the allocation of death in the vietnam war a public choice perspective in this paper we explore a political aspect of military choices in time of war we do not question the political origin of a military draft we assume a draft exists our interest centers on the following issue what is the probability that an individual will become a casualty in the war we model this problem as being influenced by politics in the sense that assignment to combat or non combat positions can be influenced by political considerations simply put casualties across u s states will be a function of the political influence especially in military affairs of a state s house and senate delegations ceteris paribus to test this hypothesis we develop an empirical model of casualties by state over the zenith of the vietnam war period 1965 1971 the model includes both political influence and relevant demographic variables

energy disruptions interfirm price effects and the aggregate economy in an economy with many imperfect competitors monopolistic competition firms that pass through higher oil prices during a disruption will affect the demand for firms in other industries firms that charge higher prices for their final product will include the effect on their own final product in their private decisions but will exclude the effect on the final products of other firms although a pecuniary externality these actions will reduce society s welfare unlike the case of a perfectly competitive market this situation creates a societal risk that is much wider than an externality in any single market policy interest shifts from one of punishing persian gulf oil producers to one of cushioning an industrialized economy from sudden disruptions caused by political and military conflicts although the value of reducing oil use depends upon a number of unknown parameters with wide distributions a representative numerical example suggests that it may approach 5 per barrel

residential energy demand in oecd countries and the role of irreversible efficiency improvements abstract after undergoing substantial changes during a period of high energy prices household energy demand did not rebound in times of declining energy prices as might have been expected hence other factors such as irreversible improvements in technical efficiency must be understood in order to describe both past and future household energy demand in this paper we consider irreversible efficiency improvements as a major reason for the moderate growth in energy demand after the plummeting of the oil price in 1985 we test different econometric models to take into account efficiency indicators the major conclusions of our investigation are i price elasticities are different for rising and falling prices for the latter they are close to zero implying a low rebound effect in the residential sector ii technical efficiency is an important parameter for describing and forecasting energy demand and iii income elasticities turn out to be higher once we incorporate indicators of technological efficiency in the process of estimating energy demand

the determinants of aggregate energy use in west germany factor substitution technological change and trade this paper examines the determinants of production related energy use in west germany over the period 1976 1994 the approach is to estimate a system of share equations for energy capital low skilled labor high skilled labor and materials in the west german production sector taking account of biased technological change and increasing trade orientation while technological change is found to be energy saving increased openness is energy using i e tends to increase the energy share factor substitution biased technological change and trade contribute to the year to year volatility of energy intensity in the proportion 66 30 4 the results are robust across several specifications examined

will small energy consumers be faster in transition evidence from the early shift from coal to oil in latin america abstract this paper provide evidence of the early transition from coal to oil for 20 latin american countries over the first half of the 20th century which does not fit the transition experiences of large energy consumers these small energy consumers had earlier and faster transitions than leading nations we also provide evidence for alternative sequences inverse revertible in the transition from coal to oil furthermore we demonstrate that leapfrogging allowed a set of follower economies to reach the next rung of the energy ladder oil domination 30 years in advance of the most developed economies we examine these follower economies where transition took place earlier and faster than the cases historically known in order to understand variation within the energy transitions and to expand the array of feasible pathways of future energy transitions we find that being a small energy consumer makes a difference for the way the energy transition takes place but also path dependence including trade and technological partnerships domestic energy endowment which dictates relative prices and policy decisions seem to be the variables that shaped past energy transitions

application of the translog model of energy substitution to developing countries the case of korea abstract while studies exist on the applications of the translog energy model in developed countries little is known about its application in developing countries to this end this paper investigates the long run sensitivities of energy demand to price changes and the degree of interfactor and interfuel substitution in the korean industrial sector we also uniquely disaggregate the industrial sector into nine manufacturing and three non manufacturing subsectors based on time series data obtained from the korea institute of energy and resources an energy demand model has been specified and estimated according to the translog approach the conclusions provide future directions for energy demand management policies in korea

on the portents of peak oil and other indicators of resource scarcity economists have studied various indicators of resource scarcity but largely ignored the phenomenon of peaking due to its connection to non economic physical theories of resource exhaustion i consider peaking from the economic point of view where economic forces determine the shape of the equilibrium extraction path within that framework i ask whether the timing of peak production reveals anything useful about scarcity i find peaking to be an ambiguous indicator if someone announced the peak would arrive earlier than expected and you believed them you would not know whether the news was good or bad however i also show that the traditional economic indicators of resource scarcity price cost and rent fare no better and argue that previous studies have misconstrued the connection between changes in underlying scarcity and movements in these traditional indicators

oil price shocks and real gdp growth empirical evidence for some oecd countries this study assesses empirically the effects of oil price shocks on the real economic activity of the main industrialized countries multivariate var analysis is carried out using both linear and non linear models the latter category includes three approaches employed in the literature namely the asymmetric scaled and net specifications evidence of a non linear impact of oil prices on real gdp is found in particular oil price increases are found to have an impact on gdp growth of a larger magnitude than that of oil price declines with the latter being statistically insignificant in most cases among oil importing countries oil price increases are found to have a negative impact on economic activity in all cases but japan moreover the effect of oil shocks on gdp growth differs between the two oil exporting countries in the sample with the uk being negatively affected by an oil price increase and norway benefiting from it

the stuttering energy transition in germany wind energy policy and feed in tariff lock in this article aims to examine whether the formulation of specific low carbon policy such as the feed in tariff for wind energy in germany can partly be a barrier to a comprehensive energy transition energiewende despite their short and medium term success these policies could create a long term lock in if they are formulated in a way that leads to a stagnation of systems innovation the research finds that while the share of wind energy has increased rapidly over time the feed in tariff and other low carbon policies and incentives have not been sufficient to achieve a socio technical regime transition in germany yet we suggest that the german feed in tariff has incorporated wind energy a niche innovation and wind energy actors pathway newcomers into a slightly modified socio technical regime that is rather similar to the earlier fossil fuel dominant socio technical regime

the politics of m a antitrust antitrust regulators play a critical role in protecting market competition we examine whether the political process affects antitrust reviews of merger transactions we find that acquirers and targets located in the political districts of powerful u s congressional members who serve on committees with antitrust regulatory oversight receive relatively favorable antitrust review outcomes to establish causality we use plausibly exogenous shocks to firm politician links and a falsification test additional findings suggest congressional members incentives to influence antitrust reviews are affected by three channels special interests voter and constituent interests and ideology in aggregate our findings suggest that the political process adversely interferes with the ability of antitrust regulators to provide independent recommendations about anticompetitive mergers

international and sectoral variation in industrial energy prices 1995 2015 energy price rises for industry are a major political concern access to cheap energy is often considered a key factor for the competitiveness of industry to enable international comparisons and to foster further empirical research on the impacts of energy price or tax differentials on a wide range of outcomes such as international trade and investment patterns we construct sector level energy prices for 12 industrial sectors in 48 countries for the period 1995 to 2015 our prices are constructed as weighted averages of fuel specific prices by fuel consumption we provide guidelines for the use of our energy price data which is made available for download as well as a set of stylized facts on major trends and variations and illustrative applications

carbon pricing effectiveness and equity abstract the 2015 paris agreement adopted the goal of limiting the rise in global mean temperature to 1 5 2 c above pre industrial levels carbon pricing can play a key role in meeting this objective a cap and permit system or alternatively a carbon tax indexed to a fixed emission reduction trajectory not only can spur cost effective mitigation and cost reducing innovation but also crucially can ensure that emissions are held to the target level the carbon prices needed to meet this constraint are likely to be considerably higher however than existing prices and conventional measures of the social cost of carbon this poses issues of distributional equity and political sustainability that can be addressed by universal dividends funded by carbon revenues

bureaucratic discretion or congressional control regulatory policymaking by the federal trade commission this paper extends stigler and peltzman s approach to regulation by incorporating a legislature the model yields comparative statics results and hence testable implications the paper then tests between two opposing approaches about regulatory agency behavior the first assumes agencies operate independently of the legislature and hence exercise discretion the second assumes that congress controls agency decisions the recent behavior of the federal trade commission provides the empirical setting substantial evidence is found for the specific predictions of the model including the hypothesis of systematic congressional influence over ftc decisions

labour supply tax evasion and the marginal cost of public funds an empirical investigation abstract in this paper we extend the concept of marginal cost of public funds itmcf to incorporate tax evasion in the labour market mcf values are also computed from various tax reforms applied to the province of quebec canada 1985 for this purpose a utility based labour supply model that allows for both regular and irregular work activities is used at the benchmark situation the mcf associated with an increase in marginal income tax rates ranges between 1 39 and 1 53 depending upon whether we consider rationing or not moreover the presence of the irregular sector accounts for between 0 02 and 0 05 of this mcf although small in magnitude the impact of the irregular sector increases rapidly with the level of marginal tax rates

energy taxes as a signaling device an empirical analysis of consumer preferences this paper presents an econometric study dealing with household demand in sweden the main objective is to empirically examine the differences in consumer reaction to the introduction of or the change in environmental taxes main focus is on environmental taxes as a signaling device the hypothesis is that the introduction of an environmental tax provides new information about the properties of the directly taxed goods this in turn may affect consumer preferences for these goods hence altering the consumption choice the result from the econometric analysis shows that all goods have negative own price elasticities and positive income elasticities concerning the signalling effect of environmental taxes the results are somewhat ambiguous the tax elasticity for energy goods used for heating seems to be significantly higher than the traditional price elasticity whereas the opposite seems to be the case for energy goods used for transportation

the coming sustainable energy transition history strategies and outlook abstract facing global climate change and scarce petroleum supplies the world must switch to sustainable energy systems while historical transitions between major energy sources have occurred most of these shifts lasted over a century or longer and were stimulated by resource scarcity high labor costs and technological innovations the energy transition of the 21st century will need to be more rapid unfortunately little is known about how to accelerate energy transitions this article reviews past transitions and factors behind them along with their time frames three modern case studies are discussed brazil which shifted from an oil based transportation system to one based on sugarcane ethanol success france which shifted from oil fired electric power to nuclear power success and the united states which attempted to shift from foreign oil to a mix of domestic energy resources failure lessons from these attempts to govern energy transitions are discussed several policy instruments to accelerate a transition are identified though even under ideal circumstances a global energy supply transition will be very slow given the need to simultaneously implement programs in countries with different political economies a greater focus on energy efficiency promotion of smart grids and possibly a new treaty should yield more timely results

evolution of erois of electricity until 2050 estimation and implications on prices abstract the eroi for energy returned on invested of an energy technology measures its ability to provide energy efficiently previous studies draw a link between the affluence of a society and the eroi of its energy system and show that erois of renewables are lower than those of fossil fuels logically concerns have been expressed that system wide eroi may decrease during a renewable energy transition first i explain theoretically that the erois of renewables themselves could then decrease as energy efficient fossil fuels would be replaced by less energy efficient renewables in the supply chain then using the multi regional input output model themis i estimate the evolution of erois and prices of electric technologies from 2010 to 2050 for different scenarios global eroi of electricity is predicted to go from 12 in 2010 to 11 in 2050 in a business as usual scenario but down to 6 in a 100 renewable one finally i study the economic implication of a declining eroi an inverse relation between eroi and price is suggested empirically even though theory shows that both quantities may move in the same direction

the optimal size of a tax collection agency the condition that characterizes the optimal size of a tax collection agency is derived and then given a simple interpretation in terms of excess burden the paper clarifies an earlier finding of sandmo which suggests that the optimal degree of enforcement is higher than a simple cost benefit calculation would indicate the appropriate condition is that at the margin the resource cost of increasing enforcement should equal the saving of excess burden due to the decline in exposure to risk the increased revenue gained from stricter enforcement does not enter the expression because it merely represents a transfer among the economy s identical agents

technological progress and change in market concentration in the u s 1963 77 what effect does r d induced technological progress have on market structure do the concentration ratios the most used indices of market structure increase or decrease in an industry that is faced with a high level of technological opportunity and exploits it through a high rate of r d this paper focusses on a model by nelson and winter as a theoretical starting point to deal with this question in the nelson and winter model concentration increases as a result of dynamic competition in the technologically progressive industries but their model does not allow entry and the effect on concentration may be reversed if the possibility of entry is considered empirically this paper shows that concentration ratios in the high r d industries have decreased in the united states during 1963 77

elasticities science or fiction abstract apart from discrepancies in statistical data series the most frequent source of inconsistencies among elasticity estimates is the model specification and the interpretation of empirical results this paper investigates this issue and in particular highlights the misconception that elasticities can scientifically and uniquely be determined by econometric techniques however it is common knowledge that econometric methods constitute a very good tool for analysing the past thus the main message of this exercise is that in the absence of complete specification there are important trends in the elasticities themselves such trends are very crucial and need to be interpreted if elasticities are to be used for forecasting purposes

the energy demand in the manufacturing sector of pakistan some further results abstract the purpose of this study was to re examine the role of energy in the manufacturing sector of pakistan using a partial equilibrium approach gl restricted cost function along with the factor demand equations were estimated using zellner s iterative procedure higher energy prices do not seem to adversely affect investment in capital substitution possibilities between energy and non energy inputs are very limited and therefore energy price hikes may directly affect the cost of production inter fuel cross price elasticities indicate that there are substitution possibilities between electricity and gas

oil supply disruptions and modelling methodologies the role of lp models abstract this paper has three main objectives first an argument is made that oil vulnerability is not a problem of the past but remains a significant concern for all oil consuming countries especially beyond 1990 second it is suggested that the severity of past disruptions can be attributed in part to physical and institutional constraints that prevented the oil market from reacting quickly to what were relatively minor supply disruptions the currently changing structure of the world oil market in particular the evolving sales agreements under which an increasing percentage of world oil is traded and the vertical integration of major opec members into areas such as refining could decrease the ability of the market to adjust to future disruptions third it is suggested that linear programming lp models offer unique capabilities in assessing the degree to which the world and domestic oil markets could adjust to short term supply disruptions given constraints on transport trade and refining possibilities imposed by the physical structures of those market sectors or by control of those sectors by increasingly powerful producing countries the assessment of this flexibility will help pinpoint areas needing attention and also contribute indirectly to the evaluation of short run demand elasticities for world oil the us department of energy s petroleum allocation pal model is used as an example of one lp model that can address such issues

on the inevitable return of higher oil prices abstract must oil prices eventually return to or rise above their 1980 peak levels or will history record that high oil prices were a passing phenomenon this article argues that their return to higher levels is inevitable many perhaps most energy analysts apparently accept this view but some do not among those who expect higher oil prices there is a split on the question of when most look to the 1990s but some say it will be a century or more

energy expenditure economic growth and the minimum eroi of society we estimate energy expenditure for the us and world economies from 1850 to 2012 periods of high energy expenditure relative to gdp from 1850 to 1945 or spikes 1973 74 and 1978 79 are associated with low economic growth rates and periods of low or falling energy expenditure are associated with high and rising economic growth rates e g 1945 1973 over the period 1960 2010 for which we have continuous year to year data for control variables capital formation population and unemployment rate we estimate that statistically in order to enjoy positive growth the us economy cannot afford to spend more than 11 of its gdp on energy given the current energy intensity of the us economy this translates in a minimum societal eroi of approximately 11 1 or a maximum tolerable average price of energy of twice the current level granger tests consistently reveal a one way causality running from the level of energy expenditure as a fraction of gdp to economic growth in the us between 1960 and 2010 a coherent economic policy should be founded on improving net energy efficiency this would yield a double dividend increased societal eroi through decreased energy intensity of capital investment and decreased sensitivity to energy price volatility

tax enforcement a public choice perspective federal income tax inforcement varies greatly across individual states while it is not known if this interstate variation enhances efficiency anecdotal evidence suggests it does not in this paper we apply the weingast moran model to the treasury and explore the relationship between the legislature and the irs specifically we model irs audit rates by state as a function of both political and efficiency considerations we find that the interstate differences in enforcement is influenced by efficiency considerations but also the irs shifts enforcement away from states represented by legislators who sit on committees with oversight responsibility for the irs

an analysis of china s coal supply and its impact on china s future economic growth many people believe that china s economic growth can continue almost indefinitely for a manufacturingbased economy such as china s to continue to grow it needs an adequate supply of inexpensive energy to date this energy growth has primarily come from coal but china s indigenous coal supplies are now falling short of the amount needed to support this growth in this situation the status of china s future coal supply will be very important for china s future economic development our analysis shows that china s ultimate recoverable coal reserves equal 223 6 10 9 mt and its production will peak between 2025 and 2030 with peak production of approximately 3 9 10 9 mt the extent to which china can import coal in the future is uncertain with rising coal demand this combination is likely to create a significant challenge to china s future economic development

three laws of energy transitions the paper formulates and explores a hypothesis on three general energy transition laws the law of stable long term energy costs to income ratio the law of improving energy quality and the law of growing energy productivity these laws are essential for shaping long term projections and checking for their consistency all three are rooted in amazingly stable in time and universal across countries energy costs to income ratios limited energy purchasing power sets up thresholds which if exceeded bring asymmetry to energy demand to price elasticity the author believes that the theoretical postulate on the substantial substitution among production factors which is used in the production functions theory may be incorrect in reality innovations mainly lead to the substitution of a low quality production factor with the same yet of a better quality improving energy quality with stable costs to income ratio is accompanied by growing energy productivity energy costs to income thresholds are indicators allowing for better projections of oil prices

income tax evasion labour supply and the equity efficiency tradeoff abstract this paper is an attempt to incorporate tax evasion into the analysis of optimum income taxation a model of variable labour supply with tax evasion is used to derive supply functions for labour in regular and irregular markets given taxpayer behaviour the government chooses tax rates penalties and the probability of detection to maximize a utilitarian social welfare function the results consist in the derivation of a formula for the optimum marginal tax rate and a characterization of the factors determining the choice between the penalty rate and the probability of detection as instruments for the control of tax evasion

interest group demand for taxation researchers have typically ignored the determinants of the tax structure of the public sector political scientists have concentrated their analyses on the expenditure side of the public ledgers while economists have avoided the issue by assuming that taxes are exogenously determined in this paper we have shown that a behavioral model of political interest groups can be employed to gain insights into the political selection of taxes the theory provides a general complement to the well documented analysis of special interest demand for public expenditures our analysis raises several important policy questions first is the influence of interest groups on the determination of tax systems desirable from a public policy perspective for example special interest groups dominated by high and middle income individuals may prefer regressive tax systems which reduce their own tax burden certainly the impact of interest groups on the well known regressivity of state and local tax systems is an area worthy of additional investigation second does the influence of interest groups lead to tax systems that unduly hamper economic efficiency and retard economic growth for example governments with economies dominated by a single industry may forsake diversity and economic development by selecting a tax system favorable to the major industry interest group demand for taxes may be a factor in explaining long run regional cycles such as the rise and fall of heavy manufacturing states such as the upper midwest this research has established that a link exists between special interest group demand for taxation and the structure of local tax systems however the extent to which these groups influence tax systems and the exact nature of this influence requires further research additional research may also provide insights into the control e g constitutional or legislative of interest group influence on taxes should it be determined that such control is necessary

optimal taxation and optimal tax systems the theory of optimal taxation has for the pas two decades been the reigning normative approach of taxation this paper argues that in its current state optimal tax theory is incomplete as a guide to action concerning many critical issues in tax policy it is incomplete because it has not yet come to terms with taxation as a system of coercively collecting revenues from individuals who will tend to resist the coercive nature of collection taxes implies that the resource cost of implementing a tax system have been and will continue to be a critical determinant of appropriate tax policy the paper first presents the three cornerstone propositions of optimal tax theory and then it discusses the influence of these propositions on recent tax policy developments it concludes by sketching an alternative to optimal taxation called the theory of optimal tax systems which embraces the insights of optimal taxation but also considers the technology of raising taxes and the constraints placed upon tax policy by that technology the optimal tax systems perspective is shown to shed light on the choice of tax instruments the problem of tax evasion and the appropriate tax treatment of capital income this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

dynamic translog and linear logit models a factor demand analysis of interfuel substitution in us industrial energy demand abstract we compare and contrast two popular dynamic flexible functional forms for cost functions the translog and the logit j bus econ stat 8 1990 347 353 using data on us industrial energy demand from 1960 to 1992 which has been analysed by previous studies energy econ 11 1989 89 94 appl econ 21 1989 931 945 j bus econ stat 13 1995 459 465 we show the crucial role played by different dynamic formulations of the translog in this analysis of factor demands with respect to rates of dynamic adjustment and substitution possibilities we conclude that the poor performance of the dynamic translog relative to the dynamic logit cannot be explained solely by dynamic model mis specification or the inclusion of price unresponsive non energy fuel use data our most robust empirical result is that coal and oil are substitutes

industrial companies demand for electricity evidence from a micropanel abstract the paper presents a micro econometric analysis of industrial companies demand for electricity previous studies on electricity consumption in the industrial sector have relied on aggregate data or cross section observations here we present an econometric study on electricity demand based on a panel of 2949 danish companies followed from 1983 to 1996 it is found that estimators of electricity demand that take account of the panel structure fixed effect models yield considerably lower price and production elasticities compared to estimators that do not like cross section models it is also investigated how various company characteristics like size type of industrial sub sector and electricity intensity in production influence price and production elasticities it appears that companies with a high electricity intensity also have a high own price elasticity

the political economy of the essential air service program we find that congressional influences affect the amount of airport subsidies that a congressional district receives through the essential air service eas program the eas program was passed with the goal of helping to continue commercial air service to rural communities following deregulation in the 1970s using data from 1998 2014 we find strong and consistent evidence that subsidies are higher in districts having congressional representation on the house transportation and ways and means committees our empirical results when combined with news reports of members claiming credit for securing eas funding are consistent with the eas serving private and public interests

utilitarianism and horizontal equity the case for random taxation this paper establishes that far from being able to derive the principle of horizontal equity from utilitarianism the principle is actually in consistent with utilitarianism in a variety of circumstances we derive conditions under which a it is optimal to impose random tax schedules ex post randomization and b it is optimal to randomize the tax schedules imposed on a set of otherwise identical individuals ex ante randomization the implications for optimal tax theory are discussed more generally it is shown that there are a number of potentially important economic situations with which the principle of horizontal equity may be inconsistent not only with utilitarianism but even with pareto optimality this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

tax evasion and the allocation of capital abstract the efficiency cost of capital misallocations between the corporate sector and the noncorporate sector is typically measured using statutory tax differences corporate source income tax compliance is high because of third party reporting however while noncorporate rental income tax compliance is low differential evasion thus exacerbates statutory differences and enlarges the efficiency cost to measure this effect we build a numerical general equilibrium model where households simultaneously choose portfolios of risky assets and fractions of income to report