returns to education the greek experience 1988 1999 this article provides estimates of private rates of return to education in greece derived from mincerian type earnings equations the data come from the latest three household surveys of the country covering the 1988 to 1999 period the empirical evidence suggests that rates of return associated with female high school and university graduates exceed the respective rates for male graduates rates of return pertaining to tertiary education graduates are increasing over time whereas the corresponding rates for secondary education graduates follow an inverted u shaped pattern and dropouts from any education degree end up with rates of return lower than the rates associated with the immediately preceding education level

the effect of urbanization affluence and trade openness on energy consumption a time series analysis in malaysia abstract this paper investigates the impact of urbanization on energy consumption by applying the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat in case of malaysia the study covers the time period of 1970q1 2011q4 the unit root test and the ardl bounds testing approach have been applied to examine integrating properties and long run relationship in the presence of structural breaks our results validated the existence of cointegration and exposed that urbanization is a major contributor in energy consumption affluence raises energy demand capital stock boosts energy consumption trade openness leads to affluence and hence increases energy consumption the causality analysis finds that urbanization granger causes energy consumption the feedback effect is found between energy consumption and affluence and energy consumption and capital the bidirectional causality exists between trade openness and energy consumption

the new economics of teachers and education rapidly growing costs of elementary and secondary education are studied in the context of the rising value of women s time the dramatic increase in direct costs of education per student in the past 3 decades is empirically linked to increasing demand and utilization of teacher and staff inputs attributable to growing market opportunities for women and changes in the structure of families on the supply side the flexibility option that female teachers who take temporary leaves do not suffer subsequent wage loss upon reentry is shown to be an important attraction of the teaching profession to women

a multi regional input output analysis of the pollution haven hypothesis from the perspective of global production fragmentation pollution haven hypothesis is an important debate on the environmental effects of international trade the pattern of which has been reshaped obviously by global production fragmentation recently the production process is distributed globally and the pollution haven effect of international trade is becoming more complicated for instance intermediate product trade corresponds to the largest share of embodied emissions and the share of emissions induced by the global value chain related trade is increasing gradually the aim of this paper is to make a comprehensive analysis on the pollution haven hypothesis in carbon emissions embodied in three different trade patterns from global bilateral and national perspectives we propose a method to parcel the pollution haven hypothesis in a multi regional input output analysis and discuss the contribution of production fragmentation for global emissions it is found that international production fragmentation generates global emissions savings the intermediate product trade has a negative balance of avoided emissions the final product trade becomes increasingly less environmentally effective during the period 1995 2009 there are significant differences in the environmental effects of different trade patterns for each country

what drives energy consumption in developing countries the experience of selected african countries abstract this study investigates the drivers of energy consumption in sub saharan african countries it applies the bounds testing approach to cointegration to time series data at individual country levels over the period from 1970 to 2011 the study finds that energy consumption is cointegrated with real gdp per capita industrial output imports foreign direct investment credit to private sector urbanization and population furthermore the sign and magnitude of long run estimates vary significantly for a single country and across countries depending on the energy consumption variable used overall the findings confirm the leading role of economic growth industrial output population and urbanization economic growth industrial output and population have positive effects on energy consumption in the majority of countries given the urgent need to address climate change african countries should adopt policies to improve energy efficiency and accelerate transition toward renewable energy the african renewable energy initiative launched at the 21st session of the united nations conference of the parties cop21 is an opportunity for african countries to provide and maintain widespread access to reliable and affordable environmentally cleaner energy to meet the requirements of rapid economic growth and improved living standards

china s balance of emissions embodied in trade approaches to measurement and allocating international responsibility international trade is characterized not only by the flow of capital and goods but also by the energy and emissions embodied in goods during their production this paper investigates the evolving role that chinese trade is playing in the response to climate change by estimating the scale of emissions embodied in china s current trade pattern and demonstrating the magnitude of the difference between the emissions it produces some of which are incurred to meet the consumption demands of the rest of the world and the emissions embodied in the goods it consumes estimating china s emissions on a consumption rather than a production basis both lowers its responsibility for carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 2006 from 5 500 to 3 840mtco2 and reduces the growth rate of emissions from an average of 12 5 per cent p a to 8 7 per cent p a between 2001 and 2006 the analysis indicates that a reliable consumption based accounting methodology is feasible and could improve our understanding of which actors and states are responsible for emissions for example recent emissions reductions by developed countries may lack credibility if production has merely been displaced to countries such as china moreover in the current institutional context production methodologies encourage leakages through trade that may do more to displace than to reduce emissions both equity and efficiency concerns therefore suggest that emissions embodied in trade should receive special attention in the distribution of post kyoto abatement burdens

energy consumption and economic growth new insights into the cointegration relationship abstract this paper examines the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp including energy prices for 25 oecd countries from 1981 to 2007 the distinction between common factors and idiosyncratic components using principal component analysis allows to distinguish between developments on an international and a national level as drivers of the long run relationship indeed cointegration between the common components of the underlying variables indicates that international developments dominate the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp furthermore the results suggest that energy consumption is price inelastic causality tests indicate the presence of a bi directional causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth

invisible energy policies a new agenda for energy demand reduction this article makes the case for a new and ambitious research and governance agenda for energy demand reduction it argues that existing demand side approaches focused on promoting technological efficiency and informed individual consumption are unlikely to be adequate to achieving future carbon emissions reduction goals it points out that very little attention has so far been paid to the impacts of non energy policies on energy demand and it submits that a much fuller integration of energy demand questions into policy is required it advances a general framework supported by illustrative examples for understanding the impacts of non energy policies on energy demand it reflects on why these connections have been so little explored and addressed within energy research and policy and it argues that for all their current invisibility there is nonetheless scope for increasing the visibility of and in effect mainstreaming energy demand reduction objectives within other policy areas researchers and policymakers we contend need to develop better understandings of how energy demand might be made governable and how non energy policies might be revised alone and in combination to help steer long term changes in energy demand

the effects of property rights on economic performance this study augments the neoclassical growth model proposed by mankiw et al 1992 to analyse the effects of the property rights protection on the levels of economic performance measured by per capita gross domestic product gdp across countries the augmented model predicts that 1 the accumulation of physical and human capital and therefore the level of per capita gdp in a country is positively related with the degree of property rights protection as well as with the saving rates and 2 the effects of the saving rates on the level of per capita gdp in a country are positively related with the degree of property rights protection empirical evidence shows that the predictions of the augmented model are consistent with the variations in the levels of per capita gdp across countries

the european renewable energy target for 2030 an impact assessment of the electricity sector abstract the european union set binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases ghg and the share of renewable energy re in final energy consumption by 2020 the european council agreed to continue with this strategy through to 2030 by setting a re target of 27 in addition to a ghg reduction target of 40 we provide a detailed sectoral impact assessment by analyzing the implications for the electricity sector in terms of economic costs and the regional distribution of investments and shares of electricity generated from renewable energy sources res e according to the impact analysis by the european commission the 27 re target corresponds to a res e share of 49 our model based sensitivity analysis on underlying technological and institutional assumptions shows that the cost effective res e share varies between 43 and 56 secondly we quantify the economic costs of these variants and those which would be incurred with higher shares the long term additional costs for higher res e shares would be less than 1 of total system costs the third aspect relates to the regional distribution of eu wide efforts for upscaling renewables we point out that delivering high res e shares in a cost effective manner involves considerably different efforts by the member states

estimating endogenous switching regression model with a flexible parametric distribution function application to korean housing demand this study introduces johnson s su normal distribution which can accommodate the flexibility of true error distribution to obtain consistent estimates in an endogenous switching regression model simulation results indicate that the su normal model outperforms the normal model for the consistency of estimators when the error distribution is nonnormal korean housing demand model estimated by the su normal model also outperforms the normal model in terms of parameter estimates and graphical predictions

economic and environmental costs of replacing nuclear fission with solar and wind energy in sweden nuclear power is facing an uncertain future in sweden due to political directives that are seeking to phase out this energy source over coming decades here we examine the environmental and economic costs of hypothetical future renewable energy focused cases compared with the current nuclear and hydroelectricity centred mix in sweden we show that if wind and photovoltaics replace entire nuclear power while maintaining the current level of dispatchable backup capacity including hydroelectric power and peak gas power 154 gw of wind power will be required and will generate 427 1 twh compared with the actual demand of 143 7 twh to reliably meet demand each hour of the year as a consequence the annual spending on electricity systems will be five times higher than the status quo increasing dispatchable power increasing transmission capacities to other countries and generating electricity from combined heat and power plants even when there is no heat demand will together reduce the required capacities of wind and solar photovoltaic by half but it will double the greenhouse gas emissions during the combustion process in conclusion our economic and greenhouse gas emissions analyses demonstrate that replacing nuclear power with renewables will be neither economic nor environmentally friendly with regards to the climate

symposium on primary and secondary education this article introduces the symposium on primary and secondary education it points out that considerable controversy surrounds the issues treated by the articles in the symposium the effect of the level of resources invested in education on student outcomes and the educational financing structure that would optimize desirable outcomes of the system including allocative and productive efficiency and equity given rising wage inequality in the labor market associated with increasing demands for skill concerns over slow u s productivity growth and burgeoning public school enrollments resolving these issues has become increasingly important

european energy policy a review this article presents the implemented policies of the european union in the broader field of energy and provides a picture of the union s strategy on energy related issues a brief historical background is provided covering the period from the beginning of the union s creation in 1951 when coal was considered as the heart of its economic growth up to 2012 policy development principles as well as the consultations that take place before the proposal of each option are also discussed implemented policies are classified into seven broad categories renewable energy energy efficiency and savings internal energy markets security of energy supply environmental protection nuclear energy and research and development for each category an introduction covering important milestones towards its development is followed by the presentation of the relevant policies and a description of their purpose

will economic restructuring in china reduce trade embodied co2 emissions we acknowledge the support of the national social science foundation of china project no project no 09 zd029 and the institute for energy environment and economy at tsinghua university which is supporting tianyu qi s doctoral research as a visiting scholar at the massachusetts institute of technology we further acknowledge the support of eni s p a icf international and shell international ltd initial sponsors of the china energy and climate project in the mit joint program on the science and policy of global change at mit none of the sponsoring organizations played a role in the study design collection analysis or interpretation of the data used for this study nor did they influence our decisions to submit the article for publication and all errors are our own we also acknowledge general industrial and government sponsors of the joint program on the science and policy of global change http globalchange mit edu sponsors all

assessing the effect of educational programs on public schools performance this paper provides evidence on the effectiveness in the implementation of an educational program which offered public schools in catalonia spain the opportunity to improve the quality of educati

embodied pollution in trade estimating the environmental load displacement of industrialised countries abstract the present paper sets out to aid in the development of environmental load displacement indicators developing the notion of the environmental memory of physical flows we estimated embodied pollution in trade of 18 industrialized countries with a the rest of the world and b developing countries from 1976 to 1994 we found that in the last years of analysis total imports of japan usa and western europe have entailed in general larger air pollutant emissions than local exports the balance of embodied emissions in trade beet seems to follow an inverted u shape across time in japan and western europe and an n shape in the us in the period of analysis japanese and european environmental terms of trade with developing countries improved from the japanese and european point of view whereas american environmental terms of trade with developing countries deteriorated over time although there is no statistical trend between income and embodied emissions in imports in a cross section analysis there does seem to be a positive relationship between both variables at a national level the results suggest that despite many shortcomings this type of assessment may shed useful insights on the international aspects of sustainable development

returns to education a further international update and implications this paper updates evidence on the returns to investment in education by adding estimates for new countries and refining existing estimates to bring the total number of country cases to over 60 the new cross country evidence confirms and reinforces earlier patterns namely that returns are highest for primary education the general curricula the education of women and countries with the lowest per capita income the findings have important implications for directing future investment in education which for efficiency and equity purposes should concentrate on these priority areas

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

recent two stage sample selection procedures with an application to the gender wage gap recently developed two stage estimation methods of sample selection models are used in the context of data from the 1989 labor market activity survey to examine labor supply decisions and wage outcomes for employed men and women recent hypothesis test procedures are used to test for no sample selection and to test for a parametric against a semiparametric selection correction procedure we conclude that selection is indeed an issue for the sample at hand and that the semiparametric specification is appropriate we also present the standard decomposition of the gender wage gap into its explained and unexplained portions

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

heterogeneous technologies strategic groups and environmental efficiency technology gaps for european countries abstract this paper measures technology tg and environmental efficiency technology gaps eetgs in 25 european countries over two distinct periods 2002 and 2008 examining the possible effect of adopted environmental regulations and the kyoto protocol commitments on environmental efficiency technology gaps however the introduction of the metafrontier in our analysis puts into our discussion the role of heterogeneous technologies and its effect on the above mentioned measures employing a directional distance function we investigate whether there is an actual difference in terms of environmental efficiency and efficiency performance among european countries considering the technological frontiers under which they operate the construction of individual frontiers has been realized employing a large number of variables that are highly correlated with countries learning and absorbing capacity new technological knowledge and using economic theory and classical frontier discrimination like developed vs developing north vs south and participation in the eurozone or not the overall results indicate a crucial role of heterogeneous technologies for technology gaps in both periods moreover a significant decrease for both measures although in different percent has been recorded emphasizing the key role of knowledge spillovers

applying physical input output analysis to estimate land appropriation ecological footprints of international trade activities in the last few years some studies have been presented which link land use accounting and input output analysis based on monetary input output tables miots for the calculation of direct and indirect land appropriation of production and consumption activities the compilation of the first comprehensive physical input output tables piots for some western european countries in the 1990s opened new possibilities for linking physical accounting and input output analysis using a physical multiplier for this kind of calculation is more appropriate as the most land intensive sectors are also the sectors with the highest amounts of material flows physical input output analysis illustrates land appropriation in relation to material flows of each of the sectors which is more appropriate from the point of view of environmental pressures than land appropriation in relation to monetary flows of a miot physical input output analysis has so far not been applied for any land related studies based on a physical input output model of the eu 15 physical input output analysis is applied in this paper in order to calculate direct and indirect land requirements for the production of exports from eu 15 to the rest of the world

the energy efficient transformation of eu business enterprises adapting policies to contextual factors abstract business contexts differ in their ability to foster the energy efficient transformation eet of enterprises accordingly energy efficiency policies have to be adapted to different situations the present paper analyzes the relationships between the eet of european union eu business end users and three contextual factors i e high energy prices stringency of regulations and society s alertness toward environment conservation enterprises from 9 eu member states have been grouped according to country industry and size the final sample includes 256 enterprise classes and the model controls for the innovation propensity and energy intensity of each enterprise class our results show that regulatory stringency is the most impactful contextual factor while the environmental alertness of society does not have a significant effect concerns over energy costs have not been found to drive eet per se but more energy intensive enterprise classes are more likely to react to high energy prices we discuss the implications of our results for the eu governments that are currently monitoring and refining the transposition of the 2012 energy efficiency directive

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

determinants of net carbon emissions embodied in sino german trade abstract the existing research on carbon emissions embodied in trade has been concentrated between net importing countries and net exporting countries few study has been conducted to analyze carbon emissions embodied in trade between net exporting countries to fill the research gap this work systematically investigated the net carbon emissions embodied in trade between the largest net exporter of developing countries china and the largest net exporter of developed countries german based on the non competitive input output analysis and the structural decomposition analysis was used to study the driving factors effecting the change of net embodied carbon emissions in sino german trade the results show the net carbon emissions embodied in sino german trade increased significantly with the sharp increase of net trade volume after china s accession to the world trade organization carbon transfer through trade was mainly concentrated in the carbon intensive industrial sectors in sino german trade this phenomenon was attributed to the differences in the trade structure and the production efficiency between china and germany the decomposition analysis shows china s intermediate input structure effect and the country structure effect of germany s final demand were the leading contributors to growth in net carbon emission in sino german trade which mainly was offset by china s carbon intensity effect finally some policy implications are offered

education and technical efficiency during the green revolution in pakistan tion is more likely to arise during disequilibrium caused by technical change in agriculture this may be because technical change renders the existing cultural practices obsolete or inadequate and calls for an adjustment a more educated farmer is supposed to make the required adjustment more quickly this article tests the foregoing hypothesis in pakistan agriculture during the green revolution when introduction of new crop varieties disturbed the prevailing equilibrium for this purpose a production function approach is used and the analysis is conducted not only for the new crop varieties but also for their traditional counterparts the results lend support to the hypothesis by showing that the worker effect is stronger for new crop varieties than it is for traditional ones the article is divided into five sections in the next section a brief review of the literature is presented section iii presents the hypothesis and discusses the methodology used for the analysis the results and their policy implications are discussed in section iv and section v concludes the article ii brief literature review in a pioneering study exploring the economic effects of education z griliches used production function analysis to highlight the contri

driving factors of carbon embodied in china s provincial exports in this paper we use the multi regional input output model mrio and logarithm mean divisia index approach to analyze the changes in china s carbon embodied in exports cee at the national and provincial levels the results indicate that the total cee and the cee of 17 provinces including all eastern provinces decreased between 2007 and 2010 the largest decrease in total cee is caused by an input structural effect which decreases the cee of most of the provinces the technique effect arising from changes in provincial carbon intensities causes the second largest decrease in total cee and it effectively reduces the cee of most of the provinces especially the eastern provinces changes in the export composition of most of the provinces also decrease the provincial cee a change in the provincial distribution of exports decreases the cee in 11 provinces on the one hand and increases the cee in 19 provinces on the other hand a change in export volume increases the cee of each province and the whole country but its total effect is evidently lower than the input structural effect and the technique effect c 2015 elsevier b v all rights reserved

emission abatement untangling the impacts of the eu ets and the economic crisis abstract in this study we use historical emission data from installations under the european union emissions trading system eu ets to evaluate the impact of this policy on greenhouse gas emissions during the first two trading phases 2005 2012 as such the analysis seeks to disentangle two causes of emission abatement that attributable to the eu ets and that attributable to the economic crisis that hit the eu in 2008 09 to do so we use a dynamic panel data approach our results suggest that by far the biggest share of abatement was attributable to the effects of the economic crisis this finding has serious implications for future policy adjustments affecting core elements of the eu ets including the distribution of eu emission allowances

participation in gvcs and co2 emissions abstract this paper attempts to explore the determinants of co2 emissions in the context of international trade while there exist studies that examine the roles of horizontal specialization and inter industry trade transactions little previous research attention has been paid to the roles of vertical specialization and intra industry trade transactions in affecting co2 emissions to fill the knowledge gap this study uses the panel data of 62 countries and regions for the period of 1995 2011 to estimate the effect of participation in global value chains gvcs on per capita co2 emissions major findings include 1 the relationship between participation degrees in gvcs and per capita co2 emissions is found to be inversely u shaped at the aggregate economy level and for most individual industries 2 per capita gdp shows an n shaped relationship with per capita co2 emissions and 3 benign drivers of co2 emissions include r d energy conservation and population control it can be concluded that countries with low gdp or gvc participation degrees are expected to experience worsening co2 emissions in the short or even medium run this trend however can be moderated or even reversed with more r d investments

shifting policy priorities in eu china energy relations implications for chinese energy investments in europe shifting energy policy priorities both in china and the eu european union have transformed their bilateral relationship in order to assess the impact of domestic policy priorities on bilateral energy cooperation and climate policy this comparative study traces the evolution of eu and chinese approaches to energy policy and their relative emphasis on factors and frames such as availability efficiency affordability and environmental stewardship drawing on government documents and a data set of interviews with chinese policy makers experts and academics in 2015 2016 the article argues that while the eu started with a strong emphasis on environmental stewardship and moved towards a focus on affordability and availability china started with a strong emphasis on availability and has moved towards a greater emphasis on environmental stewardship this shift in frames on the chinese side and subsequent changes in subsidy structures and targets can partially explain the increase in investments in renewable energy technologies the article concludes that the chinese and eu perspectives have become more aligned over the past ten years coinciding with an increasing trend towards renewable energy in chinese energy investments in the eu for example in italy and the uk

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

prioritizing towards a green export portfolio for india an environmental input output approach abstract proponents of free trade have often hailed international trade as an engine of economic growth however the foreign trade sector like many other sectors in developing countries frequently involves these countries walking a tightrope between their developmental objectives and environmental goals in this regard prioritizing for developing a green yet internationally competitive export portfolio provides a quintessential win win solution to the problem this study factors in both environmental benignity indicated by total co2 emission intensity as well as trade competitiveness indicated by revealed comparative advantage index in identifying the ideal indian export portfolio the analysis calculates the level of direct and indirect emissions from the foreign trade sector exports and imports using the environmental input output eio matrix for 2003 04 for india that has been jointly developed by researchers from keio university japan and the energy and resources institute teri new delhi the derived basket is compared to the current portfolio to estimate the potential saving from compositional changes and to suggest directions for policymaking to emphasize or de emphasize the export of certain categories of exports

does school quality matter returns to education and the characteristics of public schools in the united states this paper estimates the effects of school quality measured by the pupil teacher ratio average term length and relative teacher pay on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949 using earnings data from the 1980 census we find that men who were educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers holding constant school quality measures however we find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state level rates of return

earnings and education in greece 1960 1977 this paper analyses the structure of earnings in greece by level of education in 1960 1964 and 1977 by means of individual data raised by special labour market surveys covering nearly 12 000 employees in urban areas the human capital specification of the earnings function explains as elsewhere about one third of a particular measure of income inequality the variance of log earnings the rate of return to schooling as a whole and to investment in higher education in particular has declined drastically between the early sixties and the late seventies a fact that is attributed to the expansion of higher education enrolment and graduates the paper concludes with a discussion of the apparent puzzle of a strong social demand for higher education combined with a low private rate of return to this level of schooling

school quality and returns to education of u s immigrants using the u s labor market as a common point of reference this article investigates the influence of source country school quality on the returns to education of immigrants based on 1980 and 1990 census data we first estimate country of origin specific returns to education results reveal that immigrants from japan and northern europe receive high returns and immigrants from central america receive low returns next we examine the relationship between school quality measures and these returns holding per capita gdp and other factors constant immigrants from countries with lower pupil teacher ratios and greater expenditures per pupil earn higher returns to education

the european framework for energy and climate policies european energy and climate change policy rests on two main pillars the internal energy market iem and the climate change package ccp the iem aimed at third party access and unbundling neglecting the physical infrastructure and the basis for asset valuations and hence the harmonisation of network charges the commission plans to complete the iem by 2014 almost a quarter of a century after embarking on the policy yet even if all the iem directives are implemented the eu will remain far from a single competitive market the ccp was grounded on short term targets the 2020 20 20 programme on the assumption that fossil fuel prices would rise making renewables competitive and hence yielding a competitive advantage to the eu the euets was intended to lead the way to a global trading system and an international agreement at copenhagen the eu has reduced the production of carbon emissions but only as a result of de industrialisation and slow growth and at the expense of rising carbon consumption renewables have not led to green growth but rather to a further eroding of competitiveness the euets price has collapsed in order for the eu to put the iem and the ccp back on track both need to be radically reconsidered the iem requires a refocusing on physical infrastructure common accounting rules and an eu wide approach to capacity markets and renewables trading the ccp requires a refocusing on carbon consumption on limiting the dash for coal and on future rather than current renewables

far away from a skill biased change falling educational wage premia in italy in this article we apply quantile regressions to investigate the evolution of educational wage premia ewp in italy from 1993 to 2004 using the survey of the household income and wealth shiw bank of italy and different classifications for educational attainments we show that in the private sector ewp have generally decreased over time considering both continuous and categorical specifications for education at all quantiles of the wage distribution different patterns are observed in the public sector where ewp remain basically stable over time a number of robustness checks and various econometric specifications are also applied in order to address sample selection issues our findings provide additional evidence in favour of the thesis that the increasing patterns in inequality and ewp and the related interpretations concerning skill biased changes are much less pronounced in continental europe than in anglo saxon countries

is energy security a driver for economic growth evidence from a global sample abstract this study examines whether energy security contributes to economic growth for a global sample of 74 countries covering the period from 2002 to 2013 the benchmark model is built based on an extended version of the cobb douglas production function ten measures of energy security are employed to capture five aspects of energy security including availability accessibility acceptability affordability and develop ability besides the whole sample we also conduct the panel data analysis on subsamples of countries based on different income levels using panel corrected standard errors pcse and feasible generalized least squares fgls techniques that correct for heterogeneity and autocorrelation and produce robust standard errors the empirical results appear to be relatively robust to these two estimation techniques overall we find that energy security enhances economic growth for both the whole sample and subsamples of countries meanwhile energy insecurity measured by energy intensity and carbon intensity variables has a negative impact on economic growth the results vary across subsamples for several cases the findings imply that at the global level energy for economic development energy security and climate change mitigation should be pursued as integrated themes since there are linkages among these three agendas

a cost benefit analysis of the eu 20 20 2020 package the european commission did not publish a cost benefit analysis for its 2020 climate package this paper fills that gap comparing the marginal costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emission reduction the uncertainty about the marginal costs of climate change is large and skewed and estimates partly reflect ethical choices e g the discount rate the 2010 carbon price in the eu emissions trading system can readily be justified by a cost benefit analysis emission reduction is not expensive provided that policy is well designed a condition not met by planned eu policy it is probably twice as expensive as needed costing one in ten years of economic growth the eu targets for 2020 are unlikely to meet the benefit cost test for a standard discount rate 3 pure rate of time preference the benefit cost ratio is rather poor 1 30 so that benefits need to be very much higher or costs very much lower than typically assumed to justify the 2020 targets only a very low discount rate 0 prtp would justify the 20 emission reduction target for 2020

residential energy demand in the united states analysis using static and dynamic approaches abstract the residential sector is the main consumer of energy in the united states and reducing energy consumption is an important goal for policymakers in each state to know how reducing residential energy demand could be achieved this study develops a set of static and dynamic models to investigate and identify the impact of socio economic and demographic characteristics building age energy prices and weather conditions on residential energy demand at the state level from 2005 to 2013 next this study proposes two alternative scenarios to reduce residential energy demand based on the most precise model for every 10 000 dollars of per capita income in each state 1 increasing residential electricity price by 1 cent per kw h and 2 decreasing average building age by 1 in the first scenario the findings indicate that annual residential electricity demand would decrease by 7 3 on average with the highest reductions in washington 11 9 north dakota 10 9 and idaho 9 7 in the second scenario residential gas demand would decrease by an average of 15 8 annually with the highest reduction in connecticut 33 2 followed by new york 33 0 and massachusetts 30 7 these proposed scenarios assist policymakers in optimizing decisions and investments to reduce residential energy consumption

sensitivity of energy system investments to policy regulation changes too many too fast abstract in this paper we argue that the interaction of energy policy regulations in the european electricity sector may be described by the slow fast class of dynamical systems such systems may exhibit drastic changes in their dynamics known as bifurcations one important being the so called blue sky catastrophe once reaching such a state the slow system becomes unresponsive to the changes in the fast system for the energy policy nexus this translates into the energy system becoming unresponsive to policy interventions leading to a freeze in the system dynamics application of this result allows us to argue that caution is needed when updating economic policies to achieve a faster transition towards a low carbon energy supply structure to avoid this risk the policy design should be aimed at long term incentive structures with less frequent but more consistent interventions

energy and carbon embodied in the international trade of brazil an input output approach abstract all goods and services produced in an economy are directly and or indirectly associated with energy use and according to the type of fuel utilized with co2 emissions as well international trade is an important factor in shaping the industrial structure of a country and consequently in affecting a country s energy use and co2 emissions this study applies input output techniques to the brazilian economy to evaluate the total impacts of international trade on its energy use and co2 emissions a commodity by industry io model in hybrid units energy commodities in physical units and non energy commodities in monetary units is applied to the brazilian economy in 1995 results show that total energy embodied in the exports of non energy goods of brazil equals 831 pj while total carbon embodied is 13 5 mtc these amounts are larger than the relevant amounts embodied in the imports of non energy goods respectively 679 pj and 9 9 mtc these figures are better understood by contrasting them with the total energy use and the corresponding total carbon emissions of the brazilian economy in 1995 estimated by this work 6781 pj and 99 4 mtc respectively this means that international inflows and outflows of energy embodied in non energy goods are in the order of 10 and 12 of the total energy use while inflows and outflows of carbon embodied in non energy goods are approximately 10 and 14 of the corresponding total carbon emissions of the brazilian economy in 1995 the general picture is that brazil is not only a net exporter of energy 153 pj and of carbon 3 6 mtc embodied in the non energy goods internationally traded by the country in 1995 but also that each dollar earned with exports embodied 40 more energy and 56 more carbon than each dollar spent on imports these findings suggest that brazilian policy makers should be concerned about the extra impacts international trade policy may have on energy use and carbon emissions of the country

assessment of environmental impacts embodied in u s china and u s india trade and related climate change policies we empirically investigate the ghg emissions embodied in the bilateral trade between the united states and china and the united states and india and their countryspecific and global environmental impacts in order to address the concerns of levelplaying field and carbon leakage associated with domestic carbon pricing scheme various border carbon adjustments have been proposed in recent u s climate change legislation employing gtap e model this study examines how and to what extent the proposed carbon tariffs and export subsidies potentially affect bilateral trade flow domestic production and the ghg emissions results indicate that carbon tariff effectively alleviates the impact of domestic carbon tax on vulnerable domestic industries and slightly raises their output and ghg emissions in addition it is also evident that a combined or full border adjustment policy has bigger impacts than an individual policy

schooling and monetary rewards in greece an over education false alarm the paper uses data from the 1993 94 household survey to investigate a number of issues stemming from the current educational policy debate in greece private and social returns to investment in education are estimated and a test of the screening hypothesis is conducted no evidence was found that higher education is being used as a screening device and the returns to investment in education have been maintained to just below their level in the 1960s the central finding of the paper is that the fear of further expansion of the university system is highly exaggerated and that the economy could absorb even larger amounts of highly educated manpower of course such expansion could not take place unless there is an end of the state monopoly on the financing and provision of tertiary education

the effects of cognitive ability and high school quality on college entry decisions nonparametric estimation of parameters of interest the decisions to attend college are analysed and nonparametric predictions compared to those obtained from the widely used logit model the impacts of measured cognitive ability and proxies for high school quality on the decisions to attend college are examined for a sample of white and black males and females from the usa two different parameters of interest which isolate the effects of ability and high school quality on college entry decisions are described and estimated by integrating out the effect of other covariates it is found that measured cognitive ability is an extremely important determinant of college entry for all race and gender groups at the same point in the ability distribution blacks are more likely to select into college than whites and females more likely than males of the same racial group proxies for high school quality such as teacher education student teacher ratios school enrolment and library size are shown to have little or no effects on the likelihood of college entry

how important is human capital for development evidence from immigrant earnings this paper offers new evidence on the sources of cross country income differences it exploits the idea that observing immigrant workers from different countries in the same labor market provides an opportunity to estimate their human capital endowments these estimates suggest that human and physical capital account for only a fraction of cross country income differences for countries below 40 of the us output per worker less than half of the output gap relative to the us is attributed to human and physical capital

bi lateral co2 emissions embodied in australia china trade abstract this paper quantifies the co 2 emissions embodied in bi lateral trade between australia and china using a sectoral input output model the results revealed 1 that china performs lower than australia in clean technology in the primary manufacturing energy sectors due to their overuse of coal and inefficient sectoral production processes and 2 that china had a 30 94 mt surplus of bi lateral co 2 emissions in 2010 2011 and 3 overall global emissions were reduced by 20 19 mt through australia china trade in 2010 2011 the result indicates that the greater the energy efficient a country among the trading partners the lower will be the overall global co 2 emissions global emissions decreased mainly because china consumed australian primary products rather than producing them australia is an energy efficient producer of primary products relative to china the bilateral trade compositions and trade volume played an important role in lowering global emissions and therefore one can view proposed china australia free trade agreement positively in reducing global emissions however for the sustainable development china should strengthen clean energy use and both countries should adopt measures to create an emission trading scheme in order to avoid protectionism in the form of future border price adjustments

co2 emissions embodied in china us trade input output analysis based on the emergy dollar ratio to gain insight into changes in co2 emissions embodied in china us trade an input output analysis based on the emergy dollar ratio edr is used to estimate embodied co2 emissions a structural decomposition analysis sda is employed to analyze the driving factors for changes in co2 emissions embodied in china s exports to the us during 2002 2007 the results of the input output analysis show that net export of co2 emissions increased quickly from 2002 to 2005 but decreased from 2005 to 2007 these trends are due to a reduction in total co2 emission intensity a decrease in the exchange rate and small imports of embodied co2 emissions the results of the sda demonstrate that total export volume was the largest driving factor for the increase in embodied co2 emissions during 2002 2007 followed by intermediate input structure direct co2 emissions intensity had a negative effect on changes in embodied co2 emissions the results suggest that china should establish a framework for allocating emission responsibilities enhance energy efficiency and improve intermediate input structure

the role of co2 embodiment in us china trade abstract this study examines the influence of us china trade on national and global emissions of carbon dioxide co2 the three basic questions are as follows 1 what amount of co2 emissions is avoided in the us by importing chinese goods 2 how much are co2 emissions in china increased as a result of the production of goods for export to the us and 3 what are the impacts of us china trade on global co2 emissions our initial findings reveal that during 1997 2003 1 us co2 emissions would have increased from 3 to 6 if the goods imported from china had been produced in the us 2 about 7 14 of china s current co2 emissions were a result of producing exports for us consumers and 3 us china trade has increased global co2 emissions by an estimated 720 million metric tons we suggest that the export of us technologies and expertise related to clean production and energy efficiency to china could be a win win strategy for both countries for reducing their trade imbalance and mitigating global co2 emissions improved international accounting methodologies for assigning responsibility for co2 emissions must be designed to account for the dynamic nature of international trade

energy security measurement a sustainable approach abstract the main objective of this paper is to define new energy security indicator with the long term sustainability and to test it in a sample of 28 european union countries for the period 1990 2012 as well as to determine the level of impact of six different indicators on energy security the previous methodologies for measuring of energy security have been mainly focused on security of supply while not taking into account environmental indicators and the social component the newly proposed indicator energy security index differs from the existing measuring methods precisely in a way that it includes environmental and social aspects energy security index recorded a decline in values in most countries in the period 1990 2000 in the period 2000 2008 the values became positive and after 2008 some countries reported again gradual deterioration the index value varies by year and the biggest positive changes were recorded in the case of the netherlands slovenia and spain the four economically strongest eu countries the united kingdom france germany and italy recorded significantly less fluctuations in energy security over 23 years compared to other countries the data for france and denmark show that an increased share of energy from nuclear and renewable sources can compensate even increased energy import dependence the assessment of impact of individual indicators on energy security index was conducted by using principal component analysis and showed that energy intensity gdp per capita and carbon intensity have the greatest impact the countries of the former eastern bloc are facing particular challenges of energy security which is primarily related to the rapid economic growth and at the same time a high degree of dependence on import of energy generating products in terms of energy security the most stable transition was reported in hungary and poland

the demand for housing in spain an endogenous switching regression analysis housing demand in spain has been studied by using data disaggregated into primary and secondary housing demands it is found that demand for both types of housing area indeed related and that they are both considered necessities thus suggesting that their consumption ought to be modelled as a joint decision moreover it is found that traditional determinants of housing demand affect primary and secondary home demands differently these differences are attributable to the following economic rationales need for asset holdings diversifications relative high cost of home ownership versus rental in choice locations and differences in land demand intensity across regions in sum the findings suggest that policy makers in spain contrary to popular beliefs must consider secondary homes an integral part of households accommodation need

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

returns to investment in education a global update the author updates compilations of rate of return estimates to investment in education published since 1985 and discusses methodological issues surrounding those estimates some key patterns among the three main levels of education primary education continues to exhibit the highest social profitability in all world regions private returns are considerably higher than social returns because of the public subsidization of education the degree of public subsidy increases with the level of education which is regressive social and private returns at all levels generally decline by the level of a country s per capita income overall the returns to female education are higher than those to male education but at individual levels of education the pattern is more mixed the returns to the academic secondary school track are higher than the vocational track since unit cost of vocational education is much higher and the returns for those who work in the private competitive sector of the economy are higher than in the public noncompetitive sector and the returns in the self employment unregulated sector of the economy are higher than in the dependent employment sector controversies in the literature are discussed in the light of the new evidence the undisputable and universal positive correlation between education and earnings can be interpreted in many ways the causation issue on whether education really affects earnings can be answered only with experimental data generated by randomly exposing different people to various amounts of education given the fact that moral and pragmatic considerations prevent the generation of such pure data researchers have to make do with indirect inferences or natural experiments some have been attempted the author looks at the research on overeducation or surplus schooling the conclusions reinforce earlier patterns they confirm that primary education continues to be the number one investment priority in developing countries they also show that educating females is marginally more profitable than educating males that the academic secondary school curriculum is a better investment than the technical vocational tract and that the returns to education obey the same rules as investment in conventional capital that is they decline as investment is expanded