price shocks tourism variables and economic indicators in four european mediterranean countries in contrast with the current tourism literature we distinguish between three oil price shocks namely supply side aggregate demand and oil specific demand shocks overall our results indicate that oil specific demand shocks contemporaneously affect inflation and the tourism sector equity index whereas these shocks do not seem to have any lagged effects by contrast aggregate demand oil price shocks exercise a lagged effect either directly or indirectly to tourism generated income and economic growth the paper does not provide any evidence that supply side shocks trigger any responses from the remaining variables results are important for tourism agents and policy makers should they need to create hedging strategies against future oil price movements or plan for economic policy developments

the impact of oil price shocks evidence from the industries of six oecd countries most of the studies about the macroeconomic consequences of oil price shocks have been focused on us aggregate data in contrast to these studies this paper empirically assesses the dynamic effect of oil price shocks on the output of the main manufacturing industries in six oecd countries the pattern of responses to an oil price shock by industrial output is diverse across the four european monetary union emu countries under consideration france germany italy and spain but broadly similar in the uk and the us moreover evidence on cross industry heterogeneity of oil shock effects within the emu countries is also reported

implications of a long term increase in oil prices for tourism it is expected that global oil prices will increase in the future assessing the overall economic impacts on tourism is difficult as oil price rises will be concomitant with global changes in other commodity prices exchange rates and incomes a general equilibrium perspective is therefore presented in this paper the model couples a global general equilibrium model with a purpose built cge model of new zealand which focuses on describing tourism supply and demand in some detail the results indicate a decrease in real gross national disposable income of 1 7 for a doubling of oil price and a 9 reduction in the real value of tourism exports as a result of segment specific price increases and differing income and exchange rate effects and elasticities the reduction in demand for tourism in new zealand by 18 segments differs substantially the greatest reduction in demand is observed for tourists from the united kingdom

impacts of energy subsidy reform on the malaysian economy and transportation sector malaysia is paying a high level of subsidies on the consumption of energy about 5 of its gdp therefore reforming the energy subsidies as planned by the government will have a significant impact on household welfare and energy intensive sectors such as the transport sector this study employs a computable general equilibrium cge model to highlight the transmission channels through which the removal of energy subsidies affects the domestic economy the findings show that the shock increases real gdp and real investment while decreasing malaysian total exports and imports the removal of energy subsidies also decreases the aggregate energy demand and consequently decreases the level of carbon emissions in the malaysian economy in addition households experience significant falls in their consumption and welfare the transport sector is significantly influenced through an increase in production costs due to an increase in the prices of intermediate inputs the total output and total exports of the whole transport sector decrease while its imports increase in addition the use of all kinds of transport by households decreases significantly the malaysian energy subsidy reform leads to an initial decrease in co2 emissions and demand for electricity gas and petroleum products in the entire transport sector

optimal taxation of capital income in general equilibrium with infinite lives this paper analyzes the optimal tax on capital income in general equilibrium models of the second best agents have infinite lives and utility functions which are extensions from the koopmans form the population is heterogeneous the important property of the models is the equality between the social and the private discount rates in the long run i find that the optimal tax rate is zero in the long run for a special case of additively separable utility functions i then determine the tax rates along the dynamic path and conditions that are sufficient for the local stability of the steady state

slow oil shocks and the weakening of the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract many papers have been documenting and analysing the asymmetry and the weakening of the oil price macroeconomy relationship as off the early eighties while there seems to be a consensus about the factors causing the asymmetry namely adjustment costs which offset the benefits of low energy prices the debate about the weakening of the relationship is not over yet moreover the alternative oil price specifications which have been proposed by mork 1989 lee et al 1995 and hamilton 1996 to restore the stability of the relationship fail to granger cause output or unemployment in post 1980 data by using the concept of accelerations of the oil price we show that the weakening of this relationship corresponds to the appearance of slow oil price increases which have less impact on the economy when filtering out these slow oil price variations from the sample we manage to rehabilitate the causality running from the oil price to the macroeconomy and show that far from weakening the oil price accelerations gdp relationship has even been growing stronger since the early eighties

developing indicators for managing tourism in the face of peak oil abstract in its present form tourism is dependent on the availability of oil and is comparatively oil intensive while forecasts for future tourism growth are optimistic there is also increasing evidence about the imminence of a peak in oil production and the economic effects that this would cause globally and on a destination level it will be necessary to consider how a transition towards fossil fuel free economies might look like for tourism it is therefore timely and prudent for the tourism sector to consider its current oil requirements and derive indicators for monitoring its oil consumption in particular destinations need indicators of the amount of oil consumed by the various markets from which they receive visitors new zealand is used as an example for assessing the oil intensity of its top 10 countries of origin based on the 10 indicators overall the least exposed markets for new zealand with respect to oil are australia china singapore and taiwan although a more detailed analysis would be required for markets that display very heterogeneous travel behaviour among the indicators eco efficiency is particularly important as it allows comparison of resource inputs with economic outputs

the welfare cost of factor taxation in a perfect foresight model this paper examines the marginal efficiency cost of various factor taxes in a dynamic general equilibrium model the au thor solves for the excess burden of anticipated and unanticipated t emporary and permanent tax policies using a range of estimates for taste and technology parameters he finds excess burdens larger than those indicated by previous studies that use static models these exc ess burdens are sensitive to parameter values and timing however th e rankings of alternative tax policies turn out to be insensitive to structural parameter values copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

tourism s climate mitigation dilemma flying between rich and poor countries stronger demand for medium to long haul air transport is the main driver of the tourism industry s increasing greenhouse gas ghg emissions causing the current development of global tourism to be environmentally unsustainable efficiency improvements and biofuel usage are unlikely to maintain pace with the projected growth in transport volume therefore curbing the growing demand for air transport has been suggested as another option for the sustainable development of tourism however the political and industry discourse concerning the restriction of air transport tends to label such a restriction as unethical as such limits would impair the development that tourism brings to poor countries this paper investigates the possible impacts of air travel restrictions on the least developed countries ldcs and non ldcs by examining global tourism the impacts on ldcs are found to be neutral on average with both losses and gains in tourist arrivals the extent of any losses does not appear to be beyond the scope of possible economic compensation

demand elasticity estimates for new zealand tourism demand elasticities for new zealand tourism are estimated for 16 different international visitor segments segments are differentiated by origin purpose of visit and travel style elasticities for both international visitor arrivals and on the ground expenditure per arrival are estimated for each segment using time series data in general on the ground consumption per arrival is more price sensitive than number of arrivals and asian market segments are found to be more price sensitive both in terms of arrivals and on the ground expenditure compared to international visitors from other regions an application of the results is presented giving the total effect of exchange rate changes on expenditure by international visitors in new zealand and management implications are discussed

vacation behaviour under high travel cost conditions a stated preference of revealed preference approach abstract this paper investigates vacation behaviour under high travel cost conditions we estimate discrete portfolio vacation choice models on data obtained in a novel free format stated preference of revealed preference sp off rp choice experiment the substantive contribution of this paper is that we develop new insights into vacation behaviour under high travel cost conditions we find that vacationers exhibit considerable diminishing marginal disutility of vacation travel costs furthermore we have identified significant interactions effects across the following vacation choice dimensions destination length of stay accommodation type and mode of transport therefore a substantial increase in travel costs is likely to have marked consequences for the tourism industry reaching beyond the transportation side of tourism methodological contributions of this paper are twofold 1 it proposes a choice experiment in which sp alternatives are constructed by pivoting of late consideration set alternatives rather than only of a chosen alternative and 2 it proposes and illustrates the use of a generalization of a recently proposed sp off rp estimation procedure