testing for behavioral objective and aggregation opportunities in u s agricultural data to guide formulation of an aggregate model of u s agricultural production this paper reports nonparametric test results for both behavioral objective and aggregation level nonparametric tests are implemented as heuristics to determine empirical support for simplified analytical structures evidence does not refute the joint hypothesis that producers behave collectively as though they are a price taking profit maximizing firm with a convex technology subject to nonregressive technical change the empirical results also support exhaustive aggregation of input categories but much less aggregation of outputs this paper reports the first known implementation of the nonparametric homothetic separability tests

co benefit of carbon mitigation on resource use in china abstract on one hand natural resources and energy provide the basis for life on earth but waste and emissions are produced during their throughput on the other hand china as the most populous country and an emerging economic powerhouse has taken on the challenge of hitting peak carbon dioxide co2 emissions by 2030 pursuing resource co benefits from carbon mitigation is an effective approach for china on the road to achieving the 2030 goal in this study we combine the computable general equilibrium cge model and the economy wide material flow accounts or analysis ew mfa method to estimate china s future co2 emissions and resource consumption and their co benefit effect three scenarios are analyzed business as usual bau nationally determined contributions ndc and the scenario of achieving the 2 degree target 2deg we find that both the ndc and 2deg targets can be achieved by 2030 without a significant compromise in economic growth with the effect of carbon mitigation china s resource consumption would rise by a factor of 1 7 bau 1 6 ndc and 1 5 2deg during 2012 2030 and the reduction in co benefits of metal ores nonmetallic minerals and fossil fuels would be 0 6 billion tons and 1 4 billion tons 0 8 billion tons and 2 0 billion tons and 2 6 billion tons and 4 6 billion tons for ndc and 2deg respectively sectoral disparity indicates that sectors with high emissions and resource consumption include traditional heavy industrial sectors and energy related sectors for which additional mitigation policies should be employed not only because they offer the most co benefit effects but they also have the least cost

the global financial crisis explaining cross country differences in the output impact abstract what explains differences in the crisis impact across developing countries and emerging markets using cross country regressions to assess the factors driving the growth performance in 2009 compared to pre crisis forecasts for that year we find that a small set of variables explain a large share of the variation in the growth impact countries with more leveraged domestic financial systems stronger credit growth and more short term debt tended to suffer a larger effect on economic activity although the relative importance of these factors differs across country groups for emerging markets this financial channel trumps the trade channel for a broader set of developing countries however the trade channel seems to have mattered with more open countries affected more strongly and those exporting food commodities being less hard hit exchange rate flexibility helped in buffering the impact of the shock particularly for emerging markets there is also some evidence that countries with a stronger fiscal position prior to the crisis were impacted less severely we find little evidence for the importance of other policy variables

external liabilities and crises abstract we examine the determinants of external crises focusing on the role of foreign liabilities and their composition using a variety of statistical tools and comprehensive data spanning 1970 2011 we find that the ratio of net foreign liabilities to gdp is a significant crisis predictor this is primarily due to the net position in debt instruments the effect of net equity liabilities is weaker and net fdi liabilities seem if anything an offset factor we also find that i breaking down net external debt into its gross asset and liability counterparts does not add significant explanatory power to crisis prediction ii the current account is a powerful predictor iii foreign exchange reserves reduce the likelihood of crisis more than other foreign asset holdings and iv a parsimonious probit containing those and a handful of other variables has good predictive performance in and out of sample the latter result stems largely from our focus on external crises sensu stricto

china s balance of emissions embodied in trade approaches to measurement and allocating international responsibility international trade is characterized not only by the flow of capital and goods but also by the energy and emissions embodied in goods during their production this paper investigates the evolving role that chinese trade is playing in the response to climate change by estimating the scale of emissions embodied in china s current trade pattern and demonstrating the magnitude of the difference between the emissions it produces some of which are incurred to meet the consumption demands of the rest of the world and the emissions embodied in the goods it consumes estimating china s emissions on a consumption rather than a production basis both lowers its responsibility for carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 2006 from 5 500 to 3 840mtco2 and reduces the growth rate of emissions from an average of 12 5 per cent p a to 8 7 per cent p a between 2001 and 2006 the analysis indicates that a reliable consumption based accounting methodology is feasible and could improve our understanding of which actors and states are responsible for emissions for example recent emissions reductions by developed countries may lack credibility if production has merely been displaced to countries such as china moreover in the current institutional context production methodologies encourage leakages through trade that may do more to displace than to reduce emissions both equity and efficiency concerns therefore suggest that emissions embodied in trade should receive special attention in the distribution of post kyoto abatement burdens

the effect of off farm work on the intensity of agricultural production changes in agricultural production methods have been associated with environmental pressure and a loss of natural habitats this paper explores the extent to which farmer participation in off farm work an increasing phenomenon in most developed countries changes the intensity of agricultural input use focusing in particular on fertilizer and crop protection product use a sample selection model that accounts for both unobserved heterogeneity between farms and the potential simultaneity between farm operations and hours worked off farm is estimated for 2 419 farms in england and wales the econometric evidence indicates that the input intensity of products which have well established links to environmental damage can increase as well as decrease the results suggest that that fertilizer intensity may decline as off farm labor increases while the use of crop protection per hectare increases as off farm work increases

cost function estimation under risk aversion standard definitions of the cost function do not admit risk standard ex post approaches to cost function estimation yield biased and inconsistent estimates when production is stochastic recently an ex ante approach to cost function estimation with stochastic production has been developed by imbedding the distance function in the cost function estimation problem we generalize the approach to consider risk aversion in decision making only two empirical studies have considered stochastic production in cost function estimation both have required constant returns to scale we demonstrate a methodology sufficiently general to consider nonconstant returns to scale

regional allocation of carbon emission quotas in china evidence from the shapley value method abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission quotas among regions so as to realize its carbon reduction targets and establish the national cap and trade carbon market meanwhile it is supposed to be cost effective to jointly reduce china s carbon emissions through some collaborative activities among regions then a natural question is how to allocate the quotas among regions in light of the collaboration for this purpose the shapley value method is adopted and the results show that first the regions with higher gdp higher carbon outflow and higher carbon reduction connection should be allocated more carbon quotas moreover when the collaboration is considered the optimal allocation of carbon quotas among regions will change significantly compared to the basic quotas by the entropy method and the central region is allocated the largest proportion of carbon quota among regions which indicates its largest radiation effect besides the collaboration between the central region and northern coast region and that between the central region and the eastern region should be paid close attention these results may provide insightful support for decision makers to promote collaborative carbon reduction and allocate carbon quotas in china

low carbon and clean energy scenarios for india analysis of targets approach abstract low carbon energy technologies are of increasing importance to india for reducing emissions and diversifying its energy supply mix using gcam an integrated assessment model this paper analyzes a targets approach for pushing solar wind and nuclear technologies in the indian electricity generation sector from 2005 to 2095 targets for these technologies have been constructed on the basis of indian government documents policy announcements and expert opinions different targets have been set for the reference scenario and the carbon price scenario in the reference scenario wind and nuclear technologies exceed respective targets in the long run without any subsidy push while solar energy requires subsidy push throughout the century in order to meet its high targets in the short run nuclear energy also requires significant subsidy including a much higher initial subsidy relative to solar power which is a result of its higher targets under a carbon price scenario the carbon price drives the penetration of these technologies still subsidy is required especially in the short run when the carbon price is low we also found that pushing solar wind and nuclear technologies leads to a decrease in share of ccs under the carbon price scenario and biomass under both the reference and carbon price scenarios this is because low carbon technologies compete among themselves and substitute each other thereby enhancing the need for subsidy or carbon price highlighting that proposed targets are not set at efficient levels in light of contemporary debate on external costs of nuclear energy we also assess the sensitivity of the results to nuclear technology cost we find that higher cost significantly decreases the share of nuclear power under both the reference and carbon price scenarios

the role of international reserves holding in buffering external shocks an extended literature analyzes the accumulation foreign exchange holding observed in many developing and emerging countries since the 2000s empirical studies on the self insurance motive suggest that high reserves economies are more resilient to financial crises and to international capital inflows volatility they show also that pre crisis foreign reserve accumulation explains post crisis growth however some papers suggest that the relationship between international reserves holding and reduced vulnerability is nonlinear meaning that reserve holding is subject to diminishing returns this paper devotes more attention to the potential nonlinear relationship between the foreign reserves holding and macroeconomic resilience to shocks for a sample of 9 emerging economies we assess to what extent the accumulation of international reserves allows to mitigate negative impacts of external shocks on the output gap while a major part of the literature focuses on the global financial crisis we investigate this question by considering two sub periods 1995 2003 and 2004 2013 we implement threshold var tvar model in which the structure is allow to change if the threshold variable crosses a certain estimated threshold we find that the effectiveness of reserve holding to improve the resilience of domestic economies to shocks has increased over time hence the diminishing returns of foreign reserve holding stressed in the previous literature must be qualified

on the nexus of financial development economic growth and energy consumption in china new perspective from a gmm panel var approach abstract this paper studies the endogenous relationships among financial development energy consumption and economic growth in china by applying a gmm panel var approach with a panel data of 30 chinese provinces over the period 1996q1 2015q4 financial development is measured by six individual indicators and by a comprehensive indicator obtained through the pca method we also account for regional heterogeneity by dividing our sample into three regions eastern region central region and western region we underline our findings in three aspects first financial development measured by most individual indicators m2 credit revenue of the insurance industry and stock market value and the comprehensive one has a significantly negative impact on economic growth second energy consumption can significantly contribute to economic growth in all regions while no feedback effect is found except in the western region this result is further supported by the granger causality tests last financial development in the sense of m2 credit stock turnover and the comprehensive indicator can significantly lessen energy consumption in all regions but this inhibitory effect is found to be largest in the western region followed by the eastern region and be smallest in the central region the granger causality tests confirm further the existence of heterogeneity across regions a bidirectional granger causality between the two variables is found in the eastern region a unidirectional granger causality running from energy consumption to financial development is identified in the central region and no significant causal relationship shows up in the western region our findings provide valuable policy implications for china heading for a green economic growth

western china energy development and west to east energy transfer application of the western china sustainable energy development model china is striving for coordinated regional economic development and to solve the energy shortage in eastern china through a western china development plan with one focus being energy development and west to east energy transfer this paper describes western china sustainable energy development model wsed to evaluate various energy development scenarios for western china the model includes a western china markal model a computable general equilibrium model for western china wcge and an energy service demand projection model esdp the esdp provides energy service demand projections for the western china markal model while the wcge provides macroeconomic inputs for the esdp and analyzes the impact of different energy development scenarios on western china economy a reference scenario and several different west to east energy transfer scenarios with and without consideration of the water constraints and the endogenous technology learning are presented the modeling describes the energy consumption carbon emissions water consumption energy investment cost and the impact on western china gdp of the different scenarios through the year 2050 these results have implications on sustainable energy development policies and sustainable west to east energy transfer strategies

a model of production with supply management for the canadian agricultural sector the production structure of the canadian agricultural sector is modeled by an output constrained multiproduct profit function to account for the existence of supply management policies the le chatelier effects of supply constraints are illustrated and the comparative statics of supply management is shown to depend under input normality on the type of jointness convexity is tested and accepted and nonjointness is rejected by the estimated normalized quadratic profit function the results support the hypothesis of nonjointness due to allocatable fixed factors decreasing the supply of managed commodities will increase the supply of unrestricted commodities while total input use is reduced

on nonparametric supply response analysis in this paper we explore the usefulness of nonparametric methods in the investigation of production behavior and the estimation of price elasticities of output supply and input demand functions the approach can handle the situation where some data points are not consistent with production theory the method is illustrated by estimating supply demand elasticities of outputs and inputs in u s agriculture

a nonlinear approach to us gnp a univariate nonlinear model is estimated for us gnp that on many criteria outperforms standard linear models the estimated model is of the threshold autoregressive type and contains evidence of asymmetric effects of shocks over the business cycle in particular the nonlinear model suggests that the post 1945 us economy is significantly more stable than the pre 1945 us economy

the impact of china s carbon allowance allocation rules on the product prices and emission reduction behaviors of ets covered enterprises abstract it is an important task for china to allocate carbon emission allowance to realize its carbon reduction target and establish carbon trading market china has designed several allocation rules within seven pilot regions what influence those rules may cause is closely related with the enthusiasm of emission trading scheme ets covered enterprises participation in carbon market and more importantly with the mechanism design and sustainable development of carbon market for this purpose the multi stage profit model is developed to analyze the ets covered enterprises product prices and emission reduction behaviors under different allocation rules the results show that first under the rules of grandfathering self declaration and auctioning when deciding the optimal product price and optimal carbon emission reduction those enterprises may focus on maximizing current stage profit however under the rule of benchmarking those enterprises may care more about the impact of current decisions on the profit in next stage second the optimal product price policy is positively correlated with the price of the same kind products consumers low carbon awareness and government subsidy finally along with the increase of carbon price consumers low carbon awareness and government subsidy and the decrease of carbon emission cap those enterprises tend to reduce carbon emissions

estimating ex ante cost functions for stochastic technologies this paper revisits the problem of estimating ex ante cost functions previously studied by pope and just in 1996 as well as moschini in 2001 an ex ante cost function that generalizes their ex ante cost functions is introduced and an econometric procedure for estimating a flexible approximation to it is developed that generalized cost function is economically relevant not only for the pope and just 1996 choice setting but for general producer risk preferences general stochastic technologies and general forms of price uncertainty an econometric strategy for estimating the resulting cost structure that adapts moschini s 2001 full information approach is developed followed by an econometric application to u s agriculture

the role of exchange rate in inflation targeting the case of turkey the role of the exchange rates in emerging market economies that have adopted inflation targeting it is a critical and contentious issue in the relevant literature this article investigates whet

profit maximizing land use revisited the testable implications of non joint crop production under land constraint this article derives new implications for the land allocation and production decisions of profit maximizing farm firms where production of different crops is non joint but subject to a constraint on the total land area these implications are observable and thus subject to empirical scrutiny an estimable model of crop production land allocation and input use decisions is derived that permits joint production and enables the implications of non joint but land constrained production to be tested this may improve econometric estimates of cross price elasticities of supply by linking models of land use and production decisions and allowing non jointness to be imposed where appropriate copyright 2013 oxford university press

dynamic agricultural supply response under economic transformation a case study of henan china during the dramatic economic transformation in the last few decades food demand in china has expanded due to rapid urbanization dietary change and steady population growth at the same time a decline in available land for agriculture has made grain selfsufficiency a major goal of chinese agriculture policy a considerable challenge the governmenthasimplementedcomprehensivepolicies to encourage domestic agricultural production including eliminating agricultural taxes and providing direct subsidies to farmers it remains unclear whether these policies are effective in stimulating food production there isanurgentneedforknowledgeonagricultural supply response to changes in prices policies and rural infrastructure in china which can guide policy formulation in the process of economic transformation if agriculture is highly responsive policy induced changes in farmers behavior can be effective in increasing production and ensuring long term food security in the country

carbon dioxide emissions allocation a review carbon dioxide co2 emissions allocation plays a fundamental role in determining reduction responsibility at economy level or emission permits at firm level past decades have seen the development and applications of various methods for co2 emissions allocation this paper provides a literature review of co2 emissions allocation with emphasis on the evolution of allocation methods used it begins with a summary of the most popular allocation principles and criteria that lay a foundation for the development of allocation methods we then classify the existing allocation methods into four groups namely indicator optimization game theoretic and hybrid approaches the main features and findings of past studies are identified and summarized while the fairness principle prevails in earlier studies the efficiency principle has been found to receive increasing attention recently we also present a comparison of the empirical results based on ten popular indicator methods to show how indicator choice affects the allocation results issues related to selecting appropriate methods in co2 emissions allocation are finally discussed further research may be carried out to strike a balance between fairness and efficiency so that the allocation results become more widely acceptable and economically feasible

modeling supply response in a multiproduct framework the paper models multiproduct supply response in agriculture and tests key assumptions traditionally maintained in supply response studies the technology is approximated by a restricted profit function the properties of the restricted profit function are imposed during estimation the hypothesis that maintains the existence of output price and quantity indexes that satisfy the adding up property is rejected the existence of individual production functions for each output is also rejected unless joint production is permitted the estimates of responsiveness of a particular commodity to changes in own price or prices of competing outputs are likely to be considerably understated

burden sharing in a greenhouse egalitarianism and sovereignty reconciled the allocation of emission entitlements across countries is the single most controversial issue in international climate policy extreme positions within the policy debate range from entitlements based on current emission patterns sovereignty to entitlements based on equal per capita allocations egalitarianism this paper shows that gradual convergence from sovereignty towards egalitarianism could provide a pragmatic solution to the equity debate when combined with international emissions trading the convergence approach stands out for offering the developing countries substantial incentives for participation in the international greenhouse gas abatement effort without imposing excessive burdens on the industrialized countries

how reliable is duality theory in empirical work the neoclassical theory of production establishes a dual relationship between the profit value function of a competitive firm and its underlying production technology this relationship commonly referred to as duality theory has been widely used in empirical work to estimate production parameters such as elasticities and returns to scale we generate a pseudo dataset by monte carlo simulations which starting from known production parameters yield a dataset with the main characteristics of u s agriculture in terms of unobserved firm heterogeneity decisions under uncertainty unexpected production and price shocks endogenous prices output and input aggregation measurement error in variables and omitted variables production parameters are not precisely recovered when performing econometric estimation based on the duality approach and the elasticity estimates are inaccurate deviations of own and cross price elasticities from initial median values given our parameter calibration range between 6 and 690 with an average of 90 also own price elasticities are as imprecisely recovered as cross price elasticities sensitivity analysis shows that results still hold for different sources and levels of noise and sample size used in estimation

implications of the international reduction pledges on long term energy system changes and costs in china and india this paper analyses the impact of postponing global mitigation action on abatement costs and energy systems changes in china and india it compares energy system changes and mitigation costs from a global and two national energy system models under two global emission pathways with medium likelihood of meeting the 2 c target a least cost pathway and a pathway that postpones ambitious mitigation action starting from the copenhagen accord pledges both pathways have similar 2010 2050 cumulative greenhouse gas emissions the analysis shows that postponing mitigation action increases the lock in in less energy efficient technologies and results in much higher cumulative mitigation costs the models agree that carbon capture and storage ccs and nuclear energy are important mitigation technologies while the shares of biofuels and other renewables vary largely over the models differences between india and china with respect to the timing of emission reductions and the choice of mitigation measures relate to differences in projections of rapid economic change capital stock turnover and technological development furthermore depending on the way it is implemented climate policy could increase indoor air pollution but it is likely to provide synergies for energy security these relations should be taken into account when designing national climate policies

for a few dollars more reserves and growth in times of crises abstract based on a dataset of 112 emerging economies and developing countries this paper addresses the question whether the accumulation of international reserves has effectively protected countries during the 2008 09 financial crisis more specifically the paper investigates the relation between international reserves and the existence of capital controls we find that the level of reserves matters countries with high reserves relative to short term debt suffered less from the crisis particularly when associated with a less open capital account this suggests some degree of complementarity between reserve accumulation and capital controls

equity and carbon emissions trading a model analysis carbon emissions trading is a key instrument of climate policy it helps to bring about emission reductions in that place where they are least costly however fair burden sharing is about more than just cost efficiency while focussing on the instrument of emissions trading this paper touches upon equity issues that frame decisions on emission rights allocation the analysis is based on the iclips model the model study gives new insights on how the equal per capita allocation principle influences the intertemporal emission paths and about the distribution of mitigation costs in the long run apart from the intuitive economic evaluation of model results this paper also attempts to provide an evaluation from an equity point of view for a variety of assumptions model results show that several developing countries could benefit considerably from joining an international emissions trading system thereby becoming potential collaborators in post kyoto climate agreements

effort sharing in ambitious global climate change mitigation scenarios abstract the post 2012 climate policy framework needs a global commitment to deep greenhouse gas emission cuts this paper analyzes reaching ambitious emission targets up to 2050 either 10 or 50 from 1990 levels and how the economic burden from mitigation efforts could be equitably shared between countries the scenarios indicate a large low cost mitigation potential in electricity and industry while reaching low emission levels in international transportation and agricultural emissions might prove difficult the two effort sharing approaches triptych and multistage were compared in terms of equitability and coherence both approaches produced an equitable cost distribution between countries with least developed countries having negative or low costs and more developed countries having higher costs there is however no definitive solution on how the costs should be balanced equitably between countries triptych seems to be yet more coherent than other approaches as it can better accommodate national circumstances last challenges and possible hindrances to effective mitigation and equitable effort sharing are presented the findings underline the significance of assumptions behind effort sharing on mitigation potentials and current emissions the challenge of sharing the effort with uncertain future allowance prices and how inefficient markets might undermine the efficiency of a cap and trade system

credit and economic activity credit regimes and nonlinear propagation of shocks in this paper we examine empirically whether credit plays a role as a nonlinear propagator of shocks this propagation takes the form of a threshold vector autoregression in which a regime change occurs if credit conditions cross a critical threshold using nonlinear impulseresponse functions we evaluate the dynamics implied by the threshold model these suggest that shocks have a larger effect on output in the tight credit regime than is normally the case and that contractionary monetary shocks typically have a larger effect than expansionary shocks finally using a nonlinear version of historical decompositions we attempt to determine the relative contribution to output growth of shocks and the nonlinear structure

the triptych approach revisited a staged sectoral approach for climate mitigation abstract the triptych approach is a method for allocating future greenhouse gas ghg emission reductions among countries under a post 2012 international climate mitigation regime based on technological criteria at the sector level and accounting for structural differences the emission allowances are decomposed according to sectors thereby enabling the link to real world emission reduction strategies to be more concrete the new triptych approach presented here is a refinement of an earlier version in terms of an increased transparency and allowing a delayed participation for developing countries initial participation of developing countries with incentives but no penalties through no lose targets or sustainable development policies and measures for this article we calculated the emission reductions for countries for two technology oriented scenarios which stabilize ghg concentrations at 450 and 550 ppm co 2 eq respectively the reductions are ambitious but nonetheless compatible with existing technical reduction potentials as growth is allowed but efficiency has to be improved

simple econometrics of pesticide productivity this paper develops a multioutput generalization of the lichtenberg zilberman damage control technology the dual representation of the technology is shown to be conditionally additive in the price of abatement activities and other prices an econometric procedure for estimating the dual technology is developed and applied to an aggregate u s agricultural data set the conditionally additive nature of the model allows estimation of pest damage from the dual technology our estimates of aggregate u s pest damage are much lower than previous estimates

modeling energy and development an evaluation of models and concepts most global energy models are developed by institutes from developed countries focusing primarily on issues that are important in industrialized countries evaluation of the results for asia of the ipcc sres models shows that broad concepts of energy and development the energy ladder and the environmental kuznets curve can be observed in the results of the models however improvements can be made in modeling the issues that underlie these concepts like traditional fuels electrification economic structural change income distribution and informal economies given the rapidly growing importance of energy trajectories of developing countries for global sustainability the challenge for the future is to develop energy models that include all these aspects of energy and development

international equity and differentiation in global warming policy ne of the major obstacles to reaching a comprehensive agreement on global warming is the setting of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for individual countries long standing tensions between industrialized and developing countries have raised the issue of equity in burden sharing moreover individual industrialized nations have pleaded special circumstances and have sought differentiation in their obligations this paper analyzes alternative rules for distributing tradable carbon dioxide emissions permits a non linear programming model which distinguishes between allocation based and outcome based rules is used to analyze the relative welfare outcomes the model is applied to the world body of nations and yields several important policy implications

regional allocation of co2 emissions allowance over provinces in china by 2020 the mitigation efforts of china are increasingly important for meeting global climate target since the rapid economic growth of china has led to an increasing share in the world s total co2 emissions this paper sets out to explore the approach for realizing china s national mitigation targets submitted to the unfccc as part of the copenhagen accord that is to reduce the intensity of co2 emissions per unit of gdp by 40 45 by 2020 as well as reducing the energy intensity and increasing the share of non fossil fuel consumption through regional allocation of emission allowance over china s provinces since the realization of china s mitigation target essentially represents a total amount emission allowance allocation problem an improved zero sum gains data envelopment analysis optimization model which could deal with the constant total amount resources allocation is proposed in this study by utilizing this model and based on several scenarios of china s economic growth co2 emissions and energy consumption a new efficient emission allowance allocation scheme on provincial level for china by 2020 is proposed the allocation results indicate that different provinces have to shoulder different mitigation burdens in terms of emission intensity reduction energy intensity reduction and share of non fossil fuels increase

abatement costs of post kyoto climate regimes abstract this article analyses the abatement costs of three post kyoto regimes for differentiating commitments compatible with stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gases concentrations at 550 ppmv co 2 equivalent in 2100 the three regimes explored are 1 the multi stage approach assumes a gradual increase in the number of parties involved who are adopting either emission intensity or reductions targets 2 the brazilian proposal approach i e the allocation or reductions based on countries contribution to temperature increase 3 contraction convergence with full participation in convergence of per capita emission allowances in 2050 the global costs increase up to about 1 of the world gdp ranging from 0 5 to 1 5 depending on baseline scenario and marginal abatement costs four groups of regions can be identified on the basis of similar costs expressed as the percentage of gdp these are 1 oecd regions with average costs 2 fsu the middle east and latin america with high costs 3 south east asia and east asia incl china with low costs and 4 south asia incl india and africa with net gains from emissions trading for most regimes the brazilian proposal approach gives the highest costs for groups 1 and 2 the distribution of costs for the contraction convergence approach highly depends on the convergence year the multi stage approach and contraction convergence convergence year 2050 seem to result in relatively the most even distribution of costs amongst all parties

emission allowances and mitigation costs of china and india resulting from different effort sharing approaches to meet ambitious global climate targets mitigation effort in china and india is necessary this paper presents an analysis of the scientific literature on how effort sharing approaches affect emission allowances and abatement costs of china and india we find that reductions for both china and india differ greatly in time across and within approaches and between concentration stabilisation targets for china allocated emission allowances in 2020 are substantially below baseline projections moreover they may be below 2005 emission levels particularly for low concentration targets below 490 ppm co2 eq effort sharing approaches based on allocating reduction targets lead to relatively lower reductions for china than approaches that are based on allocating emission allowances for 2050 emission allowances for china are 50 80 below 2005 levels for low concentration targets with minor differences between approaches still mitigation costs of china including emissions trading remain mostly below global average according to literature chinese emission allowances peak before 2025 2030 for low concentration targets india s emission allowances show high increases compared to 2005 levels if emission trading is allowed financial revenues from selling credits might compensate mitigation costs in most approaches even for low concentration targets india s emission allowances peak around 2030 2040 for all concentration targets c 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

testing for consistent aggregation this paper designs workable empirical procedures for testing or imposing supply demand price aggregators only single equation methods are considered to shift the focus from any particular optimizing paradigm toward the necessities for correctly tabulating firm level supplies demands and aggregate supply demand both macro and micro level tests for consistent aggregation are developed and constructive rules for aggregation based upon empirically observed micro behavior are provided in tabular form empirical tests reveal no support for the aggregate price most commonly reported by usda the constructive rules are then used to develop a new wheat price index consistent with supply aggregation

characterizing nonlinearities in business cycles using smooth transition autoregressive models during the past few years investigators have found evidence indicating that various time series representing business cycles such as production and unemployment may be nonlinear in this paper it is assumed that if the time series is nonlinear then it can be adequately described by a smooth transition autoregressive star model the paper describes the application of these models to quarterly logarithmic production indices for 13 countries and europe tests reject linearity for most of these series and estimated star models indicate that the nonlinearity is needed mainly to describe the responses of production to large negative shocks such as oil price shocks

after kyoto alternative mechanisms to control global warming after more than a decade of negotiations and planning under the framework convention on climate change fccc the first binding international agreement to control the emissions of greenhouse gases has come into effect in the kyoto protocol the first budget period of 2008 2012 is at hand moreover the scientific evidence on greenhouse warming strengthens steadily as observational evidence of warming accumulates the institutional framework of the protocol has taken hold solidly in the european union s emissions trading scheme ets which covers almost half of europe s carbon dioxide emissions notwithstanding this apparent success the kyoto protocol is widely seen as somewhere between troubled and terminal early troubles came with the failure to include the major developing countries along with lack of an agreedupon mechanism to include new countries and extend the agreement to new periods the major blow came when the united states withdrew from the treaty in 2001 by 2002 the protocol covered only 30 percent of global emissions while the hard enforcement mechanism in the ets accounts for about 8 percent of global emissions even if the current protocol is extended models indicate that it will have little impact on global temperature change unless there is a dramatic breakthrough or a new design the protocol threatens to be seen as a monument to institutional overreach nations are now beginning to consider the structure of climate change policies for the period after 2008 to 2012 some countries states cities companies and even universities are adopting their own climate change policies are there in fact alternatives to the scheme of tradable emissions permits embodied in the protocol the fact is that alternative approaches have not had a serious hearing among natural scientists or among policymakers what are some alternatives for global public goods there are three potential approaches command and control regulation quantity oriented market approaches and taxor price based regimes of these only the tradable quantity and the price like regimes have any hope of being reasonably efficient under a tradable quantity approach an agreement proceeds by setting limits on emissions by different countries the limits are partially or wholly transferable among countries this is the approach taken under the kyoto protocol this approach has very limited international experience under existing protocols such as the cfc chlorofluorocarbon mechanisms and somewhat broader experience under national trading regimes such as the u s sulfur dioxide regime a radically different approach is to use harmonized prices fees or taxes as a method of coordinating policies among countries this approach has no international experience in the environmental area although it has modest experience nationally in such areas as the u s tax on ozone depleting chemicals on the other hand the use of harmonized price type measures has extensive international experience in fiscal and trade policies such as with the harmonization of taxes in the european union and harmonized tariffs in international trade these thoughts on the structure of international agreements to control global warming should not be regarded as negotiating strategies

model projections for household energy use in india energy use in developing countries is heterogeneous across households present day global energy models are mostly too aggregate to account for this heterogeneity here a bottom up model for residential energy use that starts from key dynamic concepts on energy use in developing countries is presented and applied to india energy use and fuel choice is determined for five end use functions cooking water heating space heating lighting and appliances and for five different income quintiles in rural and urban areas the paper specifically explores the consequences of different assumptions for income distribution and rural electrification on residential sector energy use and co2 emissions finding that results are clearly sensitive to variations in these parameters as a result of population and economic growth total indian residential energy use is expected to increase by around 65 75 in 2050 compared to 2005 but residential carbon emissions may increase by up to 9 10 times the 2005 level while a more equal income distribution and rural electrification enhance the transition to commercial fuels and reduce poverty there is a trade off in terms of higher co2 emissions via increased electricity use

comparison of different climate regimes the impact of broadening participation so far most climate mitigation studies look at climate policy strategies in a so called first best world i e using the least expensive emission reduction options in all world regions and sectors to explore the impact of limited participation of countries we have run a set of scenarios that explore the impact of introducing a carbon tax in oecd the bric countries brazil russia india and china and the rest of the world the results show that carbon taxes can effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions however if low greenhouse gas concentration levels are to be achieved early participation in some form of large developing countries is important to increase reduction potential it should be noted that global carbon taxes without additional assumptions lead to relatively high costs in low income regions cap and trade regimes have more flexibility to create a comparable distribution of costs amongst countries

energy system impacts and policy implications of the european intended nationally determined contribution and low carbon pathway to 2050 in march 2015 the european union eu submitted to the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc the intended nationally determined contribution indc in view of the paris conference of parties cop21 the binding target of lowering domestic greenhouse gases emissions by at least 40 by 2030 compared to 1990 levels coupled with long term decarbonisation goals will have profound energy system macroeconomic and policy implications eu targets are qualitatively discussed and quantitatively assessed with the simulation of a reference and an alternative decarbonisation scenario to 2050 simulations are carried out with the technology rich primes energy system model and the gem e3 computable general equilibrium model restructuring of the eu energy system induces changes in the energy mix and production with small effects on the eu gdp 0 4 in 2030 and 1 in 2050 compared to the reference scenario energy efficiency improvements increasing penetration of renewables fuel switching towards natural gas and technical progress in process related to emissions abatement are identified as essential options to the eu indc implementation the electrification of final energy demand particularly transport electrification complemented with decarbonised power supply is found to play a critical role in the successful transition towards a low carbon economy by 2050

transformation of india s transport sector under global warming of 2 c and 1 5 c scenario abstract the paris agreement stresses on concerted efforts to limit global temperature increase to 2 c and make efforts towards achieving 1 5 c temperature stabilization countries announced actions under the nationally determined contributions outlining domestic mitigation actions to achieve the global target understanding the impact of these actions on achieving these ambitions requires an assessment of long term national level scenarios limited studies currently exist that model long term scenarios at national level addressing the impacts of nationally determined contributions and the additional actions required especially at the sectoral level the paper compares four alternate future scenarios for india spanning till 2050 with a specific focus on the passenger and freight transportation the analysis is performed using the answer markal model and complemented with methodologies to estimate transportation demand under strong decarbonisation pathways the results show that 1 5 c scenario would need immediate actions and deep transformations demand side actions would in addition to infrastructure investments require transforming human behaviour through use of information technology internet and sharing economy clean vehicle technologies need to play a much bigger role and fossil fuel dependence would be moderated with the dominance of electricity hydrogen and biofuels the higher share of electricity in transport is complimented with accelerated decarbonisation of electricity this transformation required for 1 5 c scenario calls for innovations that would be driven through national and sectoral policies and explicit carbon prices

production economics worthwhile investment abstract agricultural production economics research is examined within a broad framework of scientific development and utilization recent findings in selected areas of the subdiscipline are examined and opportunities for further fruitful inquiry are identified a few stylized facts emerge from recent work and suggest the need for much careful hypothesis testing model exploration and empirical sensitivity analysis in the future

modeling inter sectoral growth linkages an application to u s agriculture abstract general equilibrium and open economy trade theory are used along with time series data on the u s agricultural sector to provide insights into the structure of agricultural supply factor returns and linkages to the rest of the economy output expansion and factor returns are found to vary depending on relative factor intensities which we refer to as rybczynski and stolper samuelson like effects the effect of the rest of the economy particularly the increase in price of services is found to have relatively large negative impacts on agriculture the short run effects of prices and factor endowments on growth in agricultural supply and factor returns are dominated by the long run effects of technological change

cap reform modelling supply response subject to the land set aside abstract this paper uses duality theory to develop a model of european community agriculture the model is used to investigate the impact of the land set aside provision of the recent package of reforms of the common agricultural policy we assume that producers chose output and variable input levels that maximize difference between revenue and variable cost by including first order conditions for the allocation of land across its uses we impose that the observed allocations are profit maximizing allocations to overcome the problem of incorporating many outputs into an estimable production structure we imposed a priori the restriction that the technology was weakly separable in major categories of outputs with this restriction it was possible to model production decisions in stages using consistent aggregates in the latter stages

allocation of co2 emission permits economic incentives for emission reductions in developing countries the economic impacts on developing regions following a global cap and trade system for carbon dioxide are assessed through the use of an energy economy systems model both an equal per capita allocation and a contraction and convergence allocation with convergence of the per capita emissions by 2050 are shown to offer economic incentive for africa india and probably also latin america to accept binding emissions commitments under a 450 ppm carbon dioxide stabilization scenario the gain for latin america is mainly a result of increased export revenues from sales of bio fuels as a result of the climate policy it is on the other hand unlikely that these allocation approaches would offer an economic incentive for china to join the regime because of its high economic growth present higher per capita emissions than india and africa and more costly mitigation options than latin america a more stringent allocation for developing countries such as contraction with convergence of the per capita emissions by the end of this century is estimated to generate reduced net gains or increased net losses for the developing regions though africa is still expected to gain

future energy system challenges for africa insights from integrated assessment models although africa s share in the global energy system is only small today ongoing population growth and economic development imply that this can change significantly here we discuss long term energy system developments in africa using results of a recent model inter comparison study on global climate policy we focus on africa s role in the wider global energy system and in global climate mitigation the results show a considerable spread in model outcomes emphasizing the large uncertainty regarding africa s energy future without climate policy africa s share in global energy related co2 emissions is projected to increase to 3 23 by 2100 emissions become significant on a global scale only after 2050 in none of the model projections the international ambition to provide universal modern energy access by 2030 is achieved furthermore although the continent is currently a large net exporter of oil and natural gas towards 2050 the model projections emphasize that africa needs most of its resources for its rapidly growing domestic demand however the projected rapid expansion of their energy system also implies that africa gains importance in global mitigation action an important challenge is to align the increasing investments in the energy system with climate policy and potential revenues from international carbon trading

input demands and inefficiency in u s agriculture markov chain monte carlo mcmc methods are used to estimate a seemingly unrelated regression sur system of input demand functions for u s agriculture our demand functions have flexible forms and allow for nonrandom technical inefficiency concavity constraints are imposed at individual data points and the distributions of measures of relative technical efficiency are constrained to the unit interval results are evaluated in terms of characteristics of the posterior distributions of parameters measures of relative technical efficiency and other nonlinear functions of the parameters

uncertainty duality and perversity an empirical test of the schultz baron hypothesis it has been suggested that supply curves may be negatively sloped under conditions of output price uncertainty and risk aversion if the effect of an increase in expected price is offset by the effect of an associated increase in uncertainty risk this hypothesis first articulated by schultz and given a more rigorous theoretical exposition by baron is tested using aggregate time series data to estimate a stochastic model of us agriculture based on a generalized leontief certainty equivalent profit function evidence of risk aversion and a positive correlation between mean output price and its variance are found however these factors are not strong enough to generate perversity thus the own price elasticity of supply of agricultural output is found to be positive with a value of 0 25 although no evidence of perversity is found the empirical results suggest that ignoring price uncertainty may bias estimates of aggregate supply response downwards by between 5 and 47 as well as testing the schultz

the recent growth of international reserves in developing economies a monetary perspective abstract the massive accumulation of international reserves in developing economies is a puzzling recent development in the world economy this paper studies reserve accumulation as the outcome of a simple model in which the central bank smooths inflation i explore the view that central banks accumulate reserves to face large fiscal shocks that need monetary financing central bank revenues are obtained through inflation but inflation is distortionary as a result the central bank optimally accumulates international reserves in order to spread the costs associated with inflation over time a simple numerical exercise for an average developing economy using data between 1970 and 2009 yields fast growth of international reserves

aggregation of data and profit maximization in mexican agriculture nonparametric support for two important hypotheses relevant to econometric model specification is examined results of various nonparametric tests for behavioural objective and aggregation level of mexican agricultural production data are reported the evidence does not refute the hypothesis that producers behave collectively as though they are a price taking profit maximizing firm the empirical results also support exhaustive aggregation of input categories aggregation possibilities among outputs are fewer and are highly sensitive to the rejection criterion