energy saving behavior and marginal abatement cost for household co2 emissions abstract this paper attempts to measure consumers perceived net benefits or net costs of energy saving measures in using energy consuming durable goods using the estimated net costs and the volume of co2 reduced by the measures a marginal abatement cost mac curve for the average household s co2 emissions is produced an analysis using the curve suggests that in order to provide households with an incentive to take actions that can lead to co2 emission reductions in using energy consuming durables a high level of carbon price is needed in addition a regression analysis reveals that the net benefits of the measures are larger for households that put a higher priority on energy saving for those living in detached houses for those with a smaller number of persons living together and for those with less income the result of the analysis using the mac curve may suggest that promoting energy saving behavior will require not only a policy to provide economic incentives but also interventions to influence psychological factors of household behavior

structural decomposition analysis of sources of decarbonizing economic development in china 1992 2006 abstract to analyze and understand decarbonizing economic development in china this paper undertakes a structural decomposition analysis of the historical change in energy related carbon intensity in china between 1992 and 2006 the results show that the energy related carbon intensity in china decreased by about three fourths between 1992 and 2006 and reduced carbon emissions by about two billion tons the decline in the energy related carbon intensity was mainly caused by changes in production pattern especially changes in energy intensity within each sector between 1992 and 2002 however the most important driving force of carbon intensity from 2002 2006 was not the energy intensity within each sector but the input mix on the other hand changes in demand pattern pushed up the carbon intensity to further decarbonize the economy in the future it is important for china to further enforce policies on shaping the production pattern such as reducing energy intensity and pay more attention to increasing the sustainability of the demand pattern at the same time

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 2 review of input output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade this paper offers a detailed review of recently described single and multi region input output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services it is the second part of a two part contribution in part 1 turner k lenzen m wiedmann t and barrett j in press examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of ecological footprints a large number of such environment economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi region multi sector input output framework this has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability we identify six major models that employ multi sector multi region input output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi region multi sector and multi directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade such as the ecological footprint can be derived

intertemporal lifestyle changes and carbon emissions evidence from a china household survey abstract this paper examines the endogenous evolution of household consumption patterns and household carbon emissions hces by integrating the analysis methods of income distribution with climate change based on a large scale household survey spanning from 2012 to 2016 in china we estimated the direct and indirect hces observed inverse u shaped carbon kuznets curves ckc and significant changes in hces over the period at the household level applying the oaxaca blinder method we decomposed factors causing the changes in hces and found that income and demographic effects contribute only 25 1 to the total increase of hces the other 74 9 remain unexplained and we define them as the effect of intertemporal lifestyle changes further analysis from multiple perspectives illustrates that the lifestyles of households across various social strata are becoming increasingly higher carbon intensive over time even though the income remains unchanged the findings indicate that existing modeling and projections of carbon emissions based on income and household characteristics may underestimate the future emissions pressure from the household sector hence we conclude that in order to reach more meaningful results the increasing effect of lifestyles should be taken into account when conducting climate change studies and formulating climate policies

the increase in brazilian household income and its impact on co2 emissions evidence for 2003 and 2009 from input output tables abstract in recent years brazil has experienced economic growth and a recovery of income that has had a positive impact on the consumption of goods in this paper we evaluate the impact of brazilian household consumption on the co2 emissions for 2003 and 2009 using input output tables from the world input output database we used a semi closed model with eight household groups in order to apply the hypothetical extraction method in the consumption structure of each group further we use the result from the hypothetical extraction to evaluate the impacts of the structure consumption of each household group in terms of co2 emissions we find that there is a trade off between the households greater satisfaction from consumption and the increasing setback in emissions from the restructuring and modification of the consumption basket thus this study contributes to the research on emissions by mapping the recent behavior of the brazilian economy in terms of increased income changes in the consumption structure and their impacts on emissions the paper s aggregated results by income and consumption structure based on the intensity of the emissions and their systemic effects add to the discussions on less polluting production processes more conscious consumption of goods and more rational uses of energy and transportation

positive and normative analysis of the output opportunity costs of ghg emissions reductions a comparison of the six largest eu economies abstract any policy that aims at reducing ghg emissions by way of modulating the structure of an economy will entail resource reallocation and therefore an implicit economic cost in this paper we present a novel answer to this question using positive and normative analyses in such a way that they complement one another from a positive perspective we first propose a new look at the analysis of sectors distributed ghg forward emissions on the basis of absolute rather than marginal effects using this information we then move to a normative viewpoint using an environmental extended input output linear programming system and compute lower bounds for the potential gross and net output losses for each production unit when facing emissions reduction targets such as those proposed by the european union in their 20 20 20 directive the originality of our approach relies on two aspects namely the introduction of an armington assumption to link domestic and imported output and that differently to previous works total final demand drives the optimal adjustments to reach emissions cuts while minimizing output losses our empirical exercise compares the results of these normative and positive analyses for the six largest economies in the european union

decomposing industrial co2 emissions of southern european countries into production and consumption based driving factors abstract industry is a leading economic sector in european countries as well as a major carbon emitter european industry has been quite successful in abating the environmental pressures and carbon emissions and increasing its energy efficiency from production over the last years however focusing only on the production side may not lead to the desired sustainable development since there are other forces such as the international trade and consumption patterns which also shape the evolution of industrial co 2 emissions the aim of this study is to investigate how changes in production and consumption of industrial products affect the co 2 emissions of industries in four southern european countries during the period 2000 2011 to this purpose a new model of index decomposition analysis is developed in order to decompose the change in co 2 emissions of the industrial sectors of greece italy spain and portugal moreover the examined period in this study is split into two sub periods 2000 2008 and 2008 2011 in order to investigate the impact of the recent economic crisis on both the driving factors and industrial co 2 emissions the overall evolution of industrial co 2 emissions was quite similar in all the countries and the decomposition results of the two sub periods revealed substantial homogeneity across countries two production based driving factors the economic activity and the energy intensity were the main driving factors which shaped the total change in co 2 emissions of industries in the examined countries the consumption based driving factors contributed mostly to the increase in industrial co 2 emissions but not at the same level as the production based ones furthermore industrial production was more significantly affected by the economic crisis than consumers expenditures the decomposition results performed at a sectoral level revealed that it was difficult for southern european consumers to switch to a more environmentally conscious use of industrial products and their consumption preferences were not significantly affected by the consequences of the economic crisis

the role of consumption patterns demand and technological factors on the recent evolution of co2 emissions in a group of advanced economies changes in production structures and modifications of patterns of consumption are key factors in the fight against environmental harm initiatives such as agenda 21 promoted by the un highlight the need to evaluate the relationships among factors of production and consumption innovation and demographics and the environment in the attainment of sustainable development in this context our work studies in depth those factors underlying the economic activity of households in a representative group of european union countries and the us within the framework of an input output model a structural decomposition analysis is considered in order to identify the weight that growth in demand changes in patterns of consumption changes in the distribution of income the substitution of inputs and changes in energy intensity have all had on the evolution of co2 emissions the work specifically seeks to identify common patterns and differential behaviors among productive sectors in the european social environment the results show that growth in demand and therefore in production largely absorbs the limited effect of technological and efficiency improvements and the incipient changes observed in consumption patterns

a comparative analysis of the nativity wealth gap this paper investigates the source of the gap in the relative wealth posi tion of immigrant households residing in australia germany and the united states our results indicate that in germany and the united states wealth difierentials are largely the result of disparity in the educational attainment and demographic composition of the native and immigrant populations while income difierentials are relatively unimportant in understanding the nativity wealth gap in contrast the relatively small wealth gap between australian and foreign born households exists because immigrants to australia do not translate their relative educational and demographic advantage into a wealth advantage on balance our results point to substantial cross national disparity in the economic well being of immigrant and native families which is largely consistent with domestic labor markets and the selection policies used to shape the nature of the immigration ow

decomposition analysis of gas consumption in the residential sector in ireland abstract to date decomposition analysis has been widely used at the macro economic level and for in depth analyses of the industry and transport sectors however its application in the residential sector has been rare this paper uses the log mean divisia index i lmdi i methodology to decompose gas consumption trends in the gas connected residential sector in ireland from 1990 to 2008 which despite an increasing number of energy efficiency policies experienced total final consumption growth of 470 the analysis decomposes this change in gas consumption into a number of effects examining the impact over time of market factors such as a growing customer base varying mix of dwelling types changing share of vacant dwellings changing size of new dwellings the impact of building regulations policy and other factors such as the weather the analysis finds the most significant effects are changing customer numbers and changing intensity the analysis also quantifies the impact of building regulations and compares it with other effects such as changing size of new dwellings by comparing the historical impact on gas consumption of policy factors and non policy factors this paper highlights the challenge for policy makers in achieving overall energy consumption reduction

co2 emissions from household consumption in india between 1993 94 and 2006 07 a decomposition analysis abstract co 2 emission from anthropogenic activities is one of the major causes of global warming india being an agriculture dependent country global warming would mean monsoon instability and consequent food scarcity natural disasters and economic concerns however with proper policy interventions co 2 emissions can be controlled input output analysis has been used to estimate direct and indirect co 2 emissions by households for 1993 94 1998 99 2003 04 and 2006 07 complete decomposition analysis of the changes in co 2 emissions between 1993 94 and 2006 07 has been done to identify the causes into pollution energy intensity structure activity and population effects according to broad household consumption categories results indicate that activity structure and population effects are the main causes of increase in co 2 emission from household fuel consumption to identify the causes at the sectoral level a second decomposition has been done for changes between 2003 04 and 2006 07 to identify the causes in the next stage finally alternative energy policy options have been examined for each consumption category to reduce emissions combined strategies of technology upgradation fuel switching and market management in order to reduce co 2 emissions for sectors like batteries other non electrical machinery construction and electronic equipments including television for which all the effects are positive need to be adopted

politico economic equilibrium and economic growth abstract we propose a notion of dynamic politico economic equilibrium which builds on two key assumptions policies are determined sequentially and agents are fully rational in their roles as both consumers and voters we examine a simple model of endogenous growth and infinitely lived agents where taxes on income are endogenous and where growth critically depends on the initial distribution of asset holdings we relate our equilibrium definition and results to existing literature on time consistency and on political economy and growth we show that our equilibria are time consistent and we argue that the choice of equilibrium concept might have important quantitative implications

impact of household consumption on co2 emissions danish household consumption increased by 58 over the period 1966 1992 while co2 emissions only increased by 7 using decomposition analysis we investigated the global co2 impact of danish household consumption from 1966 to 1992 our conclusion is that overall growth in private consumption but not changes in the composition of consumption is the key to understanding the increase in co2 emissions however the effect of growth in private consumption has been partly offset by substantial energy conservation in the energy supply and manufacturing sectors

apples to kangaroos a framework for developing internationally comparable carbon emission factors for crop and livestock products abstract consumption based greenhouse gas accounting which encompasses emissions from a nation s domestic final consumption as well as emissions embodied in imports is gaining favor in the climate change literature for its effectiveness and consideration of equity unfortunately the calculation of emissions embodied in the trade of agricultural food products is hindered by a lack of consistent and comparable emission factors food import quantities for every country are readily available through the united nations food and agriculture organization unfortunately the carbon emission factors necessary to calculate the embodied emissions in imported foods are largely unavailable or unreliable for many countries on top of this different methodologies for determining carbon emission factors provide varying estimates based on different assumptions the differences in these assumptions and methodologies can mean that attempts to compare and combine emissions based on factors from different countries become less of a comparison of apples to apples and more of an apples to oranges or even apples to kangaroos exercise this study proposes a method to combine the food and agriculture organization s available greenhouse gas data production data and agricultural yields and scaling it against benchmarks in the literature to estimate a time series of crop and livestock carbon emission factors that are internally consistent within the food and agriculture organization s data set and comparable from nation to nation the framework provided is then used to produce a sample set of carbon emission factors for chinese agricultural import suppliers to determine the embodied greenhouse gases in china s food imports

the responsibility for carbon emissions and carbon efficiency at the sectoral level evidence from china this work reviews benefit based principles to measuring responsibility for carbon emissions at the sectoral level using environmental input output analysis several new emissions multipliers are proposed to measure sectoral carbon efficiency these principles are used in an empirical analysis of carbon emissions in china and differences between the principles are compared the results indicate that all principles considered can prevent double counting of emissions but that different principles may lead to significantly different attributions of responsibility for carbon emissions and to different multiplier values for particular sectors electricity and heat supply is found to be the sector with the highest emissions responsibility under all but the consumer responsibility principle as well as the highest carbon multiplier under all principles however this sector s responsibility under producer responsibility principles is greater than that under other principles basic metals and transportation and post and telecommunication are among the top five sectors with the greatest responsibilities under all but the consumer responsibility principle whereas construction has the highest consumer responsibility among all sectors the pros and cons and policy implications of each principle are also discussed

energy consumption as a condition for per capita carbon dioxide emission growth the results of a qualitative comparative analysis in the european union abstract the problematic of climatic changes and the respective consequences raises the need to discuss the problem and define measures to control and or reverse them because one of the causes of climatic changes is the emission of greenhouse gases the european union defined the reduction of emissions as a main concern as well as increasing efficiency in the energy sector with the objective of analysing the main conditions affecting the growth of per capita emissions this paper uses a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis fsqca based on a sample of data from 2010 to 2014 the conditions evaluated were i gdp growth ii change in the share of gdp relating to private consumption iii change in the share of gdp relating to public consumption iv change in the share of gdp on investment v and energy consumption growth the main drivers contributing to reduced emissions were the crisis and energy consumption evaluation of the main factors affecting emissions growth is the main contribution of this study considering that economic growth is an obvious goal the european union must design measures encouraging investment in more efficient and less pollutant technologies which is also in accordance with oecd sustainability goals

energy requirements of sydney households supporting the lifestyles of the populations of modern cities requires vast quantities of natural resources and leads to environmental stresses such as air and water pollution research into the metabolism of cities therefore aims at understanding the physical flows into within and out of cities with a view to reducing the use of resources and the environmental impacts one important physical indicator is energy use most studies on cities only consider direct or end user energy consumption since the function of cities is to serve the lives of their residents indirect energy use in cities or energy embodied in the consumption of goods and services by its residents can be regarded as being as important as direct energy use however physical models of cities are extremely complex and have difficulty in dealing with boundary issues and hence the indirect resource requirements in this paper we use input output analysis and detailed household expenditure data to yield comprehensive energy use breakdowns for the 14 statistical subdivisions of sydney multivariate regression and structural path analysis spa are used to interpret the results clear correlations can be drawn between energy use and income household size age and degree of urbanity the structural path analysis is used to demonstrate how significant differences in lifestyles between inner and outer areas of sydney leads to different energy use characteristics this final consumption based approach to analysing the energy requirements for households has important implications for measures aimed at reducing energy use which tend to only consider direct energy use d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the impact of economic development and social political factors on ecological footprint a panel data analysis for 15 mena countries abstract this paper extends the work of al mulali and ozturk 2015 1 by re investigating the environment kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for 15 mena middle east and north african countries using the ecological footprint ef as a proxy of environmental degradation over the period 1975 2007 unlike the existing studies we augment the basic ekc relationship by considering life expectancy at birth fertility rate and political institutional index variables as new possible determinants of environmental degradation the estimation of this relationship has been conducted for all mena 15 countries for oil exporting and non oil exporting countries sub samples the results show that energy use worsens ecological footprint whereas real gdp per capita exhibits an inverted u shaped relationship with ef in oil exporting countries and in the sample as a whole i e the ekc hypothesis is validated for the non oil exporting countries the relationship between ef and economic growth is u shaped moreover our findings show that socio demographic variables such as urbanization life expectancy at birth and fertility rate improve the environment in the long term we also found that the improvement of political institutions in those countries has not been accompanied by a reduction of environmental stress the granger causality results support evidence of the existence of an error correction mechanism between the ef real gdp energy use and the fertility rate specifically in the short term we found strong evidence for bidirectional causality among the ecological real gdp and energy use variables

allocating ecological footprints to final consumption categories with input output analysis we present and discuss a method that allows the disaggregation of national ecological footprints by economic sector detailed final demand category sub national area or socio economic group this is done by combining existing national footprint accounts with input output analysis calculations in the empirical part are carried out by using supply and use tables for the united kingdom covering the reporting period 2000 ecological footprints are allocated to detailed household consumption activities following the coicop classification system and to a detailed breakdown of capital investment the method presented enables the calculation of comparable ecological footprints on all sub national levels and for different socio economic groups the novelty of the approach lies in the use of input output analysis to re allocate existing footprint accounts in the detail of disaggregation by consumption category and in the expanded use of household expenditure data this extends the potential for applications of the ecological footprint concept and helps to inform scenarios policies and strategies on sustainable consumption the method described in this paper can be applied to every country for which a national footprint account exists and where appropriate economic and environmental accounts are available the approach helps to save time in data collection and improves the consistency between ecological footprint estimates for a particular human society from different researchers for these reasons the suggested methodology includes crucial steps on the way towards a standardisation of ecological footprint accounts

income growth and atmospheric pollution in spain an input output approach abstract the relationships between economic growth and environmental pressures are complex since the early nineties the debate on these relationships has been strongly influenced by the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis which states that during the first stage of economic development environmental pressures increase as per capita income increases but once a critical turning point has been reached these pressures diminish as income levels continue to increase however to date such a delinking between economic growth and emission levels has not happened for most atmospheric pollutants in spain the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income growth and nine atmospheric pollutants in spain in order to obtain empirical outcomes for this analysis we adopt an input output approach and use namea data for the nine pollutants first we undertake a structural decomposition analysis for the period 1995 2000 to estimate the contribution of various factors to changes in the levels of atmospheric emissions and second we estimate the emissions associated with the consumption patterns of different groups of households classified according to their level of expenditure

co2 emissions from household consumption at the provincial level and interprovincial transfer in china abstract china is under great pressure to reduce co2 emissions ces meanwhile china s economy is more reliant on domestic consumption particularly household consumption than on exports so to achieve large scale ces reduction for china there is urgent need to study the co2 emissions from household consumption ces hc based on the environmentally extended multiregional input output model this paper not only calculates both the direct co2 emissions from household consumption dces ch and the indirect co2 emissions from household consumption ices ch at the provincial level in china but also splits ices ch into domestic and foreign ces the findings of this paper are as follows 1 between 2002 and 2012 ces hc in china increased significantly by 2 27 times from 1306 17 mt in 2002 to 2971 01 mt in 2012 the co2 emissions from urban household consumption ces uhc in china accounted for 75 of the total ces hc in 2012 2 the per capita ces hc in china increased from 1 02 t person in 2002 to 2 19 t person in 2012 there was a prominent disparity in the total ces and per capital ces hc among the provinces in china the per capita ces hc were larger in provinces with a higher level of urbanization and higher per capita income 3 the large scale interprovincial transfer of ices caused by household consumption mainly occurred either within the yangtze river delta the pearl river delta and the jing jin ji region or among these three regions in addition to service the household consumption the energy abundant provinces transferred a considerable amount of ces to eastern coastal provinces to achieve ces reduction consumption based strategies such as lifestyle changes should be required in parallel with strategies to reduce emission intensities on the producer side in china urban households should take more responsibility for the reduction of ces in china the interprovincial carbon leakage should be taken into account when making policies for ces reduction in china

unemployment insurance design inducing moving and retraining evidence suggests that unemployed individuals can sometimes aect their job prospects by undertaking a costly action like deciding to move or retrain realistically such an opportunity only arises for some individuals and the iden tity of those may be unobservable ex ante the problem of characterizing con strained optimal unemployment insurance in this case has been neglected in previous literature we construct a model of optimal unemployment insurance where multiple incentive constraints are easily handled the model is used to analyze the case when an incentive constraint involving moving costs must be respected in addition to the standard constraint involving costly unobserv able job search in particular we derive closed form solutions showing that when the moving retraining incentive constraint binds unemployment bene ts should increase over the unemployment spell with an initial period with low bene ts and an increase after this period has expired

accounting for nitrogen in denmark a structural decomposition analysis abstract this paper examines the environmental economic cycle for nitrogen in denmark based on nitrogen input and output from different economic sectors an input output model is employed together with a nitrogen mass balance to apportion total nitrogen loading by final demand and estimate export and import of nitrogen from foreign trade the changes in agricultural and industrial nitrogen loading from the mid 1960s to the late 1980s are broken down into changes related to different technological and economic factors the analysis reveals that technological change intensified agricultural production and economic growth especially rising exports are the key factors structural shifts changes in commodity mix in the household and production sectors generally being of less importance

the evolution of household induced value chains and their environmental implications abstract the growing fragmentation of production processes and expansion of international trade in the last decades have increased the scope and complexity of value added chains worldwide causing a rearrangement of sectoral linkages intra and inter regionally in terms of economic spillovers this implies that a dollar entering a particular economy nowadays follows a different path than a decade before permeating in longer interregional feedback loops and creating additional multiplier effects outside its region of origin however it also implies that the environmental burden that such this dollar generates has changed in scale and spatial distribution in this paper we explore the evolution of these paths over the period 1997 2008 and highlight the main drivers of observed structural changes that contribute to the surge or decline of the spatial distribution of economic spillovers and greenhouse gases emissions we specifically study the effects of an increase in income in the united states the country with the largest trade volume in the world we introduce an extended version of the temporal leontief inverse tli framework that allows tracing the evolutionary path of the american households multiplier in a quasi dynamic fashion isolating the contribution of expenditure patterns income trade and foreign structural change to the temporal evolution we find similar growing multiplier effects inside and outside the us due to services and manufacturing respectively but a declining local environmental burden due to changes in interindustry relations inside the us with declining manufacturing and a reduced emission intensity we also highlight the fragmentation process with declining foreign intraregional spillovers and increasing trade spillovers

energy requirements of consumption urban form climatic and socio economic factors rebounds and their policy implications household consumption requires energy to be used at all stages of the economic process thereby directly and indirectly leading to environmental impacts across the entire production chain the levels structure and determinants of energy requirements of household consumption therefore constitute an important avenue of research incorporating the full upstream requirements into the analysis helps to avoid simplistic conclusions which would actually only imply shifts between consumption categories without taking the economy wide effects into account this paper presents the investigation of the direct and indirect primary energy requirements of australian households contrasting urban suburban and rural consumption patterns as well as inter and intra regional levels of inequality in energy requirements furthermore the spatial and socio economic drivers of energy consumption for different categories of energy requirements are identified and quantified conclusions regarding the relationships between energy requirements household characteristics urban form and urbanization processes are drawn and the respective policy implications are explored

energy requirements of households in brazil abstract in this study we determine the total direct plus indirect energy requirements of a given set of brazilian households we use a generalized input output model in order to calculate the energy embodied in goods and services purchased by households of different income level in 11 capital cities of brazil our results show that on average the total energy intensity of household expenditure increases with income level although there is a considerable spread in energy intensities within income classes as well as disparities between regions of the country the total yearly average energy requirement per household in brazil in 1995 96 was 173 6 gj 61 of which was indirect with 32 8 gj for the lower income level 66 of which was indirect and 602 2 gj for the higher income level 62 of which was indirect of this total average energy requirement 76 was required for only three consumption categories utilities 31 mobility 28 and shelter 17 this analysis calls for the attention that has to be given not only to the direct energy consumption as motor fuels and electricity for example but also to the consumption categories that encompass an important part of the indirect energy requirement of households in capital cities in brazil

the impact of household consumption patterns on emissions in spain abstract the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between household consumption patterns and pollution in the spanish economy the analysis was carried using a social accounting matrix sam for the spanish economy prepared for 1999 taking the final demand of households as the exogenous account in the sam framework and combining this with the information provided by the household budget continuous survey on income and consumption ine 1999 we analyse the pollution produced by both the economy and households in order to satisfy consumption requirements we also consider the effects of income inequality on expenditure levels establishing a link between income level consumption patterns propensity to consume and co2 emissions

interactions in swiss households energy demand a holistic approach abstract this article analyzes the interactions and possible trade offs between direct energy consumption and embodied energy requirement of households in switzerland in order to assess the net impacts of standard energy policies focusing exclusively on direct energy use direct and embodied energy demand of swiss households are estimated by combining consumption data of a national expenditure survey with data on energy intensity from life cycle analysis using a system of equations and an instrumental variable approach we find that both domains are driven by same determinants but that there is no evidence for significant substitution between them we also find an increasing effect of income on both domains with particularly important effects on embodied energy from a policy perspective our findings highlight a concern that economic growth could bring about an increasing global energy demand through energy requirement for non energy commodities however the wide spread policies targeting direct energy are unlikely to cause a substantial shift in household consumption to embodied energy

analysis of carbon tax efficiency in energy industries of selected eu countries abstract a carbon tax is one of economic policy instruments of environmental protection supposed to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas ghg emissions a functional carbon tax aims at incorporating costs for elimination of environmental harm into the pricing decisions in terms of global climate change the carbon tax is usually imposed on the production distribution or consumption of carbon content fossil fuels the main aim of the study is to evaluate the carbon tax environmental effectiveness in the energy industries of selected eu countries namely sweden finland denmark ireland and slovenia to achieve the principal research objective the multiple panel regression method for the selected variables was used the synergy of other environmental policy tools being taken into account control variables employed were emission allowance price household final consumption expenditure corporate investments solid fuel consumption and renewable energy consumption the analysis results suggest that the carbon tax in the energy industry is environmentally efficient an increased tax rate allowing to reduce ghg production which is statistically significantly affected by the consumption of fossil fuels based on the estimated partial regression coefficient 0 01158 raising the carbon tax by one euro per tonne can cut annual per capita emissions by 11 58 kg

the redistributive roles of unemployment insurance and the dynamics of voting abstract public unemployment insurance is analyzed as the majority voting equilibrium policy of a dynamic stochastic economy abstracting from incentive effects we focus on redistribution some results are because of the distribution of heterogeneous employment opportunities public insurance may be democratically chosen even if complete private markets exist and because of the dynamics even when agents are intrinsically homogeneous the equilibrium benefit level or duration benefit schedule deviates from what has been described as optimal in the literature the effects of differences in the average frequency or duration of unemployment on equilibrium taxes and benefits are investigated with some unanticipated results

structural change and energy use the case of the manufacturing sector in taiwan abstract this paper examines the role of sectoral shift and improvements in energy intensity of individual industries in aggregate manufacturing sector energy intensity changes in taiwan during 1971 1985 the divisia index approach is employed to decompose sectoral shift and energy intensity effects a major finding of this analysis is that changes in energy intensities of individual industries were the main influence in changes in aggregate manufacturing sector fuel and electricity intensities during the period sectoral shifts were found to contribute very little to the energy intensity changes

china s carbon emissions from urban and rural households during 1992 2007 in china rapid economic growth has stimulated fast urban expansion and rural household income and consumption expenditure in current paper an input output method is used to determine the impact of china s increased urban and rural household consumption on carbon emissions the results shows that the direct and indirect co 2 emission from household consumption accounted for more than 40 of total carbon emissions from primary energy utilization in china in 1992 2007 the population increase expansion of urbanization and the increase of household consumption per capita all contribute to an increase of indirect carbon emissions while carbon intensity decline mitigates the growth of carbon emissions therefore at the domestic level household consumption is of great significance for co 2 emission which could be mitigated through changing the composition of goods and services consumed by households and switching to consumption pattern of less carbon intensive products the government must consider the substantial contribution of household consumption to carbon emissions when china is encouraging consumption in order to address the current global financial crisis c 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

employment turnover and the public allocation of unemployment insurance unemployment benefits are higher and turnover between unemployment and employment is lower in europe than in the u s we model the political determination of the unemployment insurance to explain these differences we show that saving and borrowing is a good substitute for unemployment insurance when turnover is high with high turnover the median voter thus prefers low unemployment insurance with low turnover generous unemployment insurance becomes more valuable if the median voter cannot bind future voters the voting cycle must however be long in order to support a high level of insurance endogenizing turnover produces the possibility of multiple political equilibria

domestic ghg emissions and the responsibility of households in spain looking for regional differences abstractthe aim of this article is to analyze the responsibilities of spanish households as final consumers for the generation of domestic greenhouse gases emissions ghg by region of residence distinguishing between nuts 1 and nuts 2 autonomous regions the motivation is the process of convergence experimented by spanish regions based on the strong economic growth experienced by the country until 2008 which could results in different emissions responsibilities because of different lifestyles and production structures we examine in depth the relationships between a representative household in each region and its patterns of consumption although we do find a relationship between per capita income and regional responsibility for pollution generation it is based on a demand scale effect which overlaps the effects of the regional consumption patterns thus in the richest regions madrid northeast east despite their having a less polluting pattern than other regions the level of per capita em

the environmental effect of car free housing a case in vienna abstract a case control study of the car free model housing project in vienna was conducted to evaluate whether people living in this settlement have more sustainable lifestyles than people living in comparable buildings in vienna another aim was to identify the lifestyle characteristics and household activities which significantly influence the environmental impact of the residents of the car free housing project and a control group the control group referred to as the reference settlement was chosen from a nearby building complex with similar characteristics but without the car free feature household consumption patterns were estimated based on interviews in combination with data from the austrian consumer expenditure survey and the national accounts the evaluation of household environmental impacts uses emissions estimates from the austrian national accounting matrices including environmental accounts and data from life cycle assessments households from the car free settlement have substantially lower environmental impacts in the categories of ground transportation and energy use their co 2 emissions of these two categories are less than 50 of those living in the reference settlement the households in the car free settlement have somewhat higher emissions in the categories air transport nutrition and other consumption reflecting the higher income per capita as a result the co 2 emissions are only slightly lower than in the reference settlement but the emissions intensity is 20 lower both household groups have significantly lower environmental impacts than the austrian average reflecting less car use and cleaner heating energy in vienna

intertemporal transfer institutions abstract we consider a single commodity overlapping generations model where at a cost institutions can be created or transformed to carry out intergenerational transfers we analyze the game with both strategic and cooperative methods characterizing the unique stationary equilibrium as well as the set of transfer institutions that belong to the core which we show to coincide with the consistent core we conclude that as long as the creation of an institution is costly it is possible to sustain positive transfers though those will be below the optimal level moreover the lower the costs the more efficient the transfer will be journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 c72 d23 e21 h55

a multisectorial matching model of unions abstract we develop an equilibrium matching model where unions have an important institutional presence monopolistic competition characterizes the goods market where only some sectors are unionized thus the model can vary the coverage of collective bargaining it can vary the degree of coordination between unions and alternatively consider national and sectorial unions calibration to the union premium implies a workers rent extraction parameter much lower than assumed in the matching literature we introduce unemployment insurance to study the interactions of policies with unions and find that unions only push for more generous benefits if this does not entail higher payroll taxes

imbalance of carbon emissions embodied in the us japan trade temporal change and driving factors abstract in us japan trade japan ran both economic export surplus and export co2 emission surplus with the us positive net monetary exports for japan were actually a kind of economic losses of the us while positive net export co2 emissions or net co2 emissions embodied in us japan trade were regarded as pollution transfer from u s to japan however due to lack of unified measurement units and standards between the two research fields it is difficult to directly assess whether positive effects of u s via carbon transfer outweigh negative effects caused by economic losses the study transforms absolute values of net monetary exports and net export co2 emissions from 2000 to 2011 in us japan trade into two ratios the ratio of net monetary exports to gdp of u s and the ratio of net embodied co2 emissions to total co2 emissions of the us by comparison the result shows that on average net monetary exports between u s and japan accounted for 0 45 of american gdp while ratio of net export emissions to aggregate consumption based co2 emissions of u s kept about 0 20 during the research period concerned which indicated that negative effects of economic losses in u s outweighed positive effects via carbon transfer in us japan trade furthermore a structural analysis of co2 emissions embodied in us japan trade during the 11 years is given the most significant driver was emission coefficients defined as co2 emissions per unit of energy consumption the driving force of emission coefficients led to dramatic reduction in co2 flows from japan to the us and thus caused decrease of net export emissions which also explained the major reason for the low ratio of export emissions to total co2 emissions of the us finally according to sectoral distributions of co2 flows between japan and the us emission sources of two countries presented different characteristics

social groups and co2 emissions in spanish households abstract this paper examines the social factors that underlie the composition of final demand and therefore determine the final volume of emissions the study throws light on the relationships between the parameters characterising spanish households income urban rural residence local population density head of household s level of education and social class and their behaviour with regard to consumption and the demand for goods and services on this basis we determine which consumption patterns are best aligned with sustainable growth and development our main conclusion is that the factors analysed determine the volume of emissions for each household in terms of their correlation with income which is the primary determinant of consumption patterns the methodology proposed combines linear sam models and econometric estimation of emissions elasticity with respect to spending