renewable and non renewable energy growth emissions linkages review of emerging trends with policy implications abstract this study is an extension of the previous studies which focused mainly on energy growth nexus but fails to consider the carbon emission implication of this relationship the methodology of the study permits a comprehensive and comparative analysis of existing studies on renewable and non renewable energy growth emission nexus in order to draw some implications for policy and research the survey revealed the extent of the spread of studies across issues time and geographical space countries and regions it also disclosed the range of methodological approaches adopted to analyse the issues over time and the frequency of their use it unravelled the varied findings across countries and regions given the diverse methods employed and specific features of the economies analysed arising from the literature survey this study highlights the existing gaps in the literature and new direction for policy and research the general policy implication of the findings of this study is that pollution effect of energy growth nexus should be taken into consideration in policy formulation for sustainable development further the design of regional and global policies should recognise the fact that energy growth emission linkages varied across countries even in the same region some new direction for research on renewable and non renewable energy growth emission linkages pointed out in this survey includes the following future research on energy growth nexus without considering the pollution impact may not contribute so much to the literature studies should investigate the substitution complementary effects of the energy varieties on growth emission nexus while new methodological contributions are imperative

why do some emerging economies proactively accelerate the adoption of renewable energy abstract this article analyses the determinants of renewable energy consumption in a panel of six major emerging economies namely brazil china india indonesia philippines and turkey that are proactively accelerating the adoption of renewable energy using fully modified ordinary least square fmols dynamic ordinary least square dols and granger causality methods this paper finds that in the long run renewable energy consumption is significantly determined by income and pollutant emission in brazil china india and indonesia while mainly by income in philippines and turkey causal link between renewable energy and income and between renewable energy and pollutant emission are found to be bidirectional in the short run these results suggest that the appropriateness of the efforts undertaken by emerging countries to reduce the carbon intensity by increasing the energy efficiency and substantially increasing the share of renewable in the overall energy mix

is the energy led growth hypothesis valid new evidence from a sample of 85 countries abstract the energy growth literature contains a large number of discussions on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth the central debate focuses on whether energy consumption contributes or not to economic growth since it has direct implications for the formulation of strategic policies nevertheless current studies cannot provide a conclusive suggestion due to mixed causality results this inconclusive evidence is potentially attributed to model specifications and the stage of economic development of the countries under investigation hence this study attempts to empirically re investigate the validity of the energy led growth hypothesis using a different model specification and different stages of economic development for 85 selected countries around the globe overall although the causality results are mixed among countries we do find a systematic pattern in particular granger causality models with three and four variables are more likely to support the hypothesis compared to their counterparts that contain only two variables in addition both developed and developing countries are more likely to support the energy led growth hypothesis compared to the less developed or low income countries therefore causality results are very sensitive to the choice of the model specification along with the stages of economic development finally energy conservation policies should only focus on low income countries as these policies may not retard the process of economic growth

politicians outside earnings and electoral competition this paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians outside earnings in our framework politicians face a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings the main hypothesis is that the amount of time spent on outside work is negatively related to the degree of electoral competition we test this hypothesis using a new dataset on outside earnings of members of the german federal assembly and find that politicians facing low competition have substantially higher outside earnings

coal consumption and economic growth evidence from a panel of oecd countries this study examines the relationship between coal consumption and economic growth for 25 oecd countries within a multivariate panel framework over period 1980 2005 the larsson et al 2001 panel cointegration test indicates there is a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp coal consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force the respective coefficients for real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force are positive and statistically significant whereas the coefficient for coal consumption is negative and statistically significant the results of the panel vector error correction model reveal bidirectional causality between coal consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run however the bidirectional causality in the short run is negative

disaggregate energy consumption employment and income in turkey the purpose of this paper is to contribute to literature on energy consumption and economic growth relationship by examining how much of the variance in national income growth can be explained by the growth of different sources of energy consumption and employment in turkey we use the recently developed generalized forecast error variance decomposition technique of koop et al j econom 74 1996 119 and pesaran and shin econ lett 58 1998 17 to determine the information content of the growth rate of energy consumption waste seems to have the largest initial impact followed by oil however over a 3 year horizon lignite appears to explain the largest forecast error variance of gdp the total energy consumption explains 21 of forecast error variance of gdp energy consumption appears to be almost as important as employment in turkey therefore policy makers may be interested in identifying the energy dependencies of economic growth in allocating the energy investment budget

co2 emissions non renewable and renewable electricity production economic growth and international trade in italy abstract this paper applies the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration to investigate the dynamic causal relationships between co2 emissions per capita real gdp per capita per capita non renewable electricity production and per capita renewable electricity production and international trade in the case of italy from 1960 to 2011 we find cointegration among these variables in the presence of possible structural breaks and we overcome the problem of multicollinearity in the research design the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is validated analytically because the estimated pollution model indicates that economic growth leads to less pollution over time per capita renewable electricity production reduces the level of co2 emissions per capita in the short run and in the long run whereas international trade only impacts positively upon carbon dioxide emissions per capita in the long run international trade granger causes co2 emissions per capita and non renewable electricity production per capita moreover the results depict the existence of the long run unidirectional granger causality relation running from output per capita to renewable electricity production per capita and from non renewable electricity production per capita to renewable electricity production per capita the findings indicate that renewable electricity production is a key solution in reducing pollutant emissions over time this result should be of concern to policy makers

an economic model of representative democracy this paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office the approach has a number of attractive features first it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by as well as of the people second the model is analytically tractable being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally third it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy

party polarization in legislatures with office motivated candidates we develop a theory of legislative competition in which voters care about local candidate valence and national party positions that are determined by the parties median legislators as long as election outcomes are sufficiently predictable the only stable equilibria exhibit policy divergence between the parties if the degree of uncertainty about election outcomes decreases and if voters place less weight on local candidates valence polarization between the parties increases furthermore a systematic electoral shock makes the party favored by the shock more moderate while the disadvantaged party becomes more extreme finally we examine data on state elections and the ideological positions of state legislatures and find patterns that are consistent with key predictions of our model

coal consumption and economic growth in china abstract the aim of this paper is to re examine the relationship between coal consumption and real gdp of china with the use of panel data this paper applies modern panel data techniques to help shed light on the importance of the heterogeneity among different regions within china empirical analyses are conducted for the full panel as well as three subgroups of the panel the empirical results show that coal consumption and gdp are both i 1 and cointegrated in all regional groupings heterogeneity is found in the gdp equation of the full panel the regional causality tests reveal that the coal consumption gdp relationship is bidirectional in the coastal and central regions whereas causality is unidirectional from gdp to coal consumption in the western region thus energy conservation measures will not adversely affect the economic growth of the western region but such measures will likely encumber the economy of the coastal and central regions where most of the coal intensive industries are concentrated

disaggregated energy consumption and gdp in taiwan a threshold co integration analysis abstract energy consumption growth is much higher than economic growth for taiwan in recent years worsening its energy efficiency this paper provides a solid explanation by examining the equilibrium relationship between gdp and disaggregated energy consumption under a non linear framework the threshold co integration test developed with asymmetric dynamic adjusting processes proposed by hansen and seo hansen b e seo b 2002 testing for two regime threshold cointegration in vector error correction models journal of econometrics 110 293 318 is applied non linear co integrations between gdp and disaggregated energy consumptions are confirmed except for oil consumption the two regime vector error correction models vecm show that the adjustment process of energy consumption toward equilibrium is highly persistent when an appropriately threshold is reached there is mean reverting behavior when the threshold is reached making aggregate and disaggregated energy consumptions grow faster than gdp in taiwan

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

effectiveness of electoral systems for reducing government corruption a game theoretic analysis abstract a theoretical model is developed for predicting the relative effectiveness of different electoral systems for reducing government corruption we consider voting games in which parties with known corruption levels and known positions on a major policy question compete for legislative seats we find that approval voting and proportional representation are fully effective in the sense that all equilibria exclude corrupt parties from legislative seats plurality voting is partly effective in the sense that there always exist some equilibria that exclude corrupt parties borda voting is ineffective because for some political situations no equilibria can guarantee the exclusion of corrupt parties journal of economic literature classification number d72

energy use exports imports and gdp new evidence from the oecd countries this paper aims to investigate the relationship between energy use gdp energy use exports trade and energy use imports on aggregate level in the oecd countries while the energy use growth nexus is widely examined in the literature studies on the energy use trade nexus are very scarce thus this study also serves to fill this gap by presenting a new research on the oecd countries we employ the panel cointegration technique and use the granger representation theorem to examine the presence of long run relationship and the causality between pairs of variables to investigate the presence of causality several tests developed by canning and pedroni 2008 are used we find that the pairs of energy use gdp energy use exports and energy use imports are cointegrated and there is two way granger causality between each pairs we also estimate the long run elasticities by employing panel dynamic ordinary least squares the results suggest that the sign of long run elasticity is positive for all pairs particularly 1 increase in gdp export and import causes almost 0 32 0 21 and 0 16 increase in energy use respectively

why a clean politician supports dirty politics a game theoretical explanation for the persistence of political corruption abstract using a theoretical model of repeated political competition among two career politicians i study the incentives of both the corrupt and clean politicians not to adopt a fully effective reform targeting political corruption in the setup i study each politician can credibly adopt the reform as part of his policy platform in the elections yet when the level of political corruption is high neither politician does so in a nash equilibrium intuitively political corruption changes the zero sum nature of political competition the reform eliminates the illegal rents of the corrupt candidate and the competitive advantage of the clean candidate

a structural model of government formation in this paper we estimate a bargaining model of government formation in parliamentary democracies we use the estimated structural model to conduct constitutional experiments aimed at evaluating the impact of institutional features of the political environment on the duration of the government formation process the type of coalitions that form and their relative stability

a dynamic duverger s law electoral systems promote strategic voting and affect party systems duverger les partis politiques 1951 proposed that plurality rule leads to bi partyism and proportional representation leads to multi partyism we show that in a dynamic setting these static effects also lead to a higher option value for existing minor parties under plurality rule so their incentive to exit the party system is mitigated by their future benefits from continued participation the predictions of our model are consistent with multiple cross sectional predictions on the comparative number of parties under plurality rule and proportional representation in particular there could be more parties under plurality rule than under proportional representation at any point in time however our model makes a unique time series prediction the number of parties under plurality rule should be less variable than under proportional representation we provide extensive empirical evidence in support of these results

environmental degradation economic growth and energy consumption evidence of the environmental kuznets curve in malaysia this paper tests for the short and long run relationship between economic growth carbon dioxide co2 emissions and energy consumption using the environmental kuznets curve ekc by employing both the aggregated and disaggregated energy consumption data in malaysia for the period 1980 2009 the autoregressive distributed lag ardl methodology and johansen juselius maximum likelihood approach were used to test the cointegration relationship and the granger causality test based on the vector error correction model vecm to test for causality the study does not support an inverted u shaped relationship ekc when aggregated energy consumption data was used when data was disaggregated based on different energy sources such as oil coal gas and electricity the study does show evidences of the ekc hypothesis the long run granger causality test shows that there is bi directional causality between economic growth and co2 emissions with coal gas electricity and oil consumption this suggests that decreasing energy consumption such as coal gas electricity and oil appears to be an effective way to control co2 emissions but simultaneously will hinder economic growth thus suitable policies related to the efficient consumption of energy resources and consumption of renewable sources are required

incentives to cultivate favored minorities under alternative electoral systems a simple model is used to compare under different electoral systems the incentives for candidates to create inequalities among otherwise homogeneous voters by making campaign promises that favor small groups rather than appealing equally to all voters in this game model each candidate generates offers for voters independently out of a distribution that is chosen by the candidate subject only to the constraints that offers must be nonnegative and have mean 1 symmetric equilibria with sincere voting are analyzed for two candidate elections and for multicandidate elections under rank scoring rules approval voting and single transferable vote voting rules that can guarantee representation for minorities in multiseat elections generate in this model the most severely unequal campaign promises

coal consumption and industrial production nexus in usa cointegration with two unknown structural breaks and causality approaches abstract the paper investigates the causality relationships among industrial production index coal consumption and employment in industrial sector for the period of 1973 1 2011 10 in usa after noticing that there are breaks in the regression model the hatemi j test for cointegration is employed to the cases that take into account two possible regime shifts it is concluded that there is a long run relationship between industrial production and industrial coal consumption with the breaks at 1983 4 and 1998 4 we found a negative relationship between coal consumption and industrial production for the period of 1973 1 1983 4 and positive relationship for 1983 5 1998 4 period for the last period that covers 1983 5 2011 10 the cointegration relationship turned to negative in addition the results show that causal relationship between coal consumption and industrial production changes over time

the size and scope of government comparative politics with rational politicians we try to demonstrate how economists may engage in research on comparative politics relating the size and composition of government spending to the political system a downsian model of electoral competition and forward looking voting indicates that majoritarian as opposed to proportional elections increase competition between parties by focusing it into some key marginal districts this leads to less public goods less rents for politicians more redistribution and larger government a model of legislative bargaining and backward looking voting indicates that presidential as opposed to parliamentary regimes increase competition between both politicians and voters this leads to less public goods less rents for politicians less redistribution and smaller government we confront these predictions with cross country data from around 1990 controlling for economic and social determinants of government spending we nd strong and robust support for the prediction that the size of government is smaller under presidential regimes and weaker support for the prediction that majoritarian elections are associated with less public goods

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from china at both aggregated and disaggregated levels using a neo classical aggregate production model where capital labor and energy are treated as separate inputs this paper tests for the existence and direction of causality between output growth and energy use in china at both aggregated total energy and disaggregated levels as coal oil and electricity consumption using the johansen cointegration technique the empirical findings indicate that there exists long run cointegration among output labor capital and energy use in china at both aggregated and all three disaggregated levels then using a vec specification the short run dynamics of the interested variables are tested indicating that there exists granger causality running from electricity and oil consumption to gdp but does not exist granger causality running from coal and total energy consumption to gdp on the other hand short run granger causality exists from gdp to total energy coal and oil consumption but does not exist from gdp to electricity consumption we thus propose policy suggestions to solve the energy and sustainable development dilemma in china as enhancing energy supply security and guaranteeing energy supply especially in the short run to provide adequate electric power supply and set up national strategic oil reserve enhancing energy efficiency to save energy diversifying energy sources energetically exploiting renewable energy and drawing out corresponding policies and measures and finally in the long run transforming development pattern and cut reliance on resource and energy dependent industries

is the share of renewable energy sources determining the co2 kwh and income relation in electricity generation abstract the present study examines the long and short run causality of the share of renewable energy sources res in the relation between carbon dioxide emissions of electricity generation co2 kw h and real income gdp for 20 european countries over 1991 2010 and in sub period 2001 2010 we used cointegration analysis and the innovative accounting approach that includes forecast error variance decomposition and impulse response functions irfs our results provide supportive evidence for the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc and suggest that renewable energy can be a potential determining driver of the difference in the emissions income relations across european countries and a significant way of reducing co2 kw h moreover in this particular 2001 2010 subperiod the share of renewable energy in electricity output will have significant influence on the shape of the ekc which will shift downward as res increases suggesting lower environmental costs of development in these sub period 2001 2010 all the results show a common pattern expected of co2 emissions in electricity generation after the european directive 2001 77 ec and reveal the importance of the interactive impact of renewable energy sources and gdp to reduce the co2 emissions in electricity generation

the economic dynamics of antibiotic efficacy under open access abstract we analyze the exploitation of an antibiotic in a market subject to open access on the part of antibiotic producers to the common pool of antibiotic efficacy while the market equilibrium depends only on current levels of antibiotic efficacy and infection of the epidemiological system the social optimum accounts for the dynamic externalities which relate those levels to the intertemporal use being made of the antibiotic we show that depending on the parameters of the model in particular the cost of production and the improvement in the recovery rate that results from antibiotic treatment the positive steady state level of antibiotic efficacy to which the system tends under open access can be lower or higher than the level which should prevail in the socially optimal steady state in fact there are parameter configurations for which the steady states can be exactly the same however the paths leading to the steady state always differ

renewable and non renewable energy consumption growth nexus evidence from a panel error correction model abstract unlike previous renewable energy consumption growth studies this study examines the relationship between renewable and non renewable energy consumption and economic growth for 80 countries within a multivariate panel framework over the period 1990 2007 the pedroni 1999 2004 heterogeneous panel cointegration test show a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp renewable energy consumption non renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force with the respective coefficient estimates positive and statistically significant there is little difference in the elasticity estimates with respect to renewable and non renewable energy consumption the results from the panel error correction model reveal bidirectional causality between renewable and non renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run also there is bidirectional short run causality between renewable and non renewable energy consumption indicative of substitutability between the two energy sources

theoretical comparisons of electoral systems abstract elements of an economic theory of political institutions are introduced a variety of electoral systems are reviewed cox s threshold is shown to measure incentives for diversity and specialization of candidates positions when the number of serious candidates is given duverger s law and its generalizations are discussed to predict the number of serious candidates duverger s law is interpreted as a statement about electoral barriers to entry and this idea is linked to the question of the effectiveness of democratic competition as a deterrent to political corruption the impact of post electoral bargaining on party structure in presidential and parliamentary systems is discussed

constitutions and economic policy at the rare moments in history when a nation debates constitutional reform the key issues often concern how the reforms might affect economic policy and economic performance for example italy abandoned a system of pure proportional representation where legislators were elected according to the proportions of the popular national vote received by their parties and moved toward including ingredients of plurality rule where legislators are elected in each district according to who receives the highest number of votes key italian political leaders are now considering proposals to introduce elements of presidentialism where the head of government is elected by direct popular vote rather than the current parliamentary regime a common argument in italy was that the electoral reform would help stifle political corruption and reduce the propensity of italian governments to run budget deficits in the 1990s constitutional reforms have been debated and implemented in a number of other countries too for instance new zealand moved away from a pure system of plurality rule in single member districts to a system mixing elements of proportional representation japan also renounced its special form of plurality rule the so called single nontransferable vote in favor of a system that mixes elements of proportional and plurality representation similar proposals have been debated in the united kingdom in latin america questions have been raised as to whether the poor and volatile economic performance of many countries can be traced to their presidential form of government

a note on the causal relationship between energy and gdp in taiwan abstract this paper re examines the causality between energy consumption and gdp by using updated taiwan data for the period 1954 1997 as a secondary contribution we investigate the causal relationship between gdp and the aggregate as well as several disaggregate categories of energy consumption including coal oil natural gas and electricity applying granger s technique we find bidirectional causality between total energy consumption and gdp we find further that different directions of cause exist between gdp and various kinds of energy consumption

analysis of democratic institutions structure conduct and performance t s ahe structure of a democratic political system consists of the offices that politicians may seek the constitutional powers associated with these offices and the procedures by which candidates are elected to these offices these structures together form a complex incentive system for politicians determining what kinds of political decisions and strategies will be rewarded thus the constitutional structure of a democracy may influence the conduct of its politicians and the performance of its government in this way political theory confronts a set of questions that have much in common with the classic economic questions of structure conduct and performance in industrial organization this paper develops this economic perspective on political theory as a guide to some problems and directions of current research economic and political interpretations of a classic model

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

would letting people vote for multiple candidates yield policy moderation abstract we investigate whether letting people vote for multiple candidates would yield policy moderation we do so in a setting that takes three key features of elections into account namely strategic voting endogenous candidacy and policy motivation on the part of the candidates we consider two classes of voting rules one class consists of the voting rules where each voter casts several equally weighed votes for the different candidates the other class consists of the voting rules where each voter rank orders the candidates we identify conditions under which these voting rules yield policy moderation we also show that these voting rules may yield policy extremism instead of policy moderation if one or several of the conditions is not satisfied finally we find that amongst these voting rules the extent of policy moderation is maximal under the borda count if we consider only equilibria where all candidates are serious contenders however this result does not carry over to spoiler equilibria where approval voting can yield more moderate policy outcomes than the borda count

voter heterogeneity and political corruption abstract we show that policies that eliminate corruption can depart from socially desirable policies and this inefficiency can be large enough to allow corruption to live on political competition between an honest welfare maximiser and corrupt politicians is studied in our model the corrupt politician is at a distinct disadvantage there is no asymmetric information no voter bias and voters are fully rational yet corruption cannot be eliminated when voters have heterogeneous preferences

tax contracts and elections in this paper we examine the impact of tax contracts as a novel institution on elections policies and welfare we consider a political game in which three parties compete to form the government and voters may behave strategically parties have policy preferences about the level of public good provision and benefit from perks when in office a government raises taxes for both purposes we show that tax contracts yield moderate policies and lead to lower perks by avoiding the formation of grand coalitions in order to win government moreover in polarized societies they unambiguously improve the welfare of the median voter

a drawback of electoral competition in most major democracies there are very few parties compared to the number of possible policy positions held by voters we provide an efficiency rationale for why it might be appropriate to limit the proliferation of parties in our model the larger the number of parties the greater the inefficiency of the outcome of electoral competition the reason is that when the number of parties increases electoral incentives push each party to focus its electoral promises on a narrower constituency and then special interest policies replace more efficient policies that have diffuse benefits the analysis provides a possible explanation for the existence of institutional features that limit the extent of electoral competition thresholds of exclusion runoff electoral systems and majoritarian two party political systems jel d82 l15

retracted factors affecting commercial energy consumption in pakistan progress in energy the purpose of this study is to identify major macroeconomic factors that enhance energy consumption for pakistan through the cointegration error correction model and granger causality tests over a 32 year time period i e between 1980 and 2011 the study employed the bivariate cointegration technique to estimate the long run relationship between the variables an error correction model was used to determine the short run dynamics of the system while granger causality test was used to find the directions between these variables the study investigates the relation between four energy consumption variables i e oil petroleum consumption gas consumption electricity consumption and coal consumption and four macroeconomic factors which have further sub classifications i e balance of payment bop factors i e exports imports trade deficit worker s remittances and current account balance fuel factors i e carbon dioxide emissions natural resource depletion and net forest depletion agricultural crops yield per hectare i e wheat rice sugarcane maize and cotton and industrial production items i e beverages cigarettes motor tyres motor tubes cycle tyres and cycle tubes in order to manage robust data analysis the result confirms the long run relationship between total commercial energy consumption and macroeconomic factors in pakistan as oil petroleum consumption increases exports fuel factors agricultural crops yield per hectare and industrial items however the intensity of these factors are different in nature carbon dioxide emissions net forest depletion beverages motor tyres and motor tubes are more elastic with oil petroleum consumption however oil petroleum consumption decreases trade deficit and workers remittances in pakistan gas electricity and coal consumption increases agricultural crops yield per hectare and industrial production which shows that as agriculture and industry modernizes energy demand increases energizing the food production chain is an essential feature of agricultural development which is a prime factor in helping to achieve food security in pakistan the empirical results only moderately support the conventional view that energy consumption has significant long run casual effect on macroeconomic variables in pakistan the present study finds evident of unidirectional causality between the commercial energy consumption factors and macroeconomic factors in pakistan however there is some bidirectional causality exist which is running between electricity consumption ec and exports ec to imports ec to carbon emissions ec to natural resource depletion nrd and ec to wheat the results conclude that macroeconomic variables tend to positively respond to total primary energy consumption this indicates that increasing total commercial energy consumption may cause growth variables which show that pakistan is an input driven economy

disaggregated industrial energy consumption and gdp the case of shanghai 1952 1999 abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between various kinds of industrial energy consumption and gdp in shanghai for the period 1952 1999 using a modified version of the granger 1969 causality test proposed by toda and yamamoto j econ 66 1995 225 the empirical evidence from disaggregated energy series seems to suggest that there was a uni directional granger causality running from coal coke electricity and total energy consumption to real gdp but no granger causality running in any direction between oil consumption and real gdp

causality between income and emission a country group specific econometric analysis abstract empirical studies of the environmental kuznets curve ekc examine the presence or otherwise of an inverted u shaped relationship between the level of pollution and the level of income customarily in the diagram of ekc the level of income is shown on the horizontal axis and that of pollution on the vertical axis thus it is presumed that the relationship between income and pollution is one of unidirectional causality with income causing environmental changes and not vice versa the validity of this presumption is now being questioned it is being asserted that the nature and direction of causality may vary from one country to the other in this paper we present the results of a study of income co 2 emission causality based on a granger causality test to cross country panel data on per capita income and the corresponding per capita co 2 emission data briefly our results indicate three different types of causality relationship holding for different country groups for the developed country groups of north america and western europe and also for eastern europe the causality is found to run from emission to income for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan causality from income to emission is obtained finally for the country groups of asia and africa the causality is found to be bi directional the regression equations estimated as part of the granger causality test further suggest that for the country groups of north america and western europe the growth rate of emission has become stationary around a zero mean and a shock in the growth rate of emission tends to generate a corresponding shock in the growth rate of income in contrast for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan a shock in the income growth rate is likely to result in a corresponding shock in the growth rate of emission finally causality being bi directional for the country groups of asia and africa the income and the emission growth rates seemed to reinforce each other

electoral rules and corruption is corruption systematically related to electoral rules recent theoretical work suggests a positive answer but little is known about the data we try to address this lacuna by relating corruption to different features of the electoral system in a sample of about eighty democracies in the 1990s we exploit the cross country variation in the data as well as the time variation arising from recent episodes of electoral reform the evidence is consistent with the theoretical priors larger voting districts and thus lower barriers to entry are associated with less corruption whereas larger shares of candidates elected from party lists and thus less individual accountability are associated with more corruption individual accountability appears to be most strongly tied to personal ballots in plurality rule elections even though open party lists also seem to have some effect because different aspects roughly offset each other a switch from strictly proportional to strictly majoritarian elections only has a small negative effect on corruption jel e62 h3

greenhouse gas emissions energy consumption and economic growth a panel cointegration analysis from canadian industrial sector perspective abstract this paper investigates the long run and the causal relationship between greenhouse gas emissions energy consumption and economic growth for canadian industrial sectors over the period 1990 2007 the empirical findings suggest that in the long run equilibrium energy consumption has a positive and statistically significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions whereas a non linear relationship is found between greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth consistent with the environmental kuznets curve the short run dynamics conveys that there is a unidirectional granger causality running from energy consumption to greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth to greenhouse gas emissions and a weak unidirectional causality running from greenhouse gas emissions to energy consumption from economic growth to energy consumption in the long run however there seems to be a weak one way causality flowing from energy consumption and economic growth to greenhouse gas emissions

examining the bi directional long run relationship between renewable energy consumption and gdp growth abstract the bi directional long run relationship between renewable energy consumption and gdp growth has been investigated in high income upper middle income lower middle income and high income countries to achieve this goal the fully modified ols was utilized the results revealed that 79 of the countries have a positive bi directional long run relationship between renewable energy consumption and gdp growth this represents the feedback hypothesis on the other hand 19 of the countries showed no long run relationship between the variables this represents the neutrality hypothesis besides 2 of the countries showed a one way long run relationship from gdp growth to renewable energy consumption confirming the conservation hypothesis and from renewable energy consumption and gdp growth representing the growth hypothesis despite the mixed results across countries it has been proved that the more persistent and significant the bi directional long run relationship between the variables is the higher the income countries are

the effects of party competition on budget outcomes empirical evidence from local governments in spain this paper investigates the link between local budget outcomes and the intensity of party competition measured as the margin of victory obtained by the incumbent in the previous local election i e the difference between the vote share and 50 two competing hypotheses are tested in the paper on the one hand the leviathan government hypothesis suggests that the lower the intensity of party competition is the greater is the increase in the size of the local public sector irrespective of the ideology of the party in power on the other hand the partisan government hypothesis suggests that the incumbent will find it easier to advance its platform when intensity of competition is low i e parties on the left right will increase decrease the size of the local public sector when the intensity of the challenge from the opposition is low these hypotheses are tested with information on spending own revenues and deficit for more than 500 spanish local governments over 8 years 1992 1999 and information on the results of two local electoral contests 1991 and 1995 the evidence favors the partisan hypothesis over the leviathan one we found that for left wing governments spending taxes and deficits increased as the electoral margin increases whereas for right wing governments a greater margin of victory led to reductions in all these variables

clean energy growth nexus in sub saharan africa evidence from cross sectionally dependent heterogeneous panel with structural breaks abstract this paper examines the existence and nature of a causality relationship between clean energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of eleven sub saharan african countries over the period 1971 2007 we apply the panel unit root test that accounts for the presence of multiple structural breaks 13 and the newly developed panel cointegration methodology which allows for cross section dependence and multiple structural breaks 38 as well as a bootstrap corrected granger causality test the estimation results show that there is cointegration between clean energy consumption and economic growth further the results from the panel causality tests indicate that there is indeed a unidirectional granger causal flow from clean energy consumption to economic growth

multi battle contests an experimental study this study examines behavior of subjects in simultaneous and sequential multi battle contests in simultaneous contests subjects make positive bids in each battle 80 of the time and bids fall within the predicted boundaries however 35 of the time subjects make positive bids in only two instead of all three battles and they significantly overuse moderately high bids in sequential contests theory predicts sizable bids in the first battle and no bids in the subsequent battles contrary to this prediction subjects significantly underbid in the first battle and overbid in subsequent battles consequently instead of always ending in the second battle contest proceeds to the third battle 38 of the time finally in both simultaneous and sequential settings subjects make higher aggregate bids than predicted resulting in negative expected payoffs

the domestic politics of banking regulation this article seeks to ground financial regulatory choices in domestic politics based on evidence from twenty two industrialized countries we argue that electoral rules specifically the extent to which they are centrifugal or centripetal have a significant effect on whether the banks or their consumers pay for the security of the banking system moreover despite the homogenizing effects of global financial integration the political dynamics generated by these electoral rules continue to shape the nature and extent of prudential regulations that countries adopt in the place of banking cartels

electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization despite common perception existing theoretical literature lacks a complete for mal argument regarding the relationship between the electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization in this paper we build a model that incorporates the disproportionality of the electoral system in a standard downsian electoral competition setup with mainly but not necessarily purely policy motivated parties we first show that in equilibrium platform polarization is decreasing in the level of the electoral rule disproportionality we then argue that the number of parties has a positive effect on platform polarization when polarization is measured by the distance between the two most distant platforms this effect does not hold when polarization is measured by the widely used dalton index constructing a dataset covering more than 300 elections our main theoretical findings are empirically supported pointing towards the electoral rule disproportionality as a major determinant of polarization

bipolar multicandidate elections with corruption the goals of democratic competition are not only to implement a majority s preference on policy questions but also to provide a deterrent against corrupt abuse of power by political leaders we consider a simple model of multicandidate elections in which different electoral systems can be compared according to these two criteria among a wide class of single winner scoring rules only approval voting is found to satisfy both effectiveness against corruption and majoritarianism for this model

on proportional non representation this paper contends the main virtue conventionally attributed to proportional electoral rules i e effective representation of political views it discusses a number of shortcomings that lead too much proportionality to a self defeat it reduces vote mobility through the strong cultivation of voters loyalties it smooths out vote variations when transforming them into seat variations it reinforces intraparty ties to the detriment of vertical attention to constituents and it impinges on the working of checks and balances the paper does not aim at a systematic evaluation of the properties of various voting systems nor is it the proportional principle as such that is under attack however its combination with other institutional features can entrap voters in their own choices thus nurturing political collusion it is because of the ensuing lower influence of the voters on political decision making that too much proportionality can lead to poor representation

political selection under alternative electoral rules we study the patterns of political selection in majoritarian versus proportional systems political parties face a trade off in choosing the mix of high and low quality candidates high quality candidates are valuable to voters and thus help to win elections but they crowd out loyal candidates who are most preferred by the parties under proportional representation politicians selection depends on the share of swing voters in the entire electorate in majoritarian elections it depends also on the distribution of competitive versus safe single member districts we show that a majoritarian system with only a few competitive districts is less capable of selecting good politicians than a proportional system as the share of competitive districts increases the majoritarian system becomes more efficient than the proportional system however for a large enough share of competitive districts a non monotonic relation arises the marginal positive effect of adding high quality politicians on the probability of winning the election is reduced and highly competitive majoritarian systems become less efficient than proportional ones in selecting good politicians

electoral reform and trade offs in representation we examine the effect of electoral institutions on two important features of representation that are often studied separately policy responsiveness and the quality of legislators theoretically we show that while a proportional electoral system is better than a majoritarian one at representing popular preferences in some contexts this advantage can come at the price of undermining the selection of good politicians to empirically assess the relevance of this trade off we analyze an unusually controlled electoral reform in switzerland early in the twentieth century to account for endogeneity we exploit variation in the intensive margin of the reform which introduced proportional representation based on administrative constraints and data on voter preferences a difference in difference analysis finds that higher reform intensity increases the policy congruence between legislators and the electorate and reduces legislative effort contemporary evidence from the european parliament supports this conclusion

hold your nose and vote corruption and public decisions in a representative democracy this paper analyzes how corruption alters policy decisions in democracy and examines whether this distortion can result in a long term persistence of corruption even when the voters are well informed and rational by applying a citizen candidate model of representative democracy the paper analyzes how corruption distorts the allocation of resources between public and private consumption altering the policy preferences of elected and nonelected citizens in opposite directions the outcome is a reduction in real public expenditure and if the median voter s demand for public goods is sufficiently elastic a reduction in taxes in this case some citizens benefit indirectly from corruption the paper also presents some empirical evidence that in democratic countries corruption results in lower tax revenue and proceeds to show that when this occurs citizens anticipating a shift in preferences in favor of public expenditure may support institutions that favor corruption this result complements the findings of other studies that have attributed the persistence of corruption in democracy to some failure on the part of the voters or the electoral system it also bears implications for developing effective anticorruption strategies and for redefining the role that can be played by the international community

structural breaks energy consumption and economic growth revisited evidence from taiwan abstract this paper studies the stability between energy consumption and gdp for taiwan during 1954 2003 we use aggregate as well as various disaggregate data of energy consumption including coal oil gas and electricity to employ the unit root tests and the cointegration tests allowing for structural breaks our main findings are first though gas consumption seems to have structural breaks in the 1960s after considering the structural breaks the series is a stationary variable when taiwan adopted its expansionary export trade policy second we find that different directions of causality exist between gdp and various kinds of energy consumption the empirical result shows unanimously in the long run that energy acts as an engine of economic growth and that energy conservation may harm economic growth third the cointegration between energy consumption and gdp is unstable and some economic events may affect the stability overall we do find the structural breakpoints and they look to match clearly with the corresponding critical economic incidents

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

from nonrenewable to renewable energy and its impact on economic growth the role of research development expenditures in asia pacific economic cooperation countries abstract this study disaggregates energy i e non renewable and renewable energy consumption and investigates its effect on economic growth the period of 1990 2015 is used to examine asia pacific economic cooperation apec countries this paper determines the cross sectional dependence and employs a second generation panel unit root test for precise estimation westerlund cointegration test is used to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between the variables and confirm the presence of cointegration in the long run the continuously updated fully modified ordinary least square cup fm approaches are applied to investigate long term output elasticities between the variables the results show the stimulating role of energy renewable and nonrenewable consumption in economic growth research and development expenditures and trade openness have a positive effect on economic growth moreover the time series individual country analysis also confirms that renewable energy has a positive impact on economic growth the heterogenous causality analysis reveals the feedback effect i e bidirectional causal associations among economic growth renewable energy consumption and nonrenewable energy consumption this empirical evidence suggests that countries should increase investment in renewable energy sectors and plan for development in renewable energy for sustainable energy growth

consequences of constitutions the paper presents empirical findings regarding the economic policy consequences of constitutional arrangements in three different dimensions first the data are consistent with several theoretical predictions about the consequences of electoral rules and forms of government for fiscal policy and rent extraction even when non random constitution selection is taken into account second empirical tests of the predictions from a new comprehensive model of parliamentary democracy show that proportional elections raise government spending through their indirect consequences for party structures and types of government rather than through their direct effects on policymaking incentives third new empirical results suggest that constitutional arrangements may have important consequences for structural policies that promote long run economic performance hinting at a missing link in the causal chain from history to current economic performance all these empirical findings appear statistically robust and the estimated effects are large enough to be of genuine economic interest jel d72 e60 h00 o11

ideologues or pragmatists we study a model of electoral control where the politician is a policy expert but the voter is not first we focus on the case of an ideologue namely a politician who always wants the same policy implemented regardless of the state we show that the voter s lack of policy expertise comes at no cost to him but may come at an electoral cost to the politician next we turn to the case of a pragmatist namely a politician whose preferences are state contingent we show that the voter s lack of policy expertise does come at a cost to him as a consequence the voter may fare better with an ideologue than with a pragmatist this can occur even if the pragmatist s preferences are arbitrarily close to and perfectly correlated with the voter s

former soviet union oil production and gdp decline granger causality and the multi cycle hubbert curve abstract this paper discusses the transition of the former soviet union fsu within the context of a 1987 1996 soviet and fsu oil production decline the conventional explanation of the break up is that economic inefficiencies and the cold war defense build up caused it another possible explanation one that is examined at length here is that declining oil production was a contributing factor the econometric analysis suggests that the fall in soviet and former soviet gdp in the 1980s and 1990s did not granger cause the decline in oil production but the decline in oil production did granger cause the fall in gdp coal and natural gas to gdp relationships show alternative granger causalities that we would expect to see with oil but do not a multi cycle hubbert trend that may be used to forecast future fsu oil production is also shown

do institutions affect citizens selection into politics traditional political economy has paid primary attention to the structuring of the principal agent relationship between citizens and politicians and the role of competition and institutions in disciplining political agents however as the electoral control of politicians and the credibility of policy commitments are limited this perspective needs to be complemented with an economics of political selection that takes into account the quality of those elected to political office we review the emerging literature which investigates institutional conditions that impact the selection of politicians we discuss pay in politics electoral rules institutions enhancing transparency in politics and institutions which govern dual office holding in different branches of government we argue that further comparative analyses are essential in order to gain an improved understanding of the impact that institutions have on political outcomes not only via the channel of accountability but also via the channel of selection

the scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement cost inefficiencies in public procurement tend to come from two sources corruption moral hazard and incompetence adverse selection in most countries audit authorities are responsible for monitoring costs but do not distinguish both sources of inefficiency in their audits judicial courts typically rely on these cost audits but only sanction corruption in a model of public procurement by politicians we study how the respective quality of the two courts affects corruption as well as cost efficiency we find that while better courts have the direct effect of decreasing corruption they may have a negative indirect effect on the abilities of the pool of politicians so that the net effect on cost efficiency is ambiguous

electoral accountability and corruption evidence from the audits of local governments we show that political institutions affect corruption levels we use audit reports in brazil to construct new measures of political cor ruption in local governments and test whether electoral account ability affects the corruption practices of incumbent politicians we find significantly less corruption in municipalities where mayors can get reelected mayors with reelection incentives misappropriate 27 percent fewer resources than mayors without reelection incentives these effects are more pronounced among municipalities with less access to information and where the likelihood of judicial punish ment is lower overall our findings suggest that electoral rules that enhance political accountability play a crucial role in constraining politician s corrupt behavior jel d72 k42 017

the relationship between disaggregate energy consumption and industrial production in the united states an ardl approach abstract we re examine the relationship between disaggregate energy consumption and industrial output as well as employment in the united states using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach developed by pesaran and pesaran pesaran m h pesaran b 1997 working with microfit 4 0 camfit data ltd cambridge and pesaran shin and smith pesaran m h shin y smith r j 2001 bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 16 289 326 in particular we focus attention on the following energy consumption variables coal fossil fuels conventional hydroelectric power solar energy wind energy natural gas wood and waste the sample period covers 2001 1 2005 6 our results imply that real output and employment are long run forcing variables for nearly all measures of disaggregate energy consumption

energy consumption income and carbon emissions in the united states abstract this paper investigates the effect of energy consumption and output on carbon emissions in the united states earlier research focused on testing the existence and or shape of an environmental kuznets curve without taking energy consumption into account we investigate the granger causality relationship between income energy consumption and carbon emissions including labor and gross fixed capital formation in the model we find that income does not granger cause carbon emissions in the us in the long run but energy use does hence income growth by itself may not become a solution to environmental problems

political competition and mirrleesian income taxation a first pass we study downsian competition in a mirrleesian model of income taxation the competing politicians may dier in competence if politicians engage in vote share maximization the less competent politician s policy proposals are attractive to the minority of rich agents whereas those of the competent politician are attractive to the majority of poor agents the less competent politician wins with positive probability which gives rise to a political failure in the sense of besley and coate 1998 political failures are avoided if politicians maximize winning probabilities nevertheless the two equilibria cannot be pareto ranked the minority may be better o under vote share maximization

energy consumption economic growth and carbon emissions challenges faced by an eu candidate member abstract this paper investigates the long run granger causality relationship between economic growth carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption in turkey controlling for gross fixed capital formation and labor the most interesting result is that carbon emissions seem to granger cause energy consumption but the reverse is not true the lack of a long run causal link between income and emissions may be implying that to reduce carbon emissions turkey does not have to forgo economic growth

how do electoral systems affect fiscal policy evidence from cantonal parliaments 1890 2000 using a new data set on swiss cantons since 1890 we analyze how the adoption of proportional representation affects fiscal policy in line with economic theory we show that proportional systems shift spending toward broad goods like education and welfare benefits but decrease spending on geographically targetable goods like roads we find little evidence that proportional representation increases the overall size of government an analysis of the underlying theoretical mechanisms reveals that proportional representation increases electoral turnout left wing representation and political fragmentation these changes in political representation explain a substantial share of the rise in education spending but a small share of the rise in welfare spending or the decline in road expenditures jel h4 h11 i38

disaggregate energy consumption and industrial production in south africa abstract this paper tries to assess the relationship between disaggregate energy consumption and industrial output in south africa by undertaking a cointegration analysis using annual data from 1980 to 2005 we also investigate the causal relationships between the various disaggregate forms of energy consumption and industrial production our results imply that industrial production and employment are long run forcing variables for electricity consumption applying the toda h y yamamoto t 1995 statistical inference in vector autoregressions with possibly integrated processes journal of econometrics 66 225 250 technique to granger causality we find bi directional causality between oil consumption and industrial production for the other forms of energy consumption there is evidence in support of the energy neutrality hypothesis there is also evidence of causality between employment and electricity consumption as well as coal consumption causing employment

the impact of socio political integration and press freedom on corruption abstract the analyses in this study demonstrate a more nuanced understanding of a previously understood phenomenon that openness has a negative relationship with corruption it is argued that this relationship is substantially influenced by the domestic context a relationship that has been underdeveloped by previous empirical studies focusing on social and political integration i find that the effect of openness on corruption is conditioned by domestic institutions the empirical evidence suggests that while political and social openness have a significant impact in combating corruption given a free press the impact of such international forces are negligible in cases where press freedoms are low

electoral rules and political selection theory and evidence from a field experiment in afghanistan voters commonly face a choice between competent candidates and those with policy preferences similar to their own this article explores how electoral rules such as district magnitude mediate this trade off and affect the composition of representative bodies and the quality of policy outcomes we show formally that anticipation of bargaining over policy causes voters in elections with multiple single member districts to prefer candidates with polarized policy positions over more competent candidates results from a unique field experiment in afghanistan are consistent with these predictions specifically representatives selected by elections with a single multi member district are better educated and exhibit less extreme policy preferences

does oil corrupt evidence from a natural experiment in west africa abstract this paper explores the oil discovery announcements in sao tome and principe 1997 1999 to assess the role of natural resources in determining corruption for this purpose we use a natural experiment framework which contrasts sao tome and principe to cape verde a control west african country sharing the same colonial past and important recent economic and political shocks our measurement is based on tailored household surveys we conducted in both island countries the unique survey instrument was retrospective and used personal histories to elicit memories from the respondents we analyze changes in perceived corruption across a wide range of public services and allocations we find clearest increases on vote buying education namely in the allocation of scholarships and customs ranging from 31 to 40 of the subjective scale we interpret these findings as symptoms of increased competition for core state resources

energy consumption and economic growth in central america evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for six central american countries over the period 1980 2004 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship based on the heterogeneous panel cointegration test by pedroni pedroni p 1999 critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 61 653 670 pedroni p 2004 panel cointegration asymptotic and finite sample properties of pooled time series tests with an application to the ppp hypothesis new results econometric theory 20 597 627 cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption the labor force and real gross fixed capital formation with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate the presence of both short run and long run causality from energy consumption to economic growth which supports the growth hypothesis

can biomass energy be an efficient policy tool for sustainable development abstract this paper first reviews the potential causality from biomass energy to co2 emissions and economic development within relevant literature later the paper examines statistically the impacts of biomass energy consumption on co2 emissions and gdp in the us to this end paper observes environmental and economic implications of biomass fuel usage throughout energy literature and launches asymmetric causality test to confirm disconfirm the literature output the findings of the tests indicate that biomass energy consumption per capita mitigates co2 emissions per capita and increases gdp per capita eventually upon its output this research asserts that biomass energy consumption can be an efficient policy tool for environmentally sustainable development in the us and that hence biomass production technologies and biomass consumption need to be promoted in other countries as well as in the us on the other hand analyses underline the fact that policy makers should consider as well some potential constraints of biomass energy usage such as land use constraints and carbon leakage from biomass production therefore although this paper explores the remedial impact of biomass on environment and growth one may suggest also that further possible works consider the effects of biomass sources in detail to minimize the some worsening influence of biomass usage on climate change