the carbon footprint of uk households 1990 2004 a socio economically disaggregated quasi multi regional input output model this paper presents a socio economically disaggregated framework for attributing co2 emissions to people s high level functional needs based around a quasi multi regional input output qmrio model the study in theory takes into account all co2 emissions that arise from energy used in production of goods and services to satisfy uk household demand whether the emissions occur in the uk or abroad results show that co2 emissions attributable to households were 15 above 1990 levels in 2004 and that although absolute decoupling occurred between household expenditure and co2 during the uk s switch from coal to gas in the early 1990s since then only slight relative decoupling is evident the proportion of co2 that arises outside uk borders in support of uk consumption is rising and reducing these emissions is particularly problematic in a global trading system investigation into the carbon footprint of different segments of the uk population shows wide variation the segment with the highest carbon footprint emits 64 more co2 than the segment with the lowest results show that recreation and leisure are responsible for over one quarter of co2 emissions in a typical uk household in 2004 we conclude that expanding lifestyle aspirations are significant factors in driving household co2 emissions but the study also emphasizes that attention must be paid to the infrastructures and institutions that result in considerable amounts of co2 being locked up in basic household activities through which people meet their everyday needs for subsistence protection and communication with family and friends the findings highlight the sheer scale of the challenge facing uk policy makers and suggest that policies should be targeted towards segments of society responsible for the highest carbon footprints

allowance trading and energy consumption under a personal carbon trading scheme a dynamic programming approach abstract in response to the challenge of climate change personal carbon trading was put forward as a policy instrument to promote low carbon behavior in the household sector to evaluate the effectiveness of this scheme it is important to gain insight into the allowance trading and energy consumption behavior in a long emission commitment period this paper proposes a dynamic programming model to investigate allowance trading and energy consumption a main feature of the model is its consideration of allowance banking and borrowing activities ten simulated scenarios with different allowance prices price volatility and carbon emission rates are discussed the findings show that consumers would trade more actively when allowance price is volatile it is also found that energy consumption and allowance trading will decrease when the carbon emission rate increases overall the analysis in this paper implies that personal carbon trading scheme would be an effective policy measure to change consumers behavior therefore it would be valuable for decision makers to consider the introduction and implementation of this scheme

real option valuation of power transmission investments by stochastic simulation abstract network expansions in power markets usually lead to investment decisions subject to substantial irreversibility and uncertainty hence investors need valuing the flexibility to change decisions as uncertainty unfolds progressively real option analysis is an advanced valuation technique that enables planners to take advantage of market opportunities while preventing or mitigating losses if future conditions evolve unfavorably in the past many approaches for valuing real options have been developed however applying these methods to value transmission projects is often inappropriate as revenue cash flows are path dependent and affected by a myriad of uncertain variables in this work a valuation technique based on stochastic simulation and recursive dynamic programming called least square monte carlo is applied to properly value the deferral option in a transmission investment the effect of option s maturity the initial outlay and the capital cost upon the value of the postponement option is investigated finally sensitivity analysis determines optimal decision regions to execute postpone or reject the investment projects

stock market volatility and investment do only fundamentals matter the empirical evidence in the volatility literature suggests that movements in stock prices cannot be satisfactorily explained purely in terms of changes in fundamentals this paper shows how to obtain proxies for the fundamental and fad components of changes in stock prices and asks the question do only fundamentals matter for investment decisions we find that changes in investment are significantly associated with movements in both components of stock prices the point estimates suggest that changes in fundamentals have a greater effect than changes in non fundamentals the statistical significance of the difference between their coefficients depends upon the financing regime these conclusions are shown to be robust to modifications and extensions of the model

allowance price and distributional effects under a personal carbon trading scheme abstract personal carbon trading pct is a downstream cap and trade scheme to reduce carbon emissions from the household sector in comparison to an upstream carbon trading scheme pct is a progressive scheme in which the poorer consumers are mostly winners as their levels of emissions are generally lower this paper investigates the equilibrium price for allowances and distributional effects under a pct scheme first we propose an equilibrium model for pct from which we derive an equilibrium price for allowances second a consumer surplus analysis is conducted to examine the welfare changes caused by the pct scheme generally we find that the pct scheme is progressive and can provide a buffer between the energy and allowance price based on these results the implications are discussed and suggestions for a future study are provided

sufficiency or efficiency to achieve lower resource consumption and emissions the role of the rebound effect a frequent criticism of eco efficiency strategies is that an increase in efficiency can be offset by the rebound effect sufficiency is discussed as a new strategy involving self imposed restriction of consumption but can also be subject to the rebound effect we show that the range of possible secondary effects of efficiency and sufficiency strategies goes beyond the rebound effect the rebound effect can indeed also be linked to eco sufficiency strategies but there are further secondary effects of both eco efficiency and eco sufficiency strategies such as double dividend effects we develop an eco efficiency sufficiency matrix to logically order eco efficiency and sufficiency measures to attain lower resource consumption and emissions

bubbles and volatility of stock prices effect of mimetic contagion the author discusses the effect of the mimetic contagion on the dynamics of stock prices each investor bids and or asks prices such that adjusts to his present value calculated from his incomplete information set and to the average price of others buyers and sellers mimetic contagion an original stochastic treatment based on the equation of motion of the probability density function is used to calculate the equations of the mean and variance of the market price as soon as the agents are mimetic and or have correlated present values then the moments of the market price are driven away from the fundamental ones copyright 1991 by royal economic society

what determines simultaneous asset bubbles an empirical analysis abstractthe recent global financial crisis demonstrated that the simultaneous collapse of asset bubbles in different countries is a major challenge for monetary policy in order to evaluate determinants of these simultaneous asset bubbles we detect rational asset bubbles in corporate equity and real estate markets worldwide using forward recursive right sided adf tests then we create dummy variables for simultaneous asset bubbles and analyse potential determinants using gravity models and spatial economics our empirical analysis suggests that simultaneous asset bubbles depend positively upon potential asset demand capital account openness monetary conditions cultural similarities and negatively upon informational frictions and exchange rate flexibility these findings imply that monetary policy can impede the probability of simultaneous asset bubbles by ensuring sound monetary conditions and choosing a flexible exchange regime

to cool a sweltering earth does energy efficiency improvement offset the climate impacts of lifestyle abstract as technical efficiency improvement in energy use remains a touchstone measure to curb greenhouse gas ghg emissions there is substantial concern about whether this approach can offset the large and expanding impacts of human actions critics contend that without adjustments to the prevailing consumptive lifestyle energy efficiency improvement will generate only token reductions in ghg emissions i address this concern by examining the extent to which technical efficiency improvement in energy use offsets the impacts of housing related lifestyle on ghg emissions i build from two perspectives the physical technical economic models that consider energy efficiency improvement as a potent strategy to curb residential energy consumption and the lifestyle and social behavioral approach which questions this view the analyses reveal consistent positive relationship between lifestyle and energy consumption the results also indicate that energy efficiency improvement has mixed effects on energy consumption in fact model based figures show that technical efficiency improvement in energy use leads to slightly higher energy consumption if it is not accompanied by adjustments to lifestyle

gordon tullock and experimental economics gordon tullock s research has substantially influenced the development of economic science in general and experimental economics in particular we present the first comprehensive survey of this significant achievement we show how tullock s research in bioeconomics influenced later developments in neuroeconomics and how his pioneering work on rent seeking generated a literature of laboratory tests of his hypothesis we also describe tullock s own experiments and draw attention to his early insights on trust games

the diffusion of production processes in the u s banking industry a finite mixture approach abstract this article applies finite mixture distributions to the estimation of cost functions for financial firms through time the mixture approach allows the estimation of multiple technologies when firms technology choices are unobservable technology switching diffusion and underlying technical change are simultaneously evaluated an application to large samples of u s banks for the years 1982 1986 illustrates the approach results suggest banks switch to lower cost production technologies when unburdened by strict branching regulations

on rational bubbles and fat tails this paper addresses the statistical properties of time series driven by rational bubbles a la blanchard and watson 1982 using insights on the behavior of multiplicative stochastic processes we demonstrate that the tails of the unconditional distribution emerging from such bubble processes follow power laws exhibit hyperbolic decline more precisely we find that rational bubbles predict a fat power tail for both the bubble component and price differences with an exponent smaller than 1 the distribution of returns is dominated by the same power law over an extended range of large returns although power law tails are a pervasive feature of empirical data these numerical predictions are in disagreement with the usual empirical estimates it therefore appears that exogenous rational bubbles are hardly reconcilable with some of the stylized facts of financial data at a very elementary level

embedded carbon footprint of chinese urban households structure and changes reducing environmental pressure is a major concern for china but despite the improvements in energy efficiency its gross carbon dioxide co2 emissions have maintained an upward trend consistent with the jevons paradox a fundamental shift is thus needed at all levels including the household this paper explores the embedded carbon footprint ecf of chinese urban households associated with activities such as food personal transport communications education recreation health and hygiene it uses an input output model for carbon emissions and 2003 2009 urban household data the results show that the total ecf emission intensity increases when an individual s consumption is higher than 10 000 yuan structural changes are further observed with consumption expenditure above 10 000 food clothing and other survival oriented emissions intensities as well as education health and development oriented emissions intensities reduce transport recreation housing and enjoyment oriented emissions intensities increase or remain stable and the total emissions intensity increases currently per capita consumption expenditure of chinese urban residents exceeds 10 000 and as income continues to rise china will remain on a high carbon track there is a need for better policies management and behavioural change and the study provides some policy suggestions including a carbon quota system to guide individual consumption

embracing morals in economics the role of internal moral constraints in a market economy abstract economists who adhere to the assumptions of homo economicus typically focus on altering external constraints through laws or regulations as the means of eliminating bad behavior reaching the optimal solution is simply a matter of having government adjust the price of unwanted behavior through punishments or fines but adam smith highlighted the importance of another type of constraint the internal moral constraint in recent years behavioral experimental and other economists have documented that people often do not act according the assumptions of the homo economicus model and instead appear to incorporate moral constraints into their decision making process in light of this growing body of research this article argues that many economists have placed too much emphasis on external constraints and that more emphasis should be placed on internal moral constraints after discussing possible sources of internal moral constraints the paper describes how these constraints can help strengthen cooperation in the short and long run

applying quantile regression and shapley decomposition to analyzing the determinants of household embedded carbon emissions evidence from urban china abstract as co2 emissions differ in households with different characteristics mitigation policies still address the contributions of these characteristics and their effects on specific households using a representative resident survey in urban china this paper compares how household characteristics differ in their associations with household embedded carbon emissions heces at different levels by quantile regression then this paper analyzes the contributions of these characteristics by shapley decomposition the findings include the following i household income is the most important contributor to the difference of heces and its positive effect increases as heces rise ii the use of wealth has different effects on heces because household housing ownership and deposits contribute little to heces but the positive effects of household car ownership contribute 25 8 iii young people and children will emit more heces than adults the employed emit more than persons who are unemployed or retired iv education increases heces overall but mainly at the low quantiles the negative effect of the marriage increases as heces rise v income car ownership marital status size and constitution of households with high heces should be addressed to reduce the inequality of heces indeed education on the low carbon concept is another way forward

price sensitivity of residential energy consumption in norway abstract the main aim of this paper is to test the stability of the results of a model which focus on the relationship between the choice of heating equipment and the residential energy consumption the results for the income and energy price variables are of special interest stability in the time dimension is tested by applying the model on micro data for each of the years 1993 1995 the parameter estimates are stable within a 95 confidence interval however the estimated impact of the energy price variable on energy consumption was considerably weaker in 1994 than in 1993 and 1995 the results for two different income groups in the pooled data set are also subject to stability testing the energy price sensitivity in residential energy consumption is found to be higher for high income households than for low income households

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

adam smith and the prisoners dilemma in ordinary life we engage in many transactions with other people in which there is potential profit for both parties from some kind of cheating normally we do not see much of this cheating i have no doubt that the merchant will put in the package the merchandise which i buy or which i ordered even though if he put in something else cheaper it is quite dubious that i would be able to win a lawsuit on my part if i decide i did not like the product and returned it with the remark that it was defective having first damaged it so that it is indeed defective i could get a gain neither i nor the merchant worries particularly about this kind of behavior although the merchant worries more than i do for reasons that will become plain below if we worried about it we would both take precautions with the result that socially we would be worse off by the cost of these precautions we have here what appears to be a prisoners dilemma matrix but the two parties are behaving cooperatively what adam smith called the discipline of continuous dealings takes care of the matter the point of this article is to work out adam smith s insight in the terminology of a modern game theory we shall see that smith was right and there are some cases indeed practically very important cases where what appears to be a prisoners dilemma in fact leads to cooperative behavior consider the prisoners dilemma game shown in figure i it is orthodox that if a and b are playing a single turn of this particular game they will end up in the lower right hand corner with a net loss of one dollar each if we go from a single game to a long series of games played by the same players however there is no agreed upon solution experimental evidence seems to indicate that the players play a mixed strategy with some cooperative plays and some noncooperative plays and the mixture can be modified by changing the payoffs 2 all of these situations are simplifications of the real world and it is a point of this article to suggest that if we make the game more like many real world

stationary sunspot equilibrium in a cash in advance economy abstract in this paper we demonstrate the existence and uniqueness of a class of stationary sunspot equilibria in the cash in advance economy of lucas and stokey sunspots affect not only the price of money but prices of productive assets assets prices may fluctuate forever below their market fundamentals

public choice and the economic analysis of anarchy a survey public choice economists began studying anarchy in the 1970s since then the amount of research on anarchy has burgeoned this article surveys the important public choice contributions to the economics of anarchy following early public choice economists many economists are researching how individuals interact without government from non public interested explanations of the creation of government to historical studies of internalizing externalities under anarchy public choice scholars are arriving at a more realistic perspective of human interaction with and without government although the economics of politics receives more attention the economics of anarchy is an important area of research in public choice

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

promises and pitfalls in environmentally extended input output analysis for china a survey of the literature abstract as the world s largest developing economy china plays a key role in global climate change and other environmental impacts of international concern environmentally extended input output analysis ee ioa is an important and insightful tool seeing widespread use in studying large scale environmental impacts in china calculating and analyzing greenhouse gas emissions carbon and water footprints pollution and embodied energy this paper surveys the published articles regarding ee ioa for china in peer reviewed journals and provides a comprehensive and quantitative overview of the body of literature examining the research impact environmental issues addressed and data utilized the paper further includes a discussion of the shortcomings in official chinese data and of the potential means to move beyond its inherent limitations

new methodology for the ecological footprint with an application to the new zealand economy abstract sustainable development has become a primary objective for many countries throughout the world since the late 1980s a major difficulty associated with sustainable development objectives however is the absence of reliable indicators to measure progress towards the goal of sustainability the ecological footprint provides an estimate of the land area necessary to sustain current levels of resource consumption for a given population on an aggregate basis the ecological footprint may be compared with the amount of ecologically productive land available to give an indication of whether consumption patterns are likely to be sustainable this paper proposes the use of a modified form of input output analysis to calculate the ecological footprint the input output approach provides a consistent means of calculating an ecological footprint using data collected as part of the system of national accounts in most developed countries in addition it makes explicit the link between the level of economic activity in a country and its corresponding impact on the environment an application of this methodology to new zealand indicates that it takes 3 49 has of ecologically productive land per year to sustain the average new zealander s current level of consumption

capital asset prices with and without negative holdings prize lecture to the memory of alfred nobel december 7 1990 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

using composition of land multiplier to estimate ecological footprints associated with production activity abstract ecological footprint ef a measure of sustainability represents the areas of land and water required to produce the goods and services for satisfying the consumption of a defined human population or economy and to provide environmental assimilation capacity for keeping its environmental quality at a given level production land footprint a main component of the ef represents the lands used by production sectors for producing the goods and services for the final consumption of a given human population there have been at least two alternatives in estimating the production land footprint one is based on the estimates of apparent consumption of each type of resource along the line of the methodology proposed by wackernagel and rees wackernagel m rees w e 1996 and its later refinement the other suggested by bicknell et al 1998 is based on the monetary values of products that are delivered to domestic final demand the information recorded in an input output table the former faces the challenge of distinguishing the commodities used as intermediate input from those as final consumption although its recent development has tried to calculate the raw materials used directly in traded manufactured products wackernagel m lewan l hansson c b 1999a it is not an easy job because the indirect input requirements are also involved using input output analysis which has been widely used to consider the direct and indirect input requirements of supporting final demand may alleviate this difficulty bicknell et al 1998 adopted input output analysis to estimate the footprint of new zealand in their calculation they used land multipliers to obtain the production land areas required to produce the outputs for domestic final consumption directly and indirectly and presented the estimates under three land categories agricultural land forest land and degraded land however this presentation causes errors in the concept and calculation this is because that the area requirement of sector j s production land is obtained by multiplying sector j s land multiplier with its output for domestic final consumption the result would contain not only sector j s own production land but also those of other sectors whose outputs sector j uses as inputs thus the ensuing estimates on sectoral production lands cannot be presented by land category using the hypothetical data in the article of bicknell et al 1998 this paper explains the reasons for using the composition of land multipliers instead of land multipliers in estimating the production land footprint so that the calculated areas can be expressed by land category the revised calculation is then applied to taiwan for estimating her two footprint components production land and energy land in 1991

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

testing for bubbles in exchange markets a case of sparkling rates this paper investigates the possibility that the observed deviations of major bilateral exchange rates from values implied by market fundamentals are a consequence of rational asset market bubbles when a new econometric methodology for detecting asset market bubbles is used the joint hypothesis of no bubbles and stable autoregressive processes for relative money supplies and real incomes is rejected for the dollar deutsche mark and dollar pound ratesusing monthly data over the period 1973 82 additional tests for coefficient stability and for lack of cointegration between exchange rates and market fundamentals suggest that the bubble findings must be interpreted with care

long term trends in direct and indirect household energy intensities a factor in dematerialisation abstract dematerialisation is assumed to contribute significantly to the alleviation of environmental problems one of the possible causes of dematerialisation is a change in the consumption patterns of households the aim of this article is to analyse changes consumption patterns of dutch households in the period between 1948 to 1996 in order to discover whether these changes haven influenced the energy intensity of society due to the rise in consumption the total household energy requirement per capita grew on average by 2 4 per year over a period of 48 years this figure ignores efficiency changes in the supplying sectors in the same period the total energy intensity of households fluctuated but on average changed from 5 6 to 6 3 mj nlg an increase of 0 25 per year if we exclude the direct energy consumption we find a slight decline in the indirect energy intensity namely from 3 8 to 3 6 mj nlg 0 14 per year no significant trends to a lower energy intensity are found and there is no indication of dematerialisation of the consumption patterns if governments pursue a policy of sustainable development they have to take into account the fact that dematerialisation of the consumption pattern does not seem to be an autonomous process

economic growth with bubbles this paper presents a stylized model of economic growth with bubbles this model views asset price bubbles as a market generated device to moderate the effects of frictions in financial markets improving the allocation of investments and raising the capital stock and welfare the model illustrates various channels through which asset price bubbles affect the incentives for innovation and economic reforms and therefore the rate of economic growth the model also offers a new perspective on the effects of financial development on asset price bubbles and economic growth

a note on price volume dynamics in an emerging stock market abstract we present a continuum economy with risk neutral agents having heterogeneous expectations and restricted short sales a stochastic version of the model is also formulated and the resulting time series behavior of the price and volume series under a specific money supply process derived the implications of the model are tested in the emerging turkish stock market where institutional arrangements comply with the restrictions of the model the results indicate that as predicted by the model price levels and trading volume are cointegrated the error correction models are also estimated and found to be significant in most cases

multiple bubbles in the european union emission trading scheme abstract the european union emission trading scheme eu ets is the first large scale co 2 emission trading system in the world carbon allowances are financial assets potentially vulnerable to the behavior of traders and investors in fact the carbon price has been quite volatile since the inception of the market and it has recently hit very low values however to date no work exists to evaluate whether volatility and price spikes are due to episodes of speculation and price bubbles our paper fills this gap we use the recent approaches developed by phillips and yu 2010 phillips et al 2011 and phillips et al 2015a 2015b who propose a recursive right sided unit root approaches to detect and date stamp mildly explosive behaviors and carbon market exuberance we complement this methodology by using the wild bootstrap procedure by goncalves and kilian 2004 to control for the heteroschedasticity of carbon price data analyzing the eu ets front month contract price from 2005 to 2014 we find different episodes of price bubbles these episodes are not explained by similar behavior of the fundamentals but seem related to energy and environmental policy announcements our results can provide insightful policy implications in the context of the actual carbon market reform as well as the implementation of stricter financial regulations rules to co 2 trading

carbon emission permit price volatility reduction through financial options we develop a stylized model to investigate the impact of financial options on reducing carbon permit price volatility under a cap and trade system the existence of an option market provides a mechanism to hedge the uncertainty of future spot prices and is a stimulus for investment in carbon emission abatement technologies we show that both the spot price level and the price volatility of carbon permits can be reduced via the trading of financial options while achieving the emission reduction target we also show that introducing financial options in a banking environment offers more flexibility to risk management in carbon permit trading

the carbon footprint of greek households 1995 2012 abstract the goal of this paper is twofold i to investigate the carbon footprint of greek households throughout the period 1995 2012 in order to identify the main socio economic factors that affect ghg emissions and ii to evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented policies to tackle climate change in this a consumption based emissions inventory approach is applied the analysis is based on an environmentally extended input output model including direct co2 emissions from households indirect co2 emissions from electricity consumption and indirect co2 emissions from energy used in the production of goods and services purchased by households domestic or imported statistical analysis and appropriate regression models were developed in order to identify the main factors influencing the carbon footprint of greek households the results indicate that the observed trends during the period 1995 2008 can be attributed to the effect of high economic growth this trend is partially counterbalanced by favorable weather conditions and the implementation of greenhouse mitigation policies and measures mainly in the supply side since 2008 the shrinking household income is the dominant driver in addition the effectiveness of energy conservation policies and measures in place is rather low while the effect of imports is limited

allowance price drivers in the first phase of the eu ets abstract in the first phase of the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets the price per ton of co 2 initially rose to over 30 the price then collapsed to essentially zero by mid 2007 by deriving a structural model of the allowance price under the assumption of efficient markets i examine the extent to which this variation in price can be explained by marginal abatement costs i then gradually relax the model by allowing for delayed adjustment of price to fundamentals as well as by introducing lagged lhs variables the pattern of results suggests that while prices were not initially driven by marginal abatement costs this inefficiency was largely corrected after the accounting of 2005 emissions in april 2006

a literature review of economic studies on carbon pricing and australian wholesale electricity markets abstract with the ongoing development of australian anthropogenic climate change mitigation policies there has been a steady increase in modelling studies undertaken to estimate australian carbon prices and their impact on existing electricity markets this article summarises some of the more prominent studies completed by many of australia s foremost economic modelling firms we developed a simple approach for testing the consistency of these studies and their findings in relation to carbon pass through unfortunately we have established that the studies are entirely inconsistent in their estimation of carbon pass through furthermore we were unable to establish why the estimation of carbon pass through varies so significantly this has important implications for policy makers given much of the compensation to be paid to households and businesses under the clean energy future package is predicated on simple assumptions of carbon pass through based upon our analysis of these economic studies our conclusion is that australian policy makers are best guided by relying upon the numerous a posteriori estimations of pass through in the european union emissions trading scheme ets rather than australian a priori studies

estimates of trends in global income and resource inequalities it is often argued that the inequality in the world is increasing we study the global income and resource inequality between 1960 and late 1990s income is measured in gdp capita in terms of both current market exchange rate and purchasing power parity ppp consumption of paper energy electricity food animal food as well as emissions of carbon dioxide is also studied changes in the absolute and relative gap between the top and bottom 20 consumers as well as the atkinson measure are used as inequality indicators some remarks are made on how to compare income across countries and how inequality should be measured we find that the inequality in terms of gdp capita measured in ppp terms is rather stable in relative terms but increasing in absolute terms we conclude that inequality as measured by the atkinson index is decreasing for all resources but that the gap in resource consumption in absolute terms is increasing for paper and electricity consumption

non prisoner s dilemma abstract all prisoner s dilemma experiments pre select contestants prevents them from communicating and changing partners in the middle of things this brief experiment changes all three of these conditions and gets a very high degree of cooperation

a bibliometric review energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector residential sector has been one key sector for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions due to its significant contribution to global warming researchers in different countries have studied household energy consumption patterns and greenhouse gas emissions in order to promote low carbon lifestyles however few review papers have been published in this regard leading to a lack of systematic understanding on the related research achievements hence by using a bibliometric approach this paper aims to review the existing literature and examine the evolution of such a field so that the research trends can be uncovered including popular research methods citation analysis is performed to assess the influence of most productive journals countries territories and authors network analysis is also conducted to evaluate the relationship among different countries territories authors and keywords research outcomes of this paper present a comprehensive research picture on residential energy consumption and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions ree related papers published from 1997 to 2016 the most productive journals countries territories authors are also analyzed based on citation analysis and network analysis in addition results also revealed that behavioral analysis input output analysis life cycle assessment and cost benefit analysis are the most commonly used methods in this field results obtained from this study can provide valuable information for researchers interested in the ree related field

combinations of policy instruments to decrease the climate impacts of housing passenger transport and food in finland policy instruments and measures already target the global warming impacts of housing and transport in many countries although many of those instruments were not originally developed for the purpose however the challenge of curbing climate change calls not only for innovative and improved instruments but for integrated policy packages that address consumption across the entire product life cycle recognize links between different consumption sectors and identify and harness synergies between instruments to this end we first evaluate the effectiveness of existing policy instruments targeted at housing passenger transport and food in finland the results show large impacts on greenhouse gas emissions second we integrate instruments into packages which minimize potential negative interferences while strengthening synergies and complementarities between instruments we estimate the potential of the consequent emission reductions to be considerable by 2020 housing and passenger transport emissions are estimated to decline by 4 2 million tons mt integrated food related policy packages are estimated to reduce emissions 0 3 mt in finland and life cycle based emissions by 0 5 mt altogether the emission reduction would be 4 5 mt in finland which is over 6 of finland s average emissions 68 mt for years 2008 2012 in conclusion though greenhouse gas emissions of household consumption have already been affected by policy instruments it is better to develop policy packages by which the synergies between measures can be reinforced and hence overall effectiveness can be improved we found acceptability of policy instruments to be a key issue necessitating careful implementation long term consistency and research showing evidence of their effectiveness the full realization of the policy package potential requires improved co operation across relevant ministries and public authorities which can be facilitated by common policy programs and objectives for all related public authorities the project results were used in the preparation of a revision of finland s program for sustainable consumption and production we propose that similar policy package development processes in other countries would increase further our understanding about effective policy packages reinforce each other and speed up the changes for more sustainable consumption

tiered gasoline pricing a personal carbon trading perspective abstract this paper proffers a tiered gasoline pricing method from a personal carbon trading perspective an optimization model of personal carbon trading is proposed and then an equilibrium carbon price is derived according to the market clearing condition based on the derived equilibrium carbon price this paper proposes a calculation method of tiered gasoline pricing then sensitivity analyses and consumers surplus analyses are conducted it can be shown that a rise in gasoline price or a more generous allowance allocation would incur a decrease in the equilibrium carbon price making the first tiered price higher but the second tiered price lower it is further verified that the proposed tiered pricing method is progressive because it would relieve the pressure of the low income groups who consume less gasoline while imposing a greater burden on the high income groups who consume more gasoline based on these results implications limitations and suggestions for future studies are provided

decision by sortition a means to reduce rent seeking this essay gives an overview of how arandomized decision mechanism sortition can be expected to reduce the intensity ofself interested activity by rent seekingfactions within democracies the socialcosts of rent seeking are briefly reviewed i then make the case that randomization ofcollective decision making proceduresattenuates rent seeking expenditures iillustrate the argument by reference to thehighly contested presidential election of2000 finally i buttress that argument bycomparing plurality voting and sortitionwithin the context of tullock s efficient rent seeking model 1980

the relation between price changes and trading volume a survey this paper reviews previous and current research on the relation between price changes and trading volume in financial markets and makes four contributions first two empiri cal relations are established volume is positively related to the magnitude of the price change and in equity markets to the price change per se second previous theoretical research on the price volume relation is summarized and critiqued and major insights are emphasized third a simple model ofthe price volume relation is proposed that is consis tent with several seemingly unrelated or contradictory observations and fourth several directions for future research are identified

futures trading activity and stock price volatility we examine whether greater futures trading activity volume and open interest is associated with greater equity volatility we partition each trading activity series into expected and unexpected components and document that while equity volatility covaries positively with unexpected futures trading volume it is negatively related to forecastable futures trading activity further though futures trading activity is systematically related to the futures contract life cycle we find no evidence of a relation between the futures life cycle and spot equity volatility these findings are consistent with theories predicting that active futures markets enhance the liquidity and depth of the equity markets

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis in recent years there have been a number of attempts to develop a more comprehensive approach to the issue of measuring resource use and or pollution generation embodied in trade flows including contributions that combine input output techniques and ecological footprint analysis in this two part paper we describe how to enumerate the resource and or pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows part 1 and we present a literature review of recent methodological and empirical developments part 2 it is straightforward in principle to extend the basic input output approach to capture international trade flows however in practice problems of data availability and compatibility and of computability of extended input output matrices mean that simplifying assumptions are generally applied but with the implications of these assumptions often not made fully explicit what appears to be absent from previous applications is an account of the analytical method by which ecological footprints should ideally be estimated in an international input output accounting analysis this allows an explicit analysis of the problems that prevent the application of the full method and identification of the most appropriate short cut methods in a transparent way the objective of this paper is to provide such an account

applying input output analysis to scenario analysis of ecological footprints abstract application of input output analysis to ecological footprints efs is shifting from an ex post static calculation toward an ex ante scenario analysis for enhancing the policy relevance of ef analysis this change in application prompts two issues requiring careful examination 1 what is measured by leontief inverses or extended environmental leontief inverses and 2 whether a sector s land multiplier or compositions of land multiplier can appropriately reflect the effect of delivering one unit of the sector s output to final demand on the required area s of production lands used by the sector itself and by other producing sectors whose products are contributed directly and indirectly to its production the underlying message of these two questions is whether the assumed linear marginal relationship between a sector s output and its intermediate inputs input output coefficients a critical assumption made by w leontief to transform a transactions table from an accounting framework into the input output model can be extended to assume that the marginal relationship between a sector s output and the area of production land it uses for generating output is fixed land output marginal coefficient equal to average coefficient by reviewing the literature on input output analysis and its application to environmental issues and by theoretically and empirically examining the relation between sector output and land appropriation this study advises against the use of land multipliers or their compositions in the ef scenario analysis to apply the input output model to ef scenario analysis for enhancing policy relevance with due attention to the relationship between sector output and land appropriation this study suggests a two stage ef calculation procedure in the first stage the input output application estimates only the required raw materials or generated pollutants for meeting a given consumption pattern which is the objective of environmental input output analysis in the second stage the estimated amount of raw materials or pollutants is converted into land water area and a choice of conversion methods is suggested according to the research questions and the availability of conversion methods and required data

impact of cap and trade policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions on u s households abstract proposals being considered by the u s congress would establish a cap and trade system to cut greenhouse gas ghg emissions approximately 2 annually through 2050 past cap and trade policies for other pollutants have distributed allowances free to the regulated companies leaving consumers uncompensated for passed through costs needed to achieve the required reductions social equity concerns were not a major issue because the total costs were relatively small however americans currently spend about 1 trillion year on energy directly and indirectly via the goods and services they consume if a cap on carbon emissions results in significant increases in energy prices social equity concerns could quickly dominate the debate over climate policy this paper confirms earlier studies that a traditional cap and trade policy is regressive and would cause the cost of reducing ghg emissions to fall disproportionately on low income households this paper explores ways to ameliorate those effects using highly disaggregated data available on consumer expenditures and energy input output analyses of the u s economy emissions are estimated based on direct and embodied energy use at the household level social equity concerns are taken into account and the consequences of cap and trade policies are assessed by quantifying the extent to which the expenditure patterns of the poor are significantly more energy intensive than those of the rich

optimal strategies for carbon reduction at dual levels in china based on a hybrid nonlinear grey prediction and quota allocation model abstract in this research a hybrid nonlinear grey prediction and quota allocation model hngp qam wasdeveloped for supporting optimal planning of china s carbon intensity reduction at both departmentaland provincial levels in 2020 at such dual levels hngp qam can not only help forecast carbon intensityand its uctuations over the concerned period but also facilitate the identi cation of china s carbonintensity reduction target in 2020 and the corresponding quotas for minimizing the total abatement cost two scenarios were developed based on multiple governmental policies and allocation schemes amongprovinces and departments the results showed that the total abatement cost would be 92 07 and98 93 10 9 as well as 180 57 and 194 19 10 9 rmb it is another shortname for china yuan for pro vincial and departmental allocation schemes under the reduction ratios of 40 and 45 respectively furthermore the west the east and the central china would be allocated the emission assignments thatwould be accounting for 48 53 28 26 and 23 21 of the total national emission reduction respectively the obtained results were particularly useful for multi level governments in providing information toidentify the carbon intensity reduction target conducting emission reduction assignments amongprovinces and departments as well as supporting relevant policy making the results also suggested thatthe developed hngp qam be applicable to similar engineering and planning problems 2014 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

a structure of models for future projections of environmental pressure due to consumption abstract a model structure for constructing consumption scenarios and determining the related energy requirement of the inhabitants of the netherlands has recently been developed at the rivm consumption is considered in the model structure to be influenced by economic growth demographic changes sociocultural developments technological enhancement and policy measures the structure includes and connects several models which also operate stand alone an important model in the system is the so called central unit which has two functions 1 dealing with the consistency between income developments and microeconomic developments on household expenditure derived from the other models in the system and 2 the broader function the construction of consumption scenarios on the basis of income elasticities these elasticities relationship between income and expenditure depend on the circumstances of a household such as its size new products and prevailing standards and values in the society these circumstances change in the course of time causing the income elasticities to change as well the central unit constructs scenarios of consumption based on the influence of these circumstances on the expenditure of households in the central unit consumer activities and underlying parameters are integrated into a matrix with domains of consumption e g food housing and holidays represented by rows and means of consumption e g products and mobility by columns developments in consumption are related to direct energy use e g petrol electricity and indirect energy embedded in goods and services

culture as a bubble this paper considers an overlapping generations growth model in which culture is viewed as a public input in the production process of the labor efficiency units of future generations given the low appropriability of its beneficial effects the market value of culture will be due to bubbles i shall characterize the balanced growth paths associated with stationary rational bubbles on culture indeterminacy arises in the transition dynamics

dynamics of final sectoral energy demand and aggregate energy intensity this paper proposes a regional and sectoral model of global final energy demand for the main end use sectors of consumption industrial commercial and public services residential and road transportation per capita demand is expressed as an s shaped function of per capita income other variables intervene as well like energy prices temperatures and technological trends this model is applied on a panel of 101 countries and 3 aggregates covering the whole world and it explains fairly well past variations in sectoral final consumption since the beginning of the 2000s further the model is used to analyze the dynamics of final energy demand by sector and in total the main conclusion concerns the pattern of change for aggregate energy intensity the simulations performed show that there is no a priori reason for it to exhibit a bell shape as reported in the literature depending on initial conditions the weight of basic needs in total consumption and the availability of modern commercial energy resources various forms might emerge

coordination without command stretching the scope of spontaneous order how far can we stretch the scope of spontaneous order gordon tullock s important work on the economics of non human societies shows how these societies are able to coordinate without command despite features economists typically see as limiting the scope of spontaneous order using tullock s insights i search for the human ant nest spontaneous institutional arrangements that create human cooperation despite the presence of these obstacles i find two significant examples of this both in precolonial africa the first demonstrates the effectiveness of spontaneous order in the face of threats of violent theft the second shows the effectiveness of spontaneous order in the face of social heterogeneity these cases suggest a broader scope for spontaneous order than conventional wisdom permits

fundamentals uncertainty bubbles and exchange rate dynamics abstract using a monetary model of exchange rate determination we study exchange rate dynamics with bubbles which depend on stochastic market fundamentals these dynamics can be either stochastically stable or unstable and either monotonic or non monotonic including cyclic in an extreme case they converge with probability one and exhibit cyclic movements implications for the analysis of time dependent regime shifts are also explored exchange rates with bubbles are likely to appear less volatile than the fundamentals in finite samples both the variance bounds and cointegration tests might thus be ineffective in testing the absence of bubbles under fundamentals uncertainty

quantifying the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint abstract analysis of household consumption and its environmental impact remains one of the most important topics in sustainability research nevertheless much past and recent work has focused on domestic national averages neglecting both the growing importance of international trade on household carbon footprint and the variation between households of different income levels and demographics using consumer expenditure surveys and multi country life cycle assessment techniques this paper analyzes the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint we find that due to recently increased international trade 30 of total us household co 2 impact in 2004 occurred outside the us further households vary considerably in their co 2 responsibilities at least a factor of ten difference exists between low and high impact households with total household income and expenditure being the best predictors of both domestic and international portions of the total co 2 impact the global location of emissions which cannot be calculated using standard input output analysis and the variation of household impacts with income have important ramifications for polices designed to lower consumer impacts on climate change such as carbon taxes the effectiveness and fairness of such policies hinges on a proper understanding of how income distributions rebound effects and international trade affect them

analyzing the impacts of carbon regulatory mechanisms on supplier and mode selection decisions an application to a biofuel supply chain this paper analyzes the impacts of carbon regulatory mechanisms on replenishment decisions in a biofuel supply chain we employ mathematical models for operations which integrate replenishment and supplier transportation mode selection decisions these models explicitly account for carbon emissions that may result from transportation and inventory storage activities this research is motivated by observations indicating that nearly 19 of the energy consumption and 25 of the energy related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide arise from transportation because freight transportation is expected to continue to grow we consider the impacts of different carbon regulatory mechanisms on transportation and inventory replenishment decisions in a biofuel supply chain a set of extensive numerical experiments uses the biofuel supply chain context to analyze the impacts of different regulatory mechanisms including carbon cap carbon tax carbon cap and trade and carbon offset on performance we use existing methodologies to calculate emissions as a function of distance traveled load weight and transportation mode used we also use publicly available data to derive representative biomass transportation costs as a consequence our numerical results are meaningful and give a realistic representation of the relationships between emissions from different transportation modes and the resulting costs the results of our computational experiments indicate that carbon regulatory mechanisms have a non trivial impact on replenishment schedules and as a consequence costs and emissions in the supply chain

sustainable development modelling for the energy sector sustainable residential energy consumption involves a complex socially embedded and socially constructed market a system dynamics approach has been used to explore the short medium and long term impact of different national consumer oriented energy efficiency policies in the residential building sector in this paper the system dynamics model has been validated by a case study using historical data from a subsidy scheme and accompanying policy measures in latvia results obtained by the validity tests showed that the model generated behaviour is consistent with available data and is capable of generating the right behaviour for the right reasons simulation results show that national energy efficiency goals cannot be met by 2016 and the absence of major consumer oriented policy tools slows down the diffusion process of energy efficiency projects it also highlights that system dynamics has a high potential to be used for sustainable end use energy policy planning at both national and sub sectoral levels