assessing the performance of renewable electricity support instruments abstract the performance of feed in tariffs and tradable certificates is assessed on criteria of efficacy efficiency equity and institutional feasibility in the early stage of transition to an energy system based entirely on renewable energy supplies renewable electricity can only thrive if support takes into account the specific technical economic and political problems which result from embedding this electricity in conventional power systems whose technology organizational structure environmental responsibility and general mission differ profoundly from the emerging renewable based system support schemes need to capture the diversity of power supplies the variable nature of some renewable supplies and their different attributes for the purposes of public policy they must take into account the variety of generators including small decentralized generation emerging in a renewable based system and the new relationships between generators and customers renewable energy policies need a clear point of reference because the incumbent power systems are not sustainable they must adapt to the requirements of the renewable ones not the other way round incumbent systems carry the responsibility of paying the transition something that corresponds best with the polluter pays principle

consumer support for environmental policies an application to purchases of green cars this paper focuses on how consumer motivation can be tapped in order to encourage the adoption of cleaner technologies consumers are heterogeneous they may be guided by intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation while information provision policies such as the energy label for cars may be effective in encouraging certain consumers to adopt green cars financial incentive schemes such as subsidies or fines may be more persuasive for extrinsically motivated consumers we develop a dynamic theory of adoption of environmental innovations in which information provision policies are followed by financial incentives first carrot then stick incentives analysis of a survey dataset of swiss households observes considerable heterogeneity in terms of support of information provision or financial incentive policies in line with our conjectures our results will be of particular interest to policymakers interested in guiding consumers towards cleaner technologies

sustainability impacts of car road pricing a computable general equilibrium analysis for austria abstract nationwide car road pricing schemes are discussed across europe we analyse the impacts of such schemes with respect to environmental economic and social indicators of sustainability also quantifying the trade offs among these three dimensions under different charging principles and revenue recycling options in our analysis we employ a computable general equilibrium cge approach develop a modelling structure for private transport and provide detailed empirical analysis for the case of austria regarding the social dimension it has often been argued that poorer households and commuters would have to bear a disproportionate share of the road pricing burden we find the contrary i e a stronger negative policy impact on richer households and on a small group of intensive car users the choice of revenue recycling is able to ameliorate the negative social and economic effects of road pricing without reversing the desired positive environmental effects for political feasibility questions of distributional impacts are most urgent and therefore we address them systematically within a quantitative framework

an investigation of co integration and causality between energy consumption and economic activity in taiwan applying hsiao a version of the granger causality method this paper examines the causality between energy and gnp and energy and employment by applying recently developed techniques of co integration and hsiao s version of the granger causality to taiwanese data for the 1955 1993 period the phillips perron tests reveal that the series with the exception of gnp are not stationary and therefore differencing is performed to secure stationarity the study finds causality running from gdp to energy consumption without feedback in taiwan it is also found that causality runs from gdp to energy but not vice versa

carbon tax simulations using a household demand model abstract the main objective of this paper is to analyse consumer response and welfare effects due to changes in energy or environmental policy to achieve this objective we formulate and estimate an econometric model for non durable consumer demand in sweden that utilises micro and macro data in the simulations we consider two revenue neutral scenarios that both imply a doubling of the co2 tax one that returns the revenues in the form of a lower vat and one that subsidise public transport one conclusion from the simulations is that the co2 tax has regional distribution effects in the sense that household living in sparsely populated areas carry a larger share of the tax burden

financial sustainability of wind electricity sectors in the baltic states abstract the baltic states realize the necessity to develop wind electricity sectors this comes from the baltic states concern of energy security competitiveness and sustainable development of energy sectors the paper deals with the financial aspects of sustainability of wind electricity sector namely it aims at performing a comparative analysis of financial sustainability of companies producing electricity from wind resources in the baltic states during 2009 2013 the financial statement analysis method is employed and the financial ratio technique is used altman liss and tafler bankruptcy forecasting models are used to show both health and viability of the companies 4 groups of financial ratios are computed financial leverage profitability liquidity and assets utilization support schemes are recognized as a relevant factor influencing on the financial sustainability the results of the analysis revealed that financial sustainability of the companies is moderate in the baltic states lithuania and estonia use high share of debt 80 85 to finance economic activity whereas latvian companies use relatively high share of equity capital 35 40 this shows that credit risk is available in the companies liquidity of the companies decreases operational efficiency is higher in estonia and lithuania than in latvia when profitability indicators are analyzed during the latter several years efficiencies of assets utilization were similar in the baltic states the efficiency of current assets utilization is higher compared to efficiency of non current assets utilization companies in latvia demonstrate middle but increasing and in estonia high but reducing bankruptcy probabilities lithuanian case reveals that bankruptcy probability varies from high to low depending on the financial ratios analyzed however bankruptcy probability reduces companies should make liquidity solvency efficient use of assets and profitability management as a part of their corporate management policy framework

a microeconometric model of the demand for health care and health insurance in australia this paper develops a model for interdependent demand for health insurance and health care under uncertainty to throw light on the issue of insurance induced distortions in the demand for health care services the model is used to empirically analyse the determinants of the choice of health insurance type and seven types of health care services using micro level data from the 1977 78 australian health survey econometric implementation of the model involves simultaneously issues of discreteness of choice selectivity and stochastic dependence between health insurance and utilization health status appears to be more important in determining health care service use than health insurance choice while income appears to be more important in determining health insurance choice than in determining health care service use for a broad range of health care services both moral hazard and self selection are found to be important determinants of utilization of health care services

motor fuel taxes and household welfare an applied general equilibrium analysis the shifts in expenditure patterns of motor fuel tax receipts that have occurred over the last decade typically are not included in the incidence estimates of these taxes we explicitly incorporate these changing expenditure patterns into our analysis of distributional impacts of motor fuel tax increases using an applied general equilibrium framework our results indicate that the greater the proportion of motor fuel tax revenue devoted to general uses the greater is the absolute and relative burden of the lowest income household and the more regressive is the policy with respect to the overall distributional structure

modeling usage of medical care services the medical expenditure panel survey data 1996 2000 we explore the determinants of usage of six different types of health care services using the medical expenditure panel survey meps data years 1996 2000 we apply a number of models for univariate count data including semiparametric semi nonparametric and finite mixture models we find that the complexity of the model that is required to fit the data well depends upon the way in which the data is pooled across sexes and over time and upon the characteristics of the usage measure pooling across time and sexes is almost always favoured but when more heterogeneous data is pooled it is often the case that a more complex statistical model is required

an econometric model of the two part decision process in the demand for health the decision to contact a physician and the decision about how often to contact a physician are determined by different decisionmakers we introduce a negative binomial distributed hurdle model that specifies the two stages of the decisionmaking process as different stochastic processes while at the same time taking care of the discrete nature of the data empirical results are based on a cross section of the west german socioeconomic panel specification tests reveal that the two stages of the process need to be treated as two distinct processes this in turn implies that ignoring this distinction leads to serious misinterpretation

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

electricity consumption and economic growth in china abstract this paper applies the error correction model to examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and real gdp for china during 1971 2000 our estimation results indicate that real gdp and electricity consumption for china are cointegrated and there is unidirectional granger causality running from electricity consumption to real gdp but not vice versa in order to overcome the constraints on electricity consumption the chinese government has to speed up the nation wide interconnection of power networks to upgrade urban and rural distribution grids and to accelerate rural electrification

energy and economic growth in the usa a multivariate approach abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between gdp and energy use for the period 1947 90 in the usa the relationship between energy use and economic growth has been examined by both biophysical and neoclassical economists in particular several studies have tested for the presence of a causal relationship in the granger sense between energy use and economic growth however these tests do not allow a direct test of the relative explanatory powers of the neoclassical and biophysical models a multivariate adaptation of the test vector autoregression var does allow such a test a var of gdp energy use capital stock and employment is estimated and granger tests for causal relationships between the variables are carried out although there is no evidence that gross energy use granger causes gdp a measure of final energy use adjusted for changing fuel composition does granger cause gdp

the relationship between energy and gnp further results this paper reexamines the casuality between gnp and energy consumption by using updated us data for the period 1947 1979 as a secondary contribution we investigate the causal relationship between energy consumption and employment applying sims technique we find no causal relationship between gnp and energy consumption we find further that there is a slight unidirectional flow running from employment to energy consumption economic interpretations of the empirical results are also presented

long run gasoline demand for passenger cars the role of income distribution it is commonly agreed that the level of income and prices are crucial determinants of the consumption of motor gasoline the respective long run price and income elasticities are regularly calculated using cross sectional models despite the acknowledgement of the role of income distribution it plays no role in intercountry cross sectional models this is due to a lack of appropriate data this paper shows that the omission of distributional characteristics provides misleading elasticities using available distributional measures this paper is referring to an income threshold which is crucial to the acquisition of an automobile it is shown that on the one hand in poor countries an unequal income distribution is needed to enable at least some people to buy automobiles on the other hand in wealthy countries an unequal income distribution would exclude some people from acquiring automobiles hence depending on the income level inequality has a diverging impact on the ability to buy durable goods the second part of this paper develops a pooled 90 country model to examine this approach empirically it could be shown that distribution variables are highly significant to explain the demand for automobiles and motor gasoline moreover the consideration of the distribution of income leads to a considerable decrease in income elasticity values this is mainly due to the positive correlation between income level and income equality within the sample

review of renewable energy investment and financing in china status mode issues and countermeasures abstract with the support of national policies china s renewable energy generation industry has experienced a rapid development period and entered the world forefront level especially in the aspects of installed capacity and speed of newly installed capacity however with the rapid development of renewable energy the power generation industry is facing more and more challenges particularly in investment and financing as for wind power industry there are also some problems such as single financing channels blindness of projects investment and so on which will result in financing difficulties for some advanced projects in addition the problems for the investment of photovoltaic pv power generation leads to vicious competition and a tumble in international market thus the overcapacity of china s entire pv industry emerges generally speaking the renewable energy industry is facing a seemingly contradictory predicament of funding deficiencies and blind investment which is derived from the government centered renewable energy investment and financing this government centered mode has promoted the development of renewable energy industry in the early stage but it cannot be adapted to the requirements of sustainable development in view of these the problems of renewable energy investment and financing are deeply studied in this paper this paper proceeds as follows firstly the overview of the development of china s renewable energy industry is briefly introduced secondly the status quo of china s renewable energy investment and financing is explored in detail based on overview of the following five perspectives investment situation investment and financing bodies investment and financing means sources of funding and financing channels secondly the patterns and characteristics of renewable energy financing are summarized and a comparative analysis of wind power and photovoltaic power generation financing means is carried out finally renewable energy investment and financing issues are discussed and further feasible proposals are put forward in all this paper is of great significance in the sustainable and healthy development of china s renewable energy

who emits most associations between socio economic factors and uk households home energy transport indirect and total co2 emissions abstract does the association between household characteristics and household co2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy transport and indirect emissions this question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others so far this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household co2 emissions using a representative uk expenditure survey this paper compares how household characteristics like income household size education gender worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions we find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains in particular whilst all types of emissions rise with income low income workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions this demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains

welfare implications of the renewable fuel standard with an integrated tax subsidy policy abstract this paper derives the optimal integrated tax subsidy policy where one input is taxed and revenues are used to subsidize the use of a substitute input to reduce greenhouse gas emissions given the existing policies under the renewable fuel standard policies we measure the welfare effects and impact on cellulosic ethanol production after implementing the tax subsidy policy using a general equilibrium model a revenue neutral integrated tax subsidy scheme leads to a small positive tax rate for crude oil and a large positive subsidy for cellulosic ethanol because the former has a larger emissions coefficient than the latter the overall welfare effects of an integrated tax subsidy scheme are less than a 1 increase for the economy but the growth in the cellulosic ethanol industry could range from 28 to 238 because the revenues from taxing crude oil are directly used to subsidize cellulosic ethanol production

poverty and famines an essay on entitlement and deprivation this book focuses on the causes of starvation in general and famines in particular the traditional analysis of famines is shown to be fundamentally defective and the author develops an alternative analysis

a multivariate cointegration analysis of the role of energy in the us macroeconomy abstract this paper extends my previous analysis of the causal relationship of gdp and energy use in the usa in the post war period a majority of the relevant variables are integrated justifying a cointegration analysis the results show that cointegration does occur and that energy input cannot be excluded from the cointegration space the results are plausible in terms of macroeconomic dynamics the results are similar to my previous granger causality results and contradict claims in the literature based on bivariate models that there is no cointegration between energy and output

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

demand for medical care by the elderly a finite mixture approach summary in this article we develop a finite mixture negative binomial count model that accommodates unobserved heterogeneity in an intuitive and analytically tractable manner this model the standard negative binomial model and its hurdle extension are estimated for six measures of medical care demand by the elderly using a sample from the 1987 national medical expenditure survey the finite mixture model is preferred overall by statistical model selection criteria two points of support adequately describe the distribution of the unobserved heterogeneity suggesting two latent populations the healthy and the ill whose fitted distributions diaer substantially from each other 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

endogeneity in count data models an application to demand for health care the generalized method of moments gmm estimation technique is discussed for count data models with endogenous regressors count data models can be specified with additive or multiplicative errors and it is shown that in general a set of instruments is not orthogonal to both error types simultaneous equations with a dependent count variable often do not have a reduced form which is a simple function of the instruments however a simultaneous model with a count and a binary variable can only be logically consistent when the system is triangular utilizing data from the british health and lifestyle survey 1991 1992 the gmm estimator is used in the estimation of a model explaining the number of visits to doctors with a self reported binary health index as a possible endogenous regressor if this regressor is truly endogenous one expects the pseudo likelihood estimate of its coefficient to be biased upwards indeed for the additive model the estimated coefficient of the binary health index decreases in value when the possible endogeneity of this regressor is taken into account further indication of endogeneity is given by the fact that the overidentifying restrictions are rejected in the multiplicative model but not in the additive model finally a model that includes predicted latent health instead of the binary health index is estimated in stages

the causality between energy consumption and economic growth in turkey abstract this paper applies the causality test to examine the causal relationship between primary energy consumption ec and real gross national product gnp for turkey during 1970 2006 we employ unit root tests the augmented dickey fuller adf and the philips perron pp johansen cointegration test and pair wise granger causality test to examine relation between ec and gnp our empirical results indicate that the two series are found to be non stationary however first differences of these series lead to stationarity further the results indicate that ec and gnp are cointegrated and there is bidirectional causality running from ec to gnp and vice versa this means that an increase in ec directly affects economic growth and that economic growth also stimulates further ec this bidirectional causality relationship between ec and gnp determined for turkey at 1970 2006 period is in accordance with the ones in literature reported for similar countries consequently we conclude that energy is a limiting factor to economic growth in turkey and hence shocks to energy supply will have a negative impact on economic growth

voting on the environment price or ideology evidence from swiss referendums studies on preferences for environmental quality usually posit that price and income explain most of the observed choices however we argue that conceptions of social norms and the common good are equally important when analyzing environmental voting outcomes and are a significant component of the environmental demand we study aggregate results of three ballot proposals in switzerland put to vote in the year 2000 which foresaw different tax schemes on fossil energy all three bills were rejected by the electorate we are able to show that regions with producer interests car commuting habits and elderly population are less supportive of ecological tax reforms unlike higher education and leftist political affinity that work in favor of the bills though more importantly our results underline the importance of including variables pertaining to the notion of ideology both in terms of statistical fit and obtaining unbiased estimates for price and income determinants

when can carbon abatement policies increase welfare the fundamental role of distorted factor markets abstract this paper employs analytical and numerical models to assess the welfare effects of a revenue neutral carbon tax and nonauctioned carbon emissions permits taking into account preexisting tax distortions in factor markets the presence of preexisting taxes significantly raises the general equilibrium costs of both policies this cost increase is much greater under emissions permits since this policy does not generate revenues to reduce distortionary taxes under our central estimates emissions permits cannot increase welfare unless environmental damages exceed about 18 per ton of carbon in contrast an appropriately scaled carbon tax is welfare improving so long as environmental damages are positive

are co2 taxes regressive evidence from the danish experience abstract denmark today carries one of the heaviest environmental tax burdens in the world bringing in around 10 of public revenues while evaluations have shown that the danish co 2 and other environmental taxes work as an effective measure to reduce emissions a considerable barrier to increased use of these instruments today seems to be a widespread perception of their socially adverse effects in this article it is demonstrated that co 2 taxes imposed on energy consumption in households as well as in industry do in fact tend to be regressive and therefore have undesirable distributional effects this holds especially for taxes imposed directly on households to analyze this we apply national consumer survey statistics in combination with input output tables

on self interested preferences for burden sharing rules an econometric analysis for the costs of energy policy measures abstract this paper examines the acceptance of burden sharing rules that refer to the costs of the german energy transition which is one of the most challenging and disputed national climate and energy policy measures based on data from a comprehensive survey of more than 2200 citizens the empirical analysis reveals that the polluter pays rule has by far the highest support compared with the ability to pay rule and especially compared with the equal pay rule which is widely refused in the sample since the distribution of the costs of the german energy transition is largely in line with a polluter pays rule its strong support seems to contribute to the high acceptance of the energy transition at all the main result of our econometric analysis with multivariate binary and ordered probit models is that not only some attitudinal factors like environmental values and political identification but especially economic self interest is relevant since equivalent energy expenditures have a significantly negative effect on the support of the polluter pays rule and especially equivalent income has a significantly negative effect on the preference for the ability to pay rule these results suggest that the use of distributional arguments for the criticism of energy policy measures is not necessarily value driven on the basis of real perceptions of distributive justice but can also be strategically motivated to prevent and combat economically unfavorable measures together with the strong general support of the polluter pays rule these results suggest that a sharp reorientation of the german energy transition due to distributional arguments is not very useful

semi parametric estimation of hurdle regression models with an application to medicaid utilization this paper develops a semi parametric estimation method for hurdle two part count regression models the approach in each stage is based on laguerre series expansion for the unknown density of the unobserved heterogeneity the semi parametric hurdle model nests poisson and negative binomial hurdle models which have been used in recent applied literature the empirical part of the paper evaluates the impact of managed care programmes for medicaid eligibles on utilization of health care services using a key utilization variable the number of doctor and health centre visits health status measures and age seem to be more important in determining health care utilization than other socio economic and enrollment variables the semi parametric approach is particularly useful for the analysis of overdispersed individual level data characterized by a large proportion of non users and highly skewed distribution of counts for users 1997 john wiley sons ltd

sharing health risk and income risk within households evidence from japanese data the question of which household members should consume medical services and in what quantities is examined by using japanese household level data two key concepts are employed health risk and income risk and whether family heads or dependants bear these risks investigated health risk is the risk that a household member falls ill while income risk is the risk that future household income decreases it is found that both heads and dependants make fewer visits to doctors as household size increases it is also found that only dependants visited doctors less frequently following the reform of the public health insurance system which raised the co payment rate of family heads from 10 to 20 these findings imply that heads and dependants share health risk but dependants bear income risk

an international literature survey on energy economic growth nexus evidence from country specific studies in this paper an extensive review of the rapidly growing in the literature on the nexus between economic growth and four types of energy consumption total energy consumption electricity consumption nuclear consumption and renewable consumption the various hypotheses associated with the causal interaction between these variables along with a survey of the empirical literature are also discussed the survey focuses on country coverage periods modeling techniques and empirical conclusions a general observation from these studies that results are found to be sensitive to methodology and type of energy considered the empirical results for the specific countries surveyed show that i for energy consumption growth nexus 29 supported the growth hypothesis 27 the feedback hypothesis 23 the conservation hypothesis and 21 the neutrality hypothesis ii for the electricity consumption growth nexus 40 supported the growth hypothesis 33 the feedback hypothesis and 27 conservation hypothesis iii for the nuclear consumption growth nexus 60 supported the neutrality hypothesis and 40 the growth hypothesis and iv for the renewable consumption growth nexus 40 supported the neutrality hypothesis 40 the conservation hypothesis and 20 the growth hypothesis these mixed results may be attributed to the different used data selected variables and econometric approaches undertaken

lifetime incidence and the distributional burden of excise taxes this implies that low income households in one year have some chance of being higher income households in other years and significantly affects the estimated distributional burden of excise taxes this paper shows that household expenditures on gasoline alcohol and tobacco as a share of total consumption a proxy for lifetime income are much more equally distributed than expenditures as a share of annual income from a longer horizon perspective excise taxes on these goods are therefore much less regressive than standard analyses suggest this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

electricity consumption growth nexus the case of malaysia abstract the goal of this paper is to model the relationship between electricity consumption and real gross domestic product gdp for malaysia in a bivariate and multivariate framework we use time series data for the period 1971 2003 and apply the bounds testing approach to search for a long run relationship our results reveal that electricity consumption real gdp and price share a long run relationship the results of the autoregressive distributed lag ardl estimates of long run elasticity of electricity consumption on gdp are found to be around 0 7 and statistically significant finally in the short run the results of the causality test show that there is a unidirectional causal flow from electricity consumption to economic growth in malaysia from these findings we conclude that malaysia is an energy dependent country leading us to draw some policy implications this paper adds support and validity thus reducing the policy makers concern on the ambiguity of the electricity and growth nexus in malaysia

has the caveat of case mix based payment influenced the quality of inpatient hospital care in portugal portugal was the first country with a national health system to incorporate diagnosis related group drg case mix adjustment in formulating hospital budgets on a nation wide basis most of the case mix payment outcomes literature comes from the usa where the quality of data is superior to that of many other countries the purpose of this article is to assess the initial impact of case mix financing on the quality of inpatient care in portuguese hospitals using a methodology that may be appropriate for health care systems whose information is not as complete as that of the usa estimating a count data model at the hospital level with inpatient mortality as a quality indicator the authors find no evidence that case mix based payment has had adverse consequences on inpatient mortality for the most frequent non obstetric drg during the three year time period under study

distributional effects of a carbon tax on chinese households a case of shanghai abstract as an effective policy instrument to reduce co 2 emissions the effects of a carbon tax on distribution have been the critical factor in determining whether a carbon tax will be acceptable in china taking shanghai as an example which is the economic center and front runner of china this paper estimates the distributional effect of a carbon tax on households in various income groups by using the input output model and the suits index the results indicate that the comprehensive distributional effect of the carbon tax is regressive the expenditure of the low income group caused by the carbon tax accounts for 0 853 of the total expenditure while that of the high income group 0 712 the direct distributional effect presents a weak progressivity while the indirect one is significantly regressive and the latter is much larger than the former moreover the suits index of the carbon tax is 0 078 implying that the carbon tax burden on the low income group is the highest and thus that a carbon tax can intensify income inequality therefore when introducing a carbon tax some rational associated redistribution or compensation measures such as purposive transfer payments should be implemented to restrict or even eliminate the regressivity of the carbon tax

what is a fair co2 tax increase on fair emission reductions in the transport sector we examine how individual preferences for fair reductions of carbon dioxide co2 emissions affect the support for increases in the co2 tax on gasoline and diesel we assume that people not only care about their own material welfare but also have preferences for fairness in policy design and we explore the implications using original data from a mail questionnaire sent to a representative sample of the swedish population the main result is that fairness in policy design does matter those respondents who adhere to a fairness principle tend to be relatively more positive to increases in the co2 tax one possible explanation for this result is that there is a relatively high degree of reciprocity regarding the origin of emissions and the fairness regarding who should bear the burden of co2 reductions via a split sample analysis we also find that the relative importance of fairness principles is dependent upon whether one uses a car often or not this sheds light on the potential goal conflict between the importance of fairness principles and self interest in the form of a need for private car transportation

economic incentives and hospitalization in germany the dramatically rising health expenditures have become a matter of prime concern using a rich panel dataset this paper contributes to this debate by investigating factors determining the demand for hospitalization in germany while most previous studies have found a significant impact of social insurance on the demand for hospital trips the empirical results presented here cast doubts on the role of those economic incentives there are also important differences in the hospitalization behaviour of men and women and between the full sample and those with chronic conditions which have been neglected by the literature 1997 john wiley sons ltd