an energy efficient future a strategy for the uk abstract this article examines the national and international energy context within which a uk energy efficiency strategy would need to be formulated and also highlights the broader macroeconomic rationale for a more concerted approach it focuses particular attention upon the crucial role of the public sector including both the energy demand and supply sides and the need to review investment appraisal criteria in the energy sector

projection of energy intensive material production for bottom up scenario building abstract the production growth of energy intensive commodities in physical terms is an important component of bottom up emission scenarios and a relevant national circumstance to be incorporated in schemes for differentiating greenhouse gas emission allowances in this study average future growth rates of physical production are estimated for various branches of the energy intensive industry in a wide range of countries to this end historic patterns of growth were analysed on a per capita basis from the 1980s onwards per capita production levels of steel cement and refinery products tend to level off for all countries as per capita income increases these stabilisation levels however differ by a factor of 10 from country to country petrochemical and total paper and board production per capita on the contrary keeps on increasing with increasing income and per capita aluminium production shows a rather weak relationship to income aggregated annual growth of physical production of energy intensive commodities in this time period amounted to 5 9 in low 1 1 in middle and 0 8 in high income countries assuming that a country experiences declining growth rates of physical production as its income increases these aggregated figures may be used to estimate future growth rates projections thus based on recent growth trends suggest that earlier estimates may be improved

the econometrics of the environmental kuznets curve an illustration using australian co2 emissions four econometric issues associated with the estimation and testing of the environmental kuznets curve ekc are considered i model specification with respect to the order of the polynomial ii

the expansion of foreign direct investments discrete rational location choices or a cultural learning process it is recognized in the literature that experience may affect the cost and the uncertainty of operating in foreign markets and experience and market knowledge may therefore influence the location decisions of fdis economic theory does not however predict a general expansion pattern of fdis across industries on the other hand the theory associated with the internationalization process approach highlights the importance of cultural distance and predicts a movement from close to more distant markets as more experience is acquired by the firm the internationalization process approach is rooted in a behavioral theory of the firm

globalisation transport and the environment new perspectives for ecological economics this article aims to offer an overview of key issues centred around the relationship between globalisation and transport related environmental decay in the ecological economics literature of the past decade followed by an exploration of new research endeavours the scientific contribution of 10 years of ecological economics to issues of environmental sustainability in relation to international trade and transport is certainly not impressive hence also contributions from other environmental economics journals are considered two themes which apparently have received less attention in the ecological economics literature are addressed namely 1 the influence of global trade on the environment and 2 the environmental effects of international transport induced by trade the total effect of globalisation and transportation on the environment originates from complex changes in the scale structural technological and product effects of our industrial system various conflicts between global trade transportation and the environment are pointed out on the basis of these four effects the paper argues that the net effects of these changes are still uncertain ecological economics however should contribute to the challenging task of analysing more thoroughly the effects of global trade and transport on the environment

foreign entry cultural barriers and learning this paper examines the longevity of foreign entries hypotheses are developed on the mode start ups vs acquisitions and ownership structure wholly owned vs joint ventures in relation to cultural distance the hypotheses are tested within a framework of organizational learning using data on 225 entries that 13 dutch firms carried out from 1966 onwards results show that the presence of cultural barriers punctuates an organization s learning cultural distance is a prominent factor in foreign entry whenever this involves another firm requiring the firm to engage in double layered acculturation we also identify locational paths of learning the longevity of acquisitions is positively influenced by prior entries of the firm in the same country similarly the longevity of foreign entries in which the firm has a majority stake improves whenever the expanding firm engaged in prior entries in the same country and in other countries in the same cultural block

international inequalities in per capita co2 emissions a decomposition methodology by kaya factors in this paper we provide a methodology for decomposing international inequalities in per capita co2 emissions into kaya multiplicative factors and two interaction terms we use the theil index of inequality and show that this decomposition methodology can be extended for analyzing between and within group inequality components we can thus analyze the factors behind inequalities in per capita co2 emissions across countries between groups of countries and within groups of countries the empirical illustration for international data suggests some points firstly international inequality in per capita co2 emissions is mainly attributable to inequalities in per capita income levels which helps to explain its recent reduction while differences in carbon intensity of energy and energy intensity have made a less significant contribution this result is strongly influenced by the performance of china and india secondly the between group inequality component which is the biggest component is also largely explained by the income factor thirdly the within group inequality component increased slightly during the period something mainly due to the change in the income factor and the interaction terms in a few regions

do individual preferences explain the environmental kuznets curve abstract some economists maintain the optimistic view that individual preferences of rich people eventually lead to a virtuous circle relationship between rising income and environmental degradation in this article i review some of the models that establish a relationship between individual preferences and environmental quality these models provide a basis for discussion of the key role played by two factors individual preferences and technology they do not however capture the distributive conflicts that occur between different social groups in the process of defining environmental policy neither do they provide a good basis for distinguishing between environmental costs caused by the decisions of particular consumers and those which affect the same consumers this point is related to the various manners in which environmental costs are displaced displacement often occurs within a country for current costs and is even clearer and more relevant when costs are transferred across a great distance or to a remote future in such cases there are few incentives to reduce consumption or alter its composition displacement moreover can become a strategy pursued more or less consciously for maintaining high and rising levels of consumption without dealing with the associated environmental costs

economic growth and the evolution of material cycles an analytical framework integrating material flow and stock indicators abstract understanding the relationship between material cycles and economic growth is essential for relieving environmental pressures associated with material extraction production and consumption we developed an integrated analytical framework of dematerialization analysis incorporating both material flow and stock indicators a four quadrant diagram is designed to classify different stages of dematerialization based on the elasticity of material flow stock to economic output or well being we then conducted a case study on the long term evolution of aluminum cycle in the u s and found that different material flow and stock indicators decoupled from gross domestic product gdp growth in a clear sequential pattern flows closer to the beginning of the aluminum cycle e g primary aluminum production decoupled from gdp earlier than flows closer to the final consumption stage e g consumption of final products in use stock of aluminum decoupled from gdp much more slowly than any flow indicator and had just reached the status of relative decoupling around 2000 this phenomenon is determined by the fact that different causes of dematerialization such as import substitution and secondary material recycling take effect at different stages of economic development comprehensive understanding of dematerialization depends on in depth analysis on material economy relationships from an integrated stock and flow perspective

platform investments and volatile exchange rates direct investment in the u s by japanese electronic companies this study examines the effects of previous entry on the subsequent decisions of japanese electronics companies to invest in the united states by gathering data at the firm level the empirical analysis provides a fine grain sorting out of firm and industry effects on foreign direct investment decisions the findings show that investment behavior is highly heterogeneous across firms and reflects their individual technological capabilities and their history of previous investments in the united states real exchange rate levels are also important the results suggest that initial investments serve as platforms for subsequent entry with the timing of entry triggered by movements in real exchange rates copyright 1996 by mit press

uncertain outcomes of foreign investment determinants of the dispersion of profits after large acquisitions when u s firms make large international acquisitions the unpredicted component of their profits over the next five years increases with the relative size of the acquired firm degree of product diversification and reliance on r d assets the unpredicted component declines with the acquirer s size experience and previous profits transitory and longer run unpredicted components are distinguished

economic growth and emissions reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental kuznets curves abstract recent empirical research indicates that certain types of emissions follow an inverted u or environmental kuznets curve ekc as income grows this regularity has been interpreted as a possible de linking of economic growth and patterns of certain pollutants for developed economies in this paper the empirical basis of this result is investigated by considering some statistical particularities of the various ekc studies performed it is argued that the inverted u relationship between income and emissions estimated from panel data need not hold for specific individual countries over time based on insights from intensity of use analysis in resource economics an alternative growth model is specified and estimated for three types of emissions co2 nox and so2 in four countries netherlands uk usa and western germany it is found that the time patterns of these emissions correlate positively with economic growth and that emission reductions may have been achieved as a result of structural and technological changes in the economy sustainable growth is defined as the rate of economic growth that does not lead to growth in emissions its rate is calculated for each type of emission and country based on estimated parameter values the resulting indicators reflect a balance between the positive influence of growth and negative influence of structural change and technological progress on emission levels

developments in the throughput income relationship theoretical and empirical observations abstract it has been suggested that the relationship between income and the associated environmental pressure in terms of derived materials inputs and pollution levels may take an inverted u shape indicating a delinking of environmental pressure from economic growth in relation to rising per capita incomes the likelihood of such a relationship being persistent is discussed in the context of a simple macro model of industrial metabolism and the possibility of relinking clearly emerges data on specific indicators of environmental pressure i e the throughput of materials energy and the volume of transport in 19 countries have been used to investigate patterns of delinking the results suggest that delinking may not be persistent already some advanced economies may be entering a new period of relinking the relationships between environmental pressure and welfare in the medium long term may be n shaped rather than inverted u shaped

green accounting for a sustainable economy policy use and analysis of environmental accounts in the philippines abstract statisticians avoid getting involved in data analysis leaving data users on their own in interpreting the results of their work this is particularly unfortunate in a new area of applied statistics such as environmental accounting with which few are really familiar earlier this year data producers and users explored in a national seminar possible policy applications of the results of a green accounting project in the philippines the main findings of the author s contribution to the seminar on which the present paper is based are that environmental accounts 1 present evidence of sustainable economic performance in the country during the relatively short time period of 1988 1994 2 provide information for environmental cost internalization 3 may guide investment to environmentally sound production processes 4 help to specify and monitor policies of natural wealth conservation distribution and management and 5 reveal major data gaps the paper concludes that environmental accounts help to assess the sustainability of economic growth in terms of broadly defined capital maintenance the sustainability of development however would have to be measured by alternative or supplementary physical indicators linked to quantifiable standards or targets

determinants of the share of equity sought in cross border acquisitions the extent of ownership in foreign market entry is an important topic in the entry mode literature yet the determinants of the share of ownership sought in cross border acquisitions cbas have not received much research attention drawing on multiple theoretical explanations we develop and test hypotheses on factors influencing the share of equity sought by foreign firms in cbas findings based on a sample of cbas by us firms show that the share of equity sought is influenced by many factors including the cost of valuing local firm assets difficulty in integrating local firm managers in culturally distant countries the cost of separating desired assets from the rest of the local firm and the cost of resource commitment under exogenous uncertainty

the relationships of carbon dioxide emissions and income in a newly industrialized economy this study investigates the carbon dioxide co2 emissions patterns in coordination with the economic development of taiwan the resulting quadratic relationship between emissions and income are partly due to the structural change of energy supply in taiwan with the introduction of nuclear energy in 1980 to 1986 this relationship is quite unique and different from the n shaped relationships in some developed countries de bruyn and opschoor 1997 friedl and getzner 2003 the co2 emissions in taiwan increase with the increasing imports of raw materials for economic activities and the increasing use of electricity there is no evidence that the substantial increase of taiwan s service sector contributed to slowing its co2 emissions

toward consilience between biology and economics the contribution of ecological economics abstract during its ten year history ecological economics has made a real difference in the way economists look at the natural world and in the way biologists look at the economy in this survey article we examine the contributions to the journal in terms of e o wilson s concept of consilience that is his argument that the methods and assumptions of any field of study should be consistent with the known and accepted facts in other disciplines in particular we examine the contributions of ecological economics to reconciling the economic theory of the consumer and producer with biophysical reality

energy intensity co2 emissions and the environmental kuznets curve the spanish case this article analyses the role of energy intensity and the relationship between co2 emissions and primary energy in order to explain the evolution of co2 emissions by unit of real gdp it also distinguishes two different meanings of co2 emissions kuznets curve hypothesis the weak and the strong sense it considers the case of spain in the period 1972 1997 as an example in which there is not any evidence supporting this hypothesis in either sense

do international acquisitions by emerging economy firms create shareholder value the case of indian firms while overseas acquisitions by emerging economy firms are gaining increased attention from the business press our understanding of whether and why this inorganic mode of international expansion creates value to acquirer firms is limited we argue that international acquisitions facilitate internalization of tangible and intangible resources that are both difficult to trade through market transactions and take time to develop internally thus constituting an important strategic lever of value creation for emerging economy firms furthermore the magnitude of value created will be higher when the target firms are located in advanced economic and institutional environments country markets that carry the promise of higher quality of resources and therefore stronger complementarity to the existing capabilities of emerging economy firms an event study of 425 cross border acquisitions by indian firms during 2000 2007 supports our predictions

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

linking analyses and environmental kuznets curves for aggregated material flows in the eu abstract the relationship between economy and environmental impacts has been an essential topic in the discussion on environmental problems for a long time from the 1990s this relationship has gained a position in environmental policy as well de coupling the use of natural resources from economic growth has been set as one of the policy goals in the sixth environmental action programme by the european commission in the scientific discussion the concept of environmental kuznets curve deals closely with the de coupling or de linking phenomenon aggregated material flows on the other hand have often been considered as a macro level proxy of environmental degradation different methods or approaches have been designed for sustainability or carrying capacity evaluation as well the objective of this article is i to discuss the possibilities and limitations of using environmental and economic indicators in the sustainability analysis at the macro level ii to present a theoretical framework for the linking analysis including a classification of the degrees of de linking re linking environmental impacts from to economic growth and iii to give an empirical example by using indicators of direct material flows as a proxy of environmental degradation and by applying the framework into the european union and its 15 member countries the results show that the trend in the european union is a weak de linking of material flows from economic growth during the years 1980 2000 in other words material intensity of the economy has generally decreased due to increased efficiency but the absolute amount of material use has increased although at a lower rate of increase than economic growth on the other hand there is a quite large variation between different eu member countries however absolute decrease in the use of materials cannot be found as a continuous trend between the years 1980 and 2000 in any of the studied eu member countries

examining market power in the european natural gas market in this paper we develop a mixed complementarity equilibrium model for the european natural gas market this model has producers as cournot players with conjectured supply functions relative to their rivals as such these producers can withhold production to increase downstream prices for greater profits the other players are taken to be perfectly competitive and are combined with extensive pipeline seasonal and other data reflecting the current state of the market four market scenarios are run to analyze the extent of market power by these producers as well as the importance of pipeline and storage capacity

an assessment of the measurement of performance in international business research a sizeable body of international business ib research is devoted to building knowledge about the determinants of organizational performance a key precursor to accurately diagnosing why some organizations succeed in the international marketplace while others struggle is operationalizing performance appropriately yet to date no systematic investigation has considered how well ib research measures performance we examine the measurement of performance in 96 articles published in the academy of management journal administrative science quarterly journal of marketing journal of marketing research journal of international business studies management science organization science a nd thestrategic management journal between 1995 and 2005 the findings reveal that most studies do not measure performance in a manner that captures the multifaceted nature of the construct we describe the implications of these results and offer suggestions for improving future practice journal of international business studies 2008 39 1064 1080

foreign direct investment co2 emissions nexus in middle east and north african countries importance of biomass energy consumption abstract this study examines the association between foreign direct investment fdi and carbon emissions for the middle east and north african mena region in 1990 2015 including biomass energy consumption as an additional determinant of carbon emissions we apply the generalized method of moments gmm to validate the existence of the pollution haven hypothesis phh the n shaped association is also validated between fdi and carbon emissions the link between economic growth and carbon emissions is inverted u and n shaped that is it satisfies the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypotheses biomass energy use lowers carbon emissions and the causality analysis reveals that fdi causes co2 emissions clearly the results confirm the existence of a feedback effect between economic growth and carbon emissions the connection between biomass energy use and co2 emissions is also bidirectional the empirical findings suggest policy makers to design comprehensive trade and energy policies by targeting the cleaner production practices for not only to ensure environmental sustainability but also to fulfil the objectives of sustainable development goals

sharing resources the global distribution of the ecological footprint abstract this paper examines how the human demand on bioproductive lands as measured by the ecological footprint is distributed across the globe using methods commonly used to measure the distribution of income measuring the distribution of natural resource use will be necessary to achieve an economy that is sustainable just and efficient currently different nations place different demands on the environment i e the ecological footprint is not evenly distributed across the globe calculation of the gini coefficient for total ecological footprint and its components explains the sources of inequality in overall resource use calculation of the atkinson index shows how inequality in the ecological footprint is related to the inequality of income and environmental intensity

internalization an event study test abstract the internalization theory of multinational firms proposes that direct international investment occurs when a firm has information related intangible assets with public good properties we find that firms with characteristics suggesting the presence of information based assets experience a significantly positive stock price reaction upon announcing a foreign acquisition on the other hand firms apparently lacking such assets experience at best zero abnormal returns upon announcing overseas acquisitions

cross border acquisition abandonment and completion the effect of institutional differences and organizational learning in the international business service industry 1981 2001 based on the concepts of north s 1990 political economy of national institutions and economic behavior we investigate how formal and informal institutional features influence the likelihood that a cross border acquisition deal will be completed as well as the time taken for its completion after announcement additionally we study how past experience with completed acquisition deals moderates the effects of institutional differences we focus on a relatively new context the pre completion stage of acquisition processes we test our hypotheses using data from 2389 announced cross border acquisition deals in the international business service industry 1981 2001 we find that differences in national formal and informal institutions explain part of the variation in the likelihood that an announced cross border acquisition deal will be completed as well as the duration of the deal making in addition organizational learning moderates the effects of institutional distance past experience with completed cross border acquisition deals increases the likelihood of a subsequent deal completion in institutionally closer environments but shortens the deal duration in institutionally distant environments

economic models for the environmental kuznets curve a survey abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc refers to an inverted u shaped relationship between some pollutant level and per capita income i e the environmental quality deteriorates at early stages of economic growth and subsequently improves at a later stage since the early 1990s a considerable number of empirical studies have been conducted on the ekc and although there is no conclusive proof it has been recognized that the ekc emerges as an empirical regularity however some recent studies cast doubt on the concept and methodology of empirical results and evidence of the existence of the ekc has been questioned in fact how economic growth affects the environmental quality i e the shape of the ekc is still controversial in order to identify the actual relationship between the environmental quality and economic growth it is essential to develop economic models from various points of view this paper overviews the current stage of theoretical models that explain such relationship

ownership versus competition efficiency in public enterprise certainly the introduction of product market competition into potentially competitive or at least contestable markets can improve performance to take just one example morrison and whinston 1986 1986 estimate that even in the imperfectly contestable u s airline industry the annual u s welfare gains from deregulation have been around 6 billion

environmental kuznets curve and financial development in pakistan abstract in this study we analyzed the effects of financial development per capita real income the square of per capita real income per capita energy consumption and openness on per capita co 2 emissions for pakistan during 1972 2013 the bound f test for cointegration yielded evidence of a long term relationship among these variables the results confirm the existence of an environmental kuznets curve in pakistan for both the short and long term this finding indicates that at the initial stage of development the level of co 2 increases with income and after some threshold level of income this relationship may change from positive to negative as more efficient infrastructure and energy efficient technology are implemented during the development process of the country the findings of this study also reveal a significantly positive sign for the coefficient of financial development suggesting that financial development has occurred at the expense of environmental quality the results further indicate that the key contributing factors to carbon emissions in pakistan are income energy consumption and financial development in addition the openness variable has no significant influence on carbon emission in either the short or long term

the use of physical indicators for industrial energy demand scenarios abstract scientific information on the size and nature of the threat of climate change is needed by politicians in order to weight their decisions computerised models are extremely useful tools to quantify the long term effects of current policies this paper describes a new modelling approach that allows formulation of industrial energy demand projections consistent with the assumptions for scenario drivers such as gdp and population in the model a level of industrial production is used as a key variable and we define it in physical units rather than in monetary units the aim of this research is to increase insights that come with long term energy demand scenarios this research clearly shows that physical indicators provide additional insights in scenario analysis the use of physical indicators instead of monetary indicators seems to affect the energy scenarios significantly the differences with monetary indicators are larger in developing regions than in oecd regions we conclude that an integrated energy and materials approach reveals developments that are hardly visible using a monetary approach moreover this research shows the potential and benefits of the use of physical indicators for scenario development

energy consumption carbon emissions and economic growth nexus in bangladesh cointegration and dynamic causality analysis abstract the paper investigates the possible existence of dynamic causality between energy consumption electricity consumption carbon emissions and economic growth in bangladesh first we have tested cointegration relationships using the johansen bi variate cointegration model this is complemented with an analysis of an auto regressive distributed lag model to examine the results robustness then the granger short run the long run and strong causality are tested with a vector error correction modelling framework the results indicate that uni directional causality exists from energy consumption to economic growth both in the short and the long run while a bi directional long run causality exists between electricity consumption and economic growth but no causal relationship exists in short run the strong causality results indicate bi directional causality for both the cases a uni directional causality runs from energy consumption to co 2 emission for the short run but feedback causality exists in the long run co 2 granger causes economic growth both in the short and in the long run an important policy implication is that energy electricity as well can be considered as an important factor for the economic growth in bangladesh moreover as higher energy consumption also means higher pollution in the long run policy makers should stimulate alternative energy sources for meeting up the increasing energy demand

revisiting the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis evidence from the asean 5 countries with structural breaks abstractthis paper tests if the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis exists for asean 5 countries in an annual sample data that covers 1971 2013 by utilizing auto regressive distributed la

a strategic model of european gas supply gasmod abstract this paper presents a model of the european natural gas supply gasmod which is structured as a two stage game of successive natural gas exports to europe upstream market and wholesale trade within europe downstream market and which explicitly includes infrastructure capacities we compare three possible market scenarios cournot competition in both markets perfect competition in both markets and perfect competition in the downstream with cournot competition in the upstream market eu liberalization we find that cournot competition in both markets is the most accurate representation of today s european natural gas market where suppliers at both stages generate a mark up at the expense of the final customer double marginalization our results yield a diversified supply portfolio with newly emerging lng exporters gaining market shares enforcing competition in the european downstream market would lead to lower prices and higher quantities by avoiding the welfare reducing effects of double marginalization binding infrastructure capacity restrictions strongly influence the results and we identify bottlenecks mainly for intra european trade relations whereas transport capacity in the upstream market is globally sufficient in the cournot scenario

self organization and sustainability energetics of evolution and implications for ecological economics abstract in the 1920s alfred lotka suggested that evolution results both in an increasing total energy flow through the biosphere and in increasing energy efficiency of biological processes later authors attempted to generalize lotka s conjectures and to transform them into general evolutionary laws these laws are derived from the laws of thermodynamics and it is frequently argued that they also apply to the development of economic systems in the present paper an alternative interpretation of the lotka principles is suggested which starts from the self organization of dissipative structures self organization concepts from ecological and evolutionary economics are integrated on this basis energetic regularities in evolutionary processes are interpreted as emergent properties of competitive self organization given the close relationship between energy dissipation in economic processes and various environmental problems thermodynamic effects of economic evolution are of practical policy relevance the evolutionary perspective taken here implies that policy measures toward sustainable development will primarily have to affect the kinds of innovative behavior triggered in competitive processes

the impact of opec on east asian oil import security a multidimensional analysis abstract east asian countries such as china japan and south korea are major importers in the international oil market therefore oil import security is critical to sustainable economic development in these countries this paper uses a modified two stage dea like model to investigate the impact of the organization of petroleum exporting countries opec on oil import security in the east asian region over time specifically three dimensional variables were introduced to the model the opec internal dimension the opec and asian country interaction dimension and the international external dimension the empirical results show a substantial difference between china and the other two countries in terms of these dimensions although the impact of opec on china s oil security has increased over time its impact on japan has declined political uncertainty in opec countries and oil price volatility are the major issues for china whereas cost is the key area of concern for japan south korea s concerns are less clear the results of this study lay an important foundation for discussing policy issues involved in regional cooperation integration and sustainable growth in the east asian region

stackelberg nash cournot equilibria characterizations and computations the supply side of an oligopolistic market supplying a homogeneous product noncooperatively is modeled in this market there is one leader and n followers the followers operate under the cournot assumption of zero conjectural variation and are accordingly called cournot firms the leader called a stackelberg firm specifically takes into account the reaction of the cournot firms to its output for this situation we study the behavior and implications of the joint cournot reaction curve as generated by plausible economic market assumptions in particular we study the existence and uniqueness of a stackelberg nash cournot equilibrium in addition we prescribe an efficient algorithm to determine a set of equilibrating output quantities for the firms

ecological restructuring for sustainable development evidence from the australian economy abstract the possibility of reconciliation between economic growth and environmental quality has been foreshadowed by several influential reports over the last decade the potential basis for reconciliation lies in delinking economic growth from material and energy throughput especially through ecological restructuring toward modes of production consumption and trade which are less environmentally intensive so far empirical studies of delinking and ecological restructuring have shown conditional improvements in a small number of industrialized countries mostly high income european economies however there are reasons to believe that the situation may vary in natural resource based economies such as australia due to differences in trade and economic structures and incentives achieving global sustainable development will hinge upon prospects for ecological restructuring in all nations some of the central concepts of ecological restructuring are reviewed and extended to an empirical search for signs of delinking in australia to do this time series trends in physical quantities of seven environmentally significant factors are examined i e energy freight cement paper steel aluminium and plastic the factors serve as proxies for economic activity of a particularly environmentally intensive nature three dimensions are analyzed material intensity absolute throughput and per capita throughput the results show that promising trends in the 1980s have not persisted in the face of relatively high population growth and economic growth some implications for ecological restructuring as a basis for sustainable development in natural resource based economies are discussed in light of evidence from australia

material accounting in a macroeconomic framework forecast of waste generated in manufacturing industries in norway this paper analyses the generation of waste inproduction processes using a technique based onthe physical law of conservation of mass according to this law mass going into aproduction process must equal the mass comingout of the same process the paper uses thismass balance perspective to refine a previouslydeveloped technique for forecasting wastequantities a macroeconomic model predicts theuse of intermediate inputs and production inmonetary units and by multiplying thesevariables with weight conversion factors weestimate physical amounts going into and out ofproduction the difference between input andoutput the residual consists of discharges toland water and air we predict a growth in theresiduals from manufacturing industries of 74 from 1993 to 2010 this growth is partly explained by an anticipated growth in material intensity

exports and foreign distributional activities evidence on japanese firms in the united states the relationship between japanese exports to the united states and distributional activities of japanese affiliates in the u s wholesale trade sector is examined by using a sample of forty four three digit japanese exporting industries matched to u s industries the statistical analysis provides evidence supporting the hypothesis that japanese direct investment in distribution has strongly promoted japanese exports to the u s markets copyright 1991 by mit press

mitigating risk in international mergers and acquisitions the role of contingent payouts previous internationalization studies have focused on the entry modes employed by multinational firms but have not considered the contractual heterogeneity that underlies each mode it is important to examine these contractual details as the firm may be able to obtain some of the benefits typically associated with one entry mode while selecting another in the case of international mergers and acquisitions m as a key contractual variable is whether the parties agree to a performance contingent payout structure which can mitigate the risk of adverse selection in this paper we examine the antecedents of contingent payouts in the form of earnouts and stock payments the results indicate that firms lacking international and domestic acquisition experience turn to contingent payouts when purchasing targets in high tech and service industries firms tend to avoid contingent payouts in host countries with problems with investor protection and legal enforceability

energy consumption carbon emissions and economic growth in china abstract this paper investigates the existence and direction of granger causality between economic growth energy consumption and carbon emissions in china applying a multivariate model of economic growth energy use carbon emissions capital and urban population empirical results for china over the period 1960 2007 suggest a unidirectional granger causality running from gdp to energy consumption and a unidirectional granger causality running from energy consumption to carbon emissions in the long run evidence shows that neither carbon emissions nor energy consumption leads economic growth therefore the government of china can purse conservative energy policy and carbon emissions reduction policy in the long run without impeding economic growth

a model of the operation and development of a national oil company we present a model of the exploration and development activities of a national oil company noc which uses similar technology to a private firm to extract a depletable resource however unlike the private firm the noc may have a wider range of objectives than maximizing the present value of profits specifically we assume an objective function that balances firm profitability against a political desire to favor domestic consumer surplus and domestic employment we find that the non commercial objectives faced by a noc tend to reinforce each other in their effects on profitability the timing of cash flows and employment

asian premium or north atlantic discount does geographical diversification in oil trade always impose costs abstract we develop a global oil trade model gotm to examine the ability of large crude oil exporters or importers to influence inter regional price differentials by allocating their sales or purchases respectively among different crude oil consuming or producing regions the model is based on the trade offs among freight costs qualities of the crude oils traded and the technical configurations of refineries that process the crude oil our reference case based on 2012 data minimizes the sum of freight costs and the costs of processing sub optimal grades of crude oil at a refinery we model a large middle east exporter allocating its supply regionally as the leader in a stackelberg game where all other producers and importers are price takers on the competitive fringe we then examine the ability of a coalition of importers in asia to make countervailing strategic purchases rather than act as a price taker we find that large sellers can increase their revenues while diversifying their customer base by allocating volumes to more distant markets if by doing so they capture locational rents from more proximate buyers large buyers are unable to reduce their costs compared to the competitive market outcome by adopting countervailing purchase strategies but have the potential to disrupt the rent seeking of large sellers

ekc type transitions and environmental policy under pollutant uncertainty and cost irreversibility abstract previous studies have suggested that some pollutant levels first increases due to the economic growth and then start decreasing the pattern being called the environmental kuznets curve ekc we examine ekc type transitions of pollutant levels not with respect to economic growth but more generally in time assuming that each policy maker optimally executes the two switching options of regulation and unregulation for pollution the switching dynamics of environmental policy can be described by an alternating renewal process it is shown that the double laplace transform of transition density of a pollutant level can be obtained by a novel application of renewal theory the expected level of overall pollutants is then calculated numerically and found to exhibit either a shaped or an n shaped pattern in time our results present a simple explanation for the ekc type transitions of pollutant levels within a real options framework

decoupling analysis of world economic growth and co2 emissions a study comparing developed and developing countries abstract this study discusses decoupling trends in world economic growth and co2 emissions based on decoupling theories the decoupling trends of economic growth and co2 emissions in typical developed and developing countries in 1965 2015 are compared by using an oecd decoupling factor model and tapio elastic analysis tea method and the igtx decoupling model on this basis this study evaluates correlations of these three decoupling models by employing the spearman s rank correlation coefficient the research indicates that owing to the igtx decoupling model being easily affected by other non environmental factors the shorter the research period of interest the more easily the decoupling indices distort while the accuracy of the tea method is not limited by the length of the research period of interest with respect to the overall decoupling trend the research shows that 1 strong decoupling is found in developed countries and slightly increases in the stabilisation thereof the decoupling state in the united kingdom and germany is more stable than that of the united states and france 2 developing countries demonstrate weak decoupling that fluctuates significantly and lacks regularity the stabilisation and optimisation of china in decoupling process are better than those of brazil and india finally according to research conclusions relevant policies and suggestions are proposed in view of energy savings and emissions reduction in developing countries

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

empiricism in ecological economics a perspective from complex systems theory economies are open complex adaptive systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium and neo classical environmental economics seems not to be the best way to describe the behaviour of such systems standard econometric analysis i e time series takes a deterministic and predictive approach which encourages the search for predictive policy to correct environmental problems rather it seems that because of the characteristics of economic systems an ex post analysis is more appropriate which describes the emergence of such systems properties and which sees policy as a social steering mechanism with this background some of the recent empirical work published in the field of ecological economics that follows the approach defended here is presented finally the conclusion is reached that a predictive use of econometrics i e time series analysis in ecological economics should be limited to cases in which uncertainty decreases which is not the normal situation when analysing the evolution of economic systems however that does not mean we should not use empirical analysis on the contrary this is to be encouraged but from a structural and ex post point of view

the sufficiency strategy would rich world frugality lower environmental impact abstract one alleged weapon against unsustainable environmental impact is for the wealthy to consume less this sufficiency strategy is to complement the efficiency strategy of lowering ratios of resource inputs to economic outputs the former would reduce the affluence factor in i pat the latter the technology factor that the latter strategy suffers from a consumption rebound is widely recognized this paper identifies a similar rebound when the affluence factor is autonomously lowered the lower initial demand lowers prices which in turn stimulates new demand by others the strategy moreover addresses only the rich raising questions of its theoretical maximum efficacy its proponents usually conflate frugality with the north south dichotomy and intra generational with inter generational equity moreover there are difficulties with the supporting arguments that frugality is good for one s own sake as well as for the environment and that the rich should lead the way to living more lightly personal behaviour change is furthermore not a substitute for international political efforts finally since all changes in right side factors of the i pat equation change other right side factors such indirect attacks on impact should be abandoned in favor of supply and emissions quotas