nep-ene New Economics Papers
on Energy Economics
Issue of 2019‒04‒08
forty-nine papers chosen by
Roger Fouquet
London School of Economics

  1. The simple arithmetic of carbon pricing and stranded assets By van der Ploeg, Frederick; Rezai, Armon
  2. Carbon-sensitive Meta-Productivity Growth and Technological Gap: An Empirical Analysis of Indian Thermal Power Sector By Surender Kumar; Rakesh Kumar Jain
  3. CO2 emissions, energy consumption and economic growth: Evidence from the Trans-Pacific Partnership By Duc Hong Vo; Ha Minh Nguyen; Anh The Vo; Michael McAleer
  4. Simple rules for climate policy and integrated assessment By van der Ploeg, Frederick; Rezai, Armon
  5. Capital Accumulation, GreeParadox, and Stranded Assets: An Endogenous Growth Perspective By Jin, Wei; Zhang, ZhongXiang
  6. Energy consumption and economic growth: Evidence from Vietnam By Ha Minh Nguyen; Ngoc Hoang Bui; Duc Hong Vo; Michael McAleer
  7. Global Unanimity Agreement on the Carbon Budget By Humberto Llavador; John E. Roemer
  8. Modelling the relationship between crude oil and agricultural commodity prices By Duc Hong Vo; Tan Ngoc Vu; Anh The Vo; Michael McAleer
  9. Climate Policy Commitment Devices By Dengler, Sebastian; Gerlagh, Reyer; Trautmann, Stefan T.; van de Kuilen, Gijs
  10. The Agnostic's Response to Climate Deniers: Price Carbon! By van der Ploeg, Frederick; Rezai, Armon
  11. The Impact of China’s Electricity Deregulation on Coal and Power Industries: Two-stage Game Modeling Approach By Liu, HuiHui; Zhang, ZhongXiang; Chen, ZhanMing; Dou, DeSheng
  12. Costs of Energy Efficiency Mandates Can Reverse the Sign of Rebound By Don Fullerton; Chi L. Ta
  13. Investment-Uncertainty Relationship in the Oil and Gas Industry By Ahmadi, Maryam; Manera, Matteo; Sadeghzadeh, Mehdi
  14. The Response of European Energy Prices to ECB Monetary Policy By Torró, Hipòlit
  15. Risk analysis of energy in Vietnam By Duc Hong Vo; Ngoc Phu Tran; Tam Nguyen-Thanh Duong; Michael McAleer
  16. Interpreting the Oil Risk Premium: do Oil Price Shocks Matter? By Valenti, Daniele; Manera, Matteo; Sbuelz, Alessandro
  17. A sectoral approach to the electricity-growth nexus in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa By Poppy Dyasi; Andrew Phiri
  18. Electricity subsidy reform in Indonesia: Demand-side effects on electricity use By Paul J Burke; Sandra Kurniawati
  19. How do lenders price energy efficiency? Evidence from personal consumption loans By Louis-Gaëtan Giraudet; Anna Petronevich; Laurent Faucheux
  20. Do pump prices really follow Edgeworth cycles? Evidence from the German retail fuel market By Samuel de Haas
  21. How BLUE is the Sky? Estimating the Air Quality Data in Beijing During the Blue Sky Day Period (2008-2012) by the Bayesian LSTM Approach By Han, Y.; Li, V.; Lam, J., Pollitt, M.; Pollitt, M.
  22. Financing Energy Efficiency, Part 2 By Yun Wu; Jas Singh; Dylan Karl Tucker
  23. Climate Transition Risk, Climate Sentiments, and Financial Stability in a Stock-Flow Consistent approach By Dunz, Nepomuk; Naqvi, Asjad; Monasterolo, Irene
  24. The effects of external shocks on Azerbaijan economy By Nijat Guliyev
  25. Towards Road Freight Decarbonisation: Trends, Measures and Policies By ITF
  26. Modelling the Global Price of Oil: Is there any Role for the Oil Futures-spot Spread? By Valenti, Daniele
  27. Challenging pollution and the balance problem from rare earth extraction: How recycling and environmental taxation matter By Pascale Combes Motel; Bocar Samba Ba; Sonia Schwartz
  28. Ready for a Carbon Tax? An Explorative Analysis of University Students’ Preferences By Rotaris, Lucia
  29. Relinquishing Riches: Auctions vs Informal Negotiations in Texas Oil and Gas Leasing By Thomas R. Covert; Richard L. Sweeney
  30. Oil Prices and Inflation: Identifying Channels for Oil Exporters By Vugar Ahmadov; Salman Huseynov; Peter Pedroni
  31. Seismic shifts from regulations: Spatial trade-offs in marine mammals and the value of information from hydrocarbon seismic surveying By Maarten J. Punt; Brooks A. Kaiser
  32. Transforming Energy Efficiency Markets in Developing Countries By Ashok Sarkar; Sarah Moin
  33. Taxe carbone, le retour, à quelles conditions ? By null null; Eloi Laurent
  34. Incentive Regulation: Evidence From German Electricity Networks By Michael Hellwig; Dominik Schober; Luis Cabral
  35. Does China Fall into Poverty-Environment Traps? Evidence from Long-term Income Dynamics and Urban Air Pollution By Wu, Jian-Xin; He, Ling-Yun; Zhang, ZhongXiang
  36. Financial Reforms and Industrialisation: Evidence from Nigeria By Oludele E. Folarin
  37. Corruption: Fertility, electricity and television: is there a link? Evidence from Pakistan, 1990-2012 By Luca Tasciotti, Farooq Sulehria and Natascha Wagner
  38. Central Bank Mandates, Sustainability Objectives and the Promotion of Green Finance By Simon Dikau and Ulrich Volz; Ulrich Volz
  39. Determinants of Public Debt and the Role of Energy: a Cross-Country Analysis By Sadik-Zada, Richard Elkhan; Gatto, Andrea
  40. Do Pollution Markets Harm Low Income and Minority Communities? Ranking Emissions Distributions Generated by California's RECLAIM Program By Erin T. Mansur; Glenn Sheriff
  41. Burden of Inspection Costs and Effectiveness of Environmental Regulations By Keisaku Higashida
  42. Self-Enforcing International Environmental Agreements: Adaptation and Complementarity By Rubio, Santiago J.
  43. Satellite monitoring of associated gas flaring torches in Russia By Matveev, Aleksey (Матвеев, Алексей); Andreev, Alexander (Андреев, Александр); Zhizhin, Mikhail (Жижин, Михаил); Poyda, Alexey (Пойда, Алексей); Troussov, Alexander (Трусов, Александр)
  44. The Impact of Jumps and Leverage in Forecasting the Co-Volatility of Oil and Gold Futures By Manabu Asai; Rangan Gupta; Michael McAleer
  45. The Impact of jumps and leverage in forecasting the co-volatility of oil and gold futures By Manabu Asai; Rangan Gupta; Michael McAleer
  46. Coal Smoke, City Growth, and the Cost of the Industrial Revolution By W. Walker Hanlon
  47. Peer influences and proenvironmental behavior: Panel evidence for the role of regional prevalence and diversity By Binder, Martin; Blankenberg, Ann-Kathrin; Welsch, Heinz
  48. Die aktuelle Treibhausgasemissionsbilanz von Elektrofahrzeugen in Deutschland By Wietschel, Martin; Kühnbach, Matthias; Rüdiger, David
  49. Climate Risk and Beliefs: Evidence from New York Floodplains By Matthew Gibson; Jamie T. Mullins; Alison Hill

  1. By: van der Ploeg, Frederick; Rezai, Armon
    Abstract: A simple rule for the optimal global price of carbon is presented, which captures the geo-physical, economic, and ethical drivers of climate policy as well as the effect of uncertainty about future growth of consumption. There is also a discussion of the optimal carbon budget and the amount of unburnable carbon and stranded fossil fuel reserves and a back-on-the-envelope expression are given for calculating these. It is also shown how one can derive the end of the carbon era and peak warming. This simple arithmetic for determining climate policy is meant to complement the simulations of large-scale integrated assessment model, and to give analytical understanding of the key determinants of climate policy. The simple rules perform very well in a full integrated assessment model. It is also shown how to take account of a 2 °C upper limit on global warming. Steady increases in the efficiency of labour do not affect the optimal price of carbon or the safe carbon budget, but do postpone the carbon-free era.
    Keywords: social cost of carbon, climate ethics, prudence, carbon budget, peak warming, end of carbon era, stranded assets, simple rules, energy efficiency
    Date: 2018–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wus045:6893&r=all
  2. By: Surender Kumar (Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics); Rakesh Kumar Jain (Indian Railways, Government of India & Department of Business Economics, South Campus, University of Delhi)
    Abstract: This paper measures carbon-sensitive efficiency and productivity growth in technologically heterogeneous coal-fired thermal power plants in India for the period of 2000 to 2013. It uses a unique data set of 56 plants, obtained petitioning the Right to Information Act 2005. We apply ‘within-MLE’ fixed effects stochastic frontier model to get consistent estimates of meta-directional output distance function. The thermal power plants are grouped in two categories: central sector and state sector. We find that the state sector plants have higher potential to simultaneously increase electricity generation and reduce carbon emission than the central sector plants. If all the state and central sectors plants were made to operate on the meta-frontier, reduction of 98 million tonnes of CO2 could have been achieved. Carbon-sensitive productivity growth in the central sector plants is higher than the plants in state sector, though in both the sectors productivity growth is governed by carbon-sensitive innovation effect. Commercialisation or autonomy in electricity generation also induces carbon-sensitive productivity growth and reduces carbon-sensitive productivity growth gap.
    Keywords: Carbon-sensitive productivity, Luenberger productivity indicator, Stochastic meta-frontier, Indian thermal power plants
    JEL: C61 D24 Q54
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cde:cdewps:297&r=all
  3. By: Duc Hong Vo (Business and Economics Research Group Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Ha Minh Nguyen (Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Anh The Vo (Business and Economics Research Group Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Michael McAleer (Department of Quantitative Finance National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan and Econometric Institute Erasmus School of Economics Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Department of Quantitative Economics Complutense University of Madrid, Spain And Institute of Advanced Sciences Yokohama National University, Japan.)
    Abstract: The paper investigates the role of consumption of both renewable and sustainable energy, as well as alternative and nuclear energy, in mitigating the effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). The papers introduces a novel variable to capture trade openness, which appears to be a crucial factor in inter-regional co-operation and development, in order to evaluate its effect on the environment, The empirical analysis is based on a sample of nine signatories to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) for the period 1971-2014, which is based on data availability. The empirical analysis is based on several time series econometric methods, such as the cointegration test, two long run estimators, namely the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) methods, as well as the Granger causality test. There are several noteworthy empirical findings: it is possible to confirm the U-shaped EKC hypothesis for six countries, namely Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, Peru and Vietnam; there is no evidence of the EKC for Mexico; a reverse-shaped EKC is observed for Japan and Malaysia, there are long run relationships among the variables, the adoption of either renewable energy, or alternative energy and nuclear energy, mitigates CO2 emissions, trade openness leads to more beneficial than harmful impacts in the long run, the Granger causality tests show more bi-directional-relationships between the variables in the long run, and the Granger causality tests show more uni-directional-relationships between the variables in the short run.
    Keywords: Renewable and sustainable energy, Alternative energy, Nuclear energy, Carbon emissions, CPTPP, EKC hypothesis, DOLS, FMOLS, Granger causality, VECM.
    JEL: C12 C52 Q42 Q43
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doicae:1908&r=all
  4. By: van der Ploeg, Frederick; Rezai, Armon
    Abstract: A simple integrated assessment framework that gives rules for the optimal carbon price, transition to the carbon-free era and stranded carbon assets is presented, which highlights the ethical, economic, geophysical and political drivers of optimal climate policy. For the ethics we discuss the role of intergenerational inequality aversion and the discount rate, where we show the importance of lower discount rates for appraisal of longer run benefit and of policy makers using lower discount rates than private agents. The economics depends on the costs and rates of technical progress in production of fossil fuel, its substitute renewable energies and sequestration. The geophysics depends on the permanent and transient components of atmospheric carbon and the relatively fast temperature response, and we allow for positive feedbacks. The politics stems from international free-rider problems in absence of a global climate deal. We show how results change if different assumptions are made about each of the drivers of climate policy. Our main objective is to offer an easy back-on-the-envelope analysis, which can be used for teaching and communication with policy makers.
    Keywords: simple rules, climate policy, ethics, economics, geophysics, politics, discounting with declining discount rates, positive feedback, free riding
    Date: 2018–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wus045:6890&r=all
  5. By: Jin, Wei; Zhang, ZhongXiang
    Abstract: The existing studies on Green Paradox and stranded assets focus on dirty exhaustible assets (fossil fuel reserves) and show that environmental regulations, by changing the costs of dirty inputs relative to clean ones, lead to replacements of the former by the latter and stranding of dirty assets due to perfect substitution. It, in turn, induces acceleration of dirty resource extractions and pollution emissions for fear of dirty assets becoming stranded - the Green Paradox effect. This paper uses an endogenous growth framework to revisit the problem of Green Paradox and stranded assets by taking a new perspective that focuses on capital accumulation with investment irreversibility. We show that if 1) direct irreversibility of investment does not rule out the indirect channel of converting dirty capital goods into clean ones through final goods allocations, and 2) interactions between dirty and clean capital as imperfect substitutes can generate reciprocal effects, then environmental regulation, through directing investment towards clean capital, does not necessarily leads to asset stranding of dirty capital. Accumulation of clean capital with a pollution-saving effect offsets the polluting impact of dirty one and leads to reversed Green Paradox. We further propose an endogenous growth mechanism through which the accumulation of both dirty and clean capital, as well as environmental improvement, can be sustained in the long run without converging to the steady state.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2019–01–14
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:281286&r=all
  6. By: Ha Minh Nguyen (Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Ngoc Hoang Bui (Graduate School, Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam, University of Labour and Social Affairs, Vietnam.); Duc Hong Vo (Business and Economics Research Group Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Michael McAleer (Department of Quantitative Finance National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan and Econometric Institute Erasmus School of Economics Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Department of Quantitative Economics Complutense University of Madrid, Spain And Institute of Advanced Sciences Yokohama National University, Japan.)
    Abstract: The importance of non-renewable, renewable and sustainable energy sources and energy consumption in the economic development strategy of a country is undeniable. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the impacts of energy consumption on the economic growth of Vietnam during the 1980-2014 period. By applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model of Pesaran et al. (2001), and the Granger causality test of Toda and Yamamoto (1995), the empirical results provide evidence that electricity consumption has positive impacts on Vietnam’s economic growth in both the short run and long run. For public policy prescriptions, the empirical evidence suggests that an exploration of new sources of renewable and sustainable energy is essential for long run economic development.
    Keywords: Energy consumption, Renewable and sustainable energy, Economic growth, Economic development, ARDL, Granger causality.
    JEL: F42 O13 O47 Q42 Q43
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doicae:1910&r=all
  7. By: Humberto Llavador; John E. Roemer
    Abstract: Carbon budgets are a useful way to frame the climate mitigation challenge and much easier to agree upon than the allocation of emissions. We propose a mechanism with countries agreeing on the global carbon budget, while the decision to emit is decentralized at the country level. The revenue is collected in a global fund and allocated according to endogenously defined 10 weights proportional to the marginal cost of climate change. The proposal features a unanimous agreement of the national citizenries of the world and global Pareto efficiency. We run a simulation in the spirit of the Paris Agreement, with zero emissions after 2055. At the Global Unanimity Equilibrium, permits are priced at 90$/tC, yielding 1.3 trillion dollars annually. Africa, India and the less developed countries in Asia are the only net recipients, while the US 15 and China are the largest net contributors.
    Keywords: carbon budget, emissions, international agreement, permits, climate change
    JEL: Q54 Q56 Q58 F53
    Date: 2019–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1084&r=all
  8. By: Duc Hong Vo (Business and Economics Research Group Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Tan Ngoc Vu (Business and Economics Research Group Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Anh The Vo (Business and Economics Research Group Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Michael McAleer (Department of Quantitative Finance National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan and Econometric Institute Erasmus School of Economics Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Department of Quantitative Economics Complutense University of Madrid, Spain And Institute of Advanced Sciences Yokohama National University, Japan.)
    Abstract: The food-energy nexus has attracted great attention from policymakers, practitioners and academia since the food price crisis during the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and new policies that aim to increase ethanol production. This paper incorporates aggregate demand and alternative oil shocks to investigate the causal relationship between agricultural products and oil markets, which is a novel contribution. For the period January 2000 - July 2018, monthly spot prices of 15 commodities are examined, including Brent crude oil, biofuel-related agricultural commodities, and other agricultural commodities. The sample is divided into three sub-periods, namely: (i) January 2000 - July 2006; (ii) August 2006 - April 2013; and (iii) May 2013 - July 2018. The Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) model, impulse response functions, and variance decomposition technique are used to examine how the shocks to agricultural markets contribute to the variance of crude oil prices. The empirical findings from the paper indicate that not every oil shock contributes the same to agricultural price fluctuations, and similarly for the effects of aggregate demand shocks on the agricultural market. These results show that the crude oil market plays a major role in explaining fluctuations in the prices and associated volatility of agricultural commodities.
    Keywords: Agricultural commodity prices, Volatility, Crude oil prices, Structural Vector Autoregressive model, Impulse response functions, Decomposition.
    JEL: C32 C58 Q14 Q42
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doicae:1911&r=all
  9. By: Dengler, Sebastian; Gerlagh, Reyer; Trautmann, Stefan T.; van de Kuilen, Gijs
    Abstract: We develop a dynamic resource extraction game that mimics the global multi-generation planning problem for climate change and fossil fuel extraction. We implement the game under different conditions in the laboratory. Compared to a ‘libertarian’ baseline condition, we find that policy interventions that provide a costly commitment device or reduce climate threshold uncertainty reduce resource extraction. We also study two conditions to assess the underlying social preferences and the viability of ecological dictatorship. Our results suggest that climate-change policies that focus on investments that lock the economy into carbon-free energy sources provide an important commitment device in the intertemporal cooperation problem.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2017–09–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:263488&r=all
  10. By: van der Ploeg, Frederick; Rezai, Armon
    Abstract: With the election of President Trump, climate deniers feel emboldened and moved from the fringes to the centre of global policy making. We study how an agnostic approach to policy, based on Pascal's wager and allowing for subjective prior probability beliefs about whether climate deniers are right, prices carbon. Using the DICE integrated assessment model, we find that assigning a 10% chance of climate deniers being correct lowers the global price on carbon in 2020 only marginally: from $21 to $19 per ton of carbon dioxide if policymakers apply "Nordhaus discounting" and from $91 to $84 per ton of carbon dioxide if they apply "Stern discounting". Agnostics' reflection of remaining scientific uncertainty leaves climate policy essentially unchanged. The robustness of an ambitious climate policy also follows from using the max-min or the min-max regret principle. Letting the coefficient of relative ambiguity aversion vary from zero, corresponding to expected utility analysis, to infinity, corresponding to the max-min principle, we show how policy makers deal with fundamental climate model uncertainty if they are prepared to assign prior probabilities to different views of the world being correct. Allowing for an ethical discount rate and a higher market discount rate and for a wide range of sensitivity exercises including damage uncertainty, we show that pricing carbon is the robust response under rising climate scepticism.
    Keywords: climate model uncertainty, differential discount rates, climate scepticism, robust climate policies, max-min, min-max regret, ambiguity aversion, DICE integrated assessment model
    Date: 2018–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wus045:6895&r=all
  11. By: Liu, HuiHui; Zhang, ZhongXiang; Chen, ZhanMing; Dou, DeSheng
    Abstract: The regulated price mechanism in China’s power industry has attracted much criticism because of its incapability to optimize the allocation of resources. To build an “open, orderly, competitive and complete” power market system, the Chinese government launched an unprecedented marketization reform in 2015 to deregulate the electricity price. This paper examines the impact of the electricity price deregulation in the industry level. We first construct two-stage dynamic game models by taking the coal and coal-fired power industries as the players. Using the models, we compare analytically the equilibriums with and without electricity regulation, and examine the changes in electricity price, electricity generation, coal price and coal traded quantity. The theoretical analyses show that there are three intervals of the regulated electricity sales prices which influence the impact of electricity price deregulation. Next, we collect empirical data to estimate the parameters in the game models, and simulate the influence of electricity deregulation on the two industries in terms of market outcome and industrial profitability. Our results suggest that the actual regulated electricity price falls within the medium interval of the theoretical results, which means the price deregulation will result in higher electricity sales price but lower coal price, less coal traded amount and less electricity generation amount. The robustness analysis shows that our results hold with respect to the electricity generation efficiency and price elasticity of electricity demand.
    Keywords: Resource /Energy Economics and Policy
    Date: 2018–06–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:273367&r=all
  12. By: Don Fullerton; Chi L. Ta
    Abstract: Improvements in energy efficiency reduce the cost of consuming services from household cars and appliances and can result in a positive rebound effect that offsets part of the direct energy savings. We use a general equilibrium model to derive analytical expressions that allow us to compare rebound effects from a costless technology shock to those from a costly energy efficiency mandate. We decompose each total effect on the use of energy into components that include a direct efficiency effect, direct rebound effect, and indirect rebound effect. We investigate which factors determine the sign and magnitude of each. We show that rebound from a costless technology shock is generally positive, as in prior literature, but we also show how a pre-existing energy efficiency standard can negate the direct energy savings from the costless technology shock – leaving only the positive rebound effect on energy use. Then we analyze increased stringency of energy efficiency standards, and we show exactly when the increased costs reverse the sign of rebound. Using plausible parameter values in this model, we find that indirect effects can easily outweigh the direct effects captured in partial equilibrium models, and that the total rebound from a costly efficiency mandate is negative.
    JEL: D58 H23 Q48
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25696&r=all
  13. By: Ahmadi, Maryam; Manera, Matteo; Sadeghzadeh, Mehdi
    Abstract: Recent studies on oil market demonstrate endogeneity of oil price by modeling it as a function of consumption and precautionary demands and producers’ supply. However, studies analysing the effect of oil price uncertainty on investment, do not disentangle uncertainties raised by underlying components playing a role in oil market. Accordingly, this study investigates the relationship between investment and uncertainty for a panel of U.S. firms operating in oil and gas industry with a new approach. We decompose oil price volatility to be driven by structural shocks that are recognized in oil market literature, over and above other determinants, to study whether investment uncertainty relationship depends on the drivers of uncertainty. Our findings suggest that oil market uncertainty lowers investment only when it is caused by global consumption demand shocks. Stock market uncertainty is found to have a negative effect on investment with a year of delay. The results suggest no positive relation between irreversible investment and uncertainty, but interestingly, positive relation exists for reversible investment. This finding is in line with the option theory of investment and implies that irreversibility effect of increased uncertainty dominates the traditional convexity effect.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2018–05–24
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:273141&r=all
  14. By: Torró, Hipòlit
    Abstract: To our knowledge, this paper is the first to discuss the response of European energy commodity prices to unexpected monetary policy surprises from the European Central Bank. Using the Rigobon (2003) identification through heteroscedasticity method, we find a significant and positive response during the crisis period for Brent and coal. Similar results are obtained by other authors for European financial assets in this period. This result reinforces the idea that during this period, financial assets and some commodities positively responded to conventional and unconventional expansionary monetary policy measures, increasing confidence about the survival of the European monetary union. The remaining European energy commodities (electricity, EUAs, and natural gas prices) seem to be unaffected by monetary policy actions. We think these results are of interest to those economic agents and institutions involved in European energy markets and are especially important for the European Central Bank in order to predict the consequences of its monetary policy on the inflation objective.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2018–03–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:269537&r=all
  15. By: Duc Hong Vo (Business and Economics Research Group Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Ngoc Phu Tran (Business and Economics Research Group Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Tam Nguyen-Thanh Duong (Business and Economics Research Group Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.); Michael McAleer (Department of Quantitative Finance National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan and Econometric Institute Erasmus School of Economics Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Department of Quantitative Economics Complutense University of Madrid, Spain And Institute of Advanced Sciences Yokohama National University, Japan.)
    Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to estimate market risk for the ten major industries in Vietnam. The focus is on the Energy sector, which has been designated as one of the four key industries, together with Services, Food, and Telecommunications, targeted for economic development by the Vietnam Government through to 2020. Oil and Gas is a separate energy-related major industry. The data set is from 2009 to 2017, which is decomposed into two distinct sub-periods after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), namely the immediate post-GFC (2009-2011) period and the normal (2012-2017) period, in order to identify the behaviour of market risk for Vietnam major industries. Two widely-used approaches to measure and analyze risk are used in the empirical analysis, namely Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). The empirical findings indicate that Energy and Pharmaceuticals are the least risky industries, whereas Oil and Gas and Securities have the greatest risk. In general, there is strong empirical evidence that the four key industries display relatively low risk. For public policy, the Vietnam Government’s pro-active emphasis on the targeted industries, including Energy, to achieve sustainable economic growth and national economic development, seems to be working effectively.
    Keywords: Market risk, Energy, Industries, Value-at-Risk, Conditional Value-at-Risk, Sustainable growth, Economic development, Vietnam.
    JEL: C10 G10 E32
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doicae:1914&r=all
  16. By: Valenti, Daniele; Manera, Matteo; Sbuelz, Alessandro
    Abstract: This paper provides an analysis of the link between the global market for crude oil and oil futures risk premium at the aggregate level. It offers empirical evidence on whether the compensation for risk required by the speculators depends on the type of the structural shock of interest. Understanding the response of the risk premium to unexpected changes in the price of oil can be useful to address some research questions, among which: what is the relationship between crude oil risk premium and unexpected rise in the price of oil? On average, what should speculators expect to receive as a compensation for the risk they are taking on? This work is based on a Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) model of the crude oil market. Two main results emerge. First, the impulse response analysis provides evidence of a negative relationship between the risk premium and the changes in the price of oil triggered by shocks to economic fundamentals. Second, this analysis shows that the historical decline of the risk premium can be modelled as a part of endogenous effect of the oil market driven shocks.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2018–02–26
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:268730&r=all
  17. By: Poppy Dyasi (Department of Economics, Nelson Mandela University); Andrew Phiri (Department of Economics, Nelson Mandela University)
    Abstract: This paper takes a sectoral, panel approach to investigating the electricity-growth nexus for the Eastern Cape province of South Africa between the period of 2003 and 2017. The empirical investigation was carried out using the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) panel estimators applied to an augmented dynamic growth model whilst the caulisty tests between electricity consumption and growth where performed using the Dumitrescu-Hurlin (2012) panel non-causality tests. The findings confirm the absence of significant long-run relationship between electricity and growth whilst finding a significant and positive effect over the short-run. Moreover, our causality tests provide strong evidence of causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth hence supporting the “growth hypothesis”. In a nutshell, our results not only demonstrate the importance of performing the electricity-growth analysis at provincial level as opposed to relying on national aggregated estimates but also provides important provincial-specific policy implications and recommendations.
    Keywords: Electricity consumption; Economic Growth; Provincial analysis; Eastern Cape province; South Africa.
    JEL: C13 C33 C51 Q43
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mnd:wpaper:1902&r=all
  18. By: Paul J Burke; Sandra Kurniawati
    Abstract: Indonesia’s budget has for years been burdened by large subsidies for electricity consumption. A series of recent reforms has delivered a substantial reduction in these subsidies. In this paper we estimate demand-side effects of these reforms on electricity use. Our analysis utilizes a three-dimensional dataset covering six consumer groups, 16 regions, and 1992–2015. We control for various fixed effects, and use an instrumental variable approach. Our estimates suggest that subsidy reductions since 2013 had induced savings in annual electricity use of around 7% relative to the no-reform counterfactual as of 2015. The phase-out of remaining subsidies has the potential to generate further improvements in the efficiency of electricity use, while freeing up resources for other priorities such as infrastructure spending.
    Keywords: electricity subsidy, electricity demand, price elasticity, Indonesia, panel data
    JEL: Q41 Q48 L94
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pas:papers:2018-01&r=all
  19. By: Louis-Gaëtan Giraudet; Anna Petronevich; Laurent Faucheux
    Abstract: At least ex ante, energy efficiency improvements increase investor’s solvency. Associated loans should therefore carry lower interest rates than do otherwise conventional loans. We test this hypothesis using unique weekly panel data on posted interest rates scraped from loan simulators made available online by French credit institutions during 2015-2016. On average, we find that lenders charged a green premium in 2015 but offered a green discount in 2016. We also find that, absent green attributes, interest rates are higher for home retrofit loans than for vehicle loans, which suggests that lenders use the loan purpose as a screening device of unobserved borrower characteristics. Our results together imply that loans for home energy renovation were consistently charged relatively high interest rates, with adverse consequences for scaling up home energy renovation.
    Keywords: energy efficiency gap, personal consumption credit loan, home energy retrofit, screening, data scraping, online prices.
    JEL: D14 G21 Q41
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfr:banfra:716&r=all
  20. By: Samuel de Haas (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)
    Abstract: Most of the literature on retail fuel markets find high-frequency and asymmetric price cycles. This is typically explained by the model of Edgeworth price cycles. A key element of this model is that prices fall to marginal costs during a cycle. It seems challenging to address this assumption empirically. However, I use a natural experiment in the German fuel market to analyze the effects of an external cost shock. I find strong evidence that prices do not fall to marginal costs. This is not in line with Edgeworth cycles and thus, should be taken into account when analyzing fuel markets.
    Keywords: Edgeworth price cycles, Retail gasoline, Price effects, Natural experiment, Coordination
    JEL: L11 L81 L91 K21 Q41
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mar:magkse:201913&r=all
  21. By: Han, Y.; Li, V.; Lam, J., Pollitt, M.; Pollitt, M.
    Abstract: Over the last three decades, air pollution has become a major environmental challenge in many of the fast growing cities in China, including Beijing. Given that any long-term exposure to high-levels of air pollution has devastating health consequences, accurately monitoring and reporting air pollution information to the public is critical for ensuring public health and safety and facilitating rigorous air pollution and health-related scientific research. Recent statistical research examining China’s air quality data has posed questions regarding data accuracy, especially data reported during the Blue Sky Day (BSD) period (2000 – 2012), though the accuracy of publicly available air quality data in China has improved gradually over the recent years (2013 – 2017). To the best of our understanding, no attempt has been made to re-estimate the air quality data during the BSD period. In this paper, we put forward a machine-learning model to re-estimate the official air quality data during the BSD period of 2008 – 2012, based on the PM2.5 data of the Beijing US Embassy, and the proxy data covering Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and meteorology. Results have shown that the average re-estimated daily air quality values are respectively 64% and 61% higher than the official values, for air quality index (AQI) and AQI equivalent PM2.5, during the BSD period of 2008 to 2012. Moreover, the re-estimated BSD air quality data exhibit reduced statistical discontinuity and irregularity, based on our validation tests. The results suggest that the proposed data re-estimation methodology has the potential to provide more justifiable historical air quality data for evidence-based environmental decision-making in China.
    Keywords: Blue Sky Day (BSD), Air Quality, Beijing, Data Irregularity, Bayesian LSTM, Data Estimation
    JEL: C53 C63 Q53
    Date: 2019–03–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:1929&r=all
  22. By: Yun Wu; Jas Singh; Dylan Karl Tucker
    Keywords: Energy - Energy Conservation & Efficiency Energy - Energy Finance Energy - Energy Policies & Economics
    Date: 2018–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:30386&r=all
  23. By: Dunz, Nepomuk; Naqvi, Asjad; Monasterolo, Irene
    Abstract: It is increasingly recognized that banks might not be pricing adequately climate risks in the value of their loans contracts. This represents a barrier to scale up the green investments needed to align the economy to sustainability and to preserve financial stability. To overcome this barrier, climate-aligned policies, such as a revision of the microprudential banking framework (for example a Green Supporting Factor (GSF )), and the introduction of stable green fiscal policies (for example a Carbon Tax (CT )), have been advocated. However, understanding the conditions under which a GSF or a CT could represent an opportunity for scaling up green investments, while preventing trade-offs on risk for financial stability, is still insufficient. We contribute to fill this knowledge gap threefold. First, we analyse the risk transmission channels from climate-aligned policies, a GSF and a CT, to the credit market and the real economy via loans contracts. Second, we assess the reinforcing feedbacks leading to cascading macro-financial shocks. Third, we consider how banks could react to the policies, i.e., their climate sentiments. In this regard, we embed for the first- time banks climate sentiments, modelled as a non-linear adaptive forecasting function into a Stock-Flow Consistent model that represents agents and sectors of the real economy and the credit market as a network of interconnected balance sheets. Our results suggest that the GSF is not sufficient to effectively scale up green investments via a change in lending conditions to green firms. In contrast, the CT could shift the bank's loans and the green/brown firms' investments towards the green sector. Nevertheless, it could imply short-term negative transition effects on GDP growth and financial stability, according to how the policy is implemented. Finally, our results show that bank's anticipation of a climate-aligned policy, through stronger climate sentiments, could smooth the risk for financial stability and foster green investments. Thus, our results contribute to understand the conditions for the onset and the mitigation of climate-related financial risks and opportunities.
    Keywords: climate sentiments, climate risk, green supporting factor, carbon tax, financial stability, Stock-Flow Consistent modelling
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wus045:6894&r=all
  24. By: Nijat Guliyev (Central Bank of Azerbaijan Republic)
    Abstract: This paper examines the effects of external shocks on the economy of oil rich Azerbaijan. Using oil price and macroeconomic indicators of three major trade partners of Azerbaijan – EU, Russia, and Turkey - as the external shock variables, we analyze the effects of those shocks on the domestic macroeconomic variables of Azerbaijan during the period from 2000Q1 to 2017Q4, in the SVAR framework with block exogeneity restriction. The results show that the overall importance of the four groups of shocks, in descending terms, is in the following order: oil shock, EU origin shocks, Russia origin shocks, and Turkey origin shocks. The major findings of the paper are: a) among considered foreign shocks oil price shock is the most important foreign shock for the economy of Azerbaijan; b) in general EU origin shocks has larger impact on considered domestic variables compared to other trade partners origin shocks; c) Turkey origin shocks have almost no impact in any of the considered domestic variables of Azerbaijan, d) among considered external shocks oil price is the main determinant of the non-oil sector of economy, and e) among considered external shocks GDP growth of the trade partners is the main determinant of the inflation in Azerbaijan.
    Keywords: VAR, non-oil GDP, CPI inflation, oil price, external shock
    JEL: E10 E30 C30
    Date: 2018–09–27
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aze:wpaper:1802&r=all
  25. By: ITF
    Abstract: This report identifies proven measures that decrease road freight’s CO2 emissions. Goods transport by road consumes around 50% of all diesel fuel and accounts for 80% of the global net increase in diesel use since 2000. Projections see road freight activity at least doubling to 2050, offsetting efficiency gains and increasing road freight CO2 emissions. The report highlights policy areas that need adjustment for effective decarbonisation of road freight and points to fields where more robust evidence through further research is needed. It collects insights held at a workshop organised by the International Transport Forum in June 2018 in Paris and features the results of a survey among experts.
    Date: 2018–12–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:itfaac:64-en&r=all
  26. By: Valenti, Daniele
    Abstract: In this work, we propose an analysis of the global market for crude oil based on a revised version of the Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) model introduced by Kilian and Murphy (2014). On this respect, we replace the global proxy for above-ground crude oil inventories with the oil futures-spot spread. The latter is defined as the percent deviation of the oil futures price from the spot price of oil and it represents a measure of the convenience yield but expressed with an opposite sign. The following model provides an economic interpretation of the residual structural shock, namely the financial market shock. This new shock is designed to capture an unanticipated change in the benefit of holding crude oil inventories that is driven by financial incentives. We find evidence that financial market shocks have played an important role in explaining the rises in the price of oil during the period 2003-2008.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2018–03–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:269534&r=all
  27. By: Pascale Combes Motel (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - Clermont Auvergne - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Bocar Samba Ba (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - Clermont Auvergne - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Sonia Schwartz (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - Clermont Auvergne - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
    Abstract: Rare earth elements extraction induces pollution and the balance problem. In this article, we investigate how far recycling and environmental taxation challenge both questions. In a two-period framework, we assume a monopoly extractor in the first period that is in competition with one recycler in the second period. Our results depend on whether the recycling activity is bounded or not by extracted quantities. When recycling is not constrained, it does not change extraction in period 1 but has pro-competitive effects in period 2. The balance problem favors recycling in period 2 and reduces environmental damages in both periods. If recycling is limited, the extractor adopts a foreclosure strategy in the first period. The balance problem reduces extraction in both periods but also recycling. A second-best environmental taxation enables to reach the first-best outcome except in the second period of the bounded case. Environmental taxes have to be amended in order to take into account the recycling effect. They are never equal to the marginal damage.
    Keywords: Rare earth elements,Pollution,Balance problem,Recycling,Taxation,Cournot competition
    Date: 2019–03–13
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02065976&r=all
  28. By: Rotaris, Lucia
    Abstract: Greenhouse gases emissions are inexorably rising worldwide and the frequency and disruptive power of extreme weather phenomena are dramatically increasing. Although command-and-control and regulation policies have been extensively used to mitigate climate change, more effective and potentially efficient policies are needed to curb the negative externalities produced by human activities. A carbon tax could make the case, but is seldom implemented due to its assumed political unpopularity. In order to estimate the acceptability and the willingness to pay (WTP) for a carbon tax, a contingent valuation experiment was administered in USA and in Italy to a sample of 150 university students. The research is innovative both for the topic chosen, since there are no studies testing the WTP for a carbon tax in the Italian context nor comparing it with the estimates obtained for other countries, and for the methodology used to estimate the WTP, making use of random parameters logit models to obtain individual specific estimates of the median WTP. The results show that the median WTP ranges between a minimum of $161 and a maximum of $242, and varies according to the purposes proposed for the tax revenue use, the respondents’ beliefs and knowledge about climate change, and some sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents (age, gender, and political affiliation). The students’ preferences seem to be quite similar when the nationality of the respondents is taken into account.
    Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy
    Date: 2017–12–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:266283&r=all
  29. By: Thomas R. Covert; Richard L. Sweeney
    Abstract: This paper compares outcomes from informally negotiated oil and gas leases to those awarded via centralized auction. We use data on all contractual characteristics and production outcomes for a class of state-owned mineral rights overlying newly discovered shale formations in Texas, between 2005 and 2016. On roughly three quarters of this land, the Texas Relinquishment Act of 1919 authorizes private individuals who own surface-only rights to negotiate mineral leases on behalf of the public in exchange for half of the proceeds. The remainder are allocated via centralized auctions. Using variation from this natural experiment, we find that almost a century after leasing mechanisms were assigned, auctioned leases generate 67% larger up-front payments than negotiated leases do. The two mechanisms also allocate mineral rights to different oil and gas companies, and leases allocated by auction are 44% more productive. These results are consistent with theoretical intuitions that centralized, formal mechanisms, like auctions, outperform decentralized and informal mechanisms, in both seller revenues and allocative efficiency. Our findings have important implications for the more than $3 trillion of minerals owned by private individuals in the US, the vast majority of which transact in informal and decentralized settings.
    JEL: D44 L13
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25712&r=all
  30. By: Vugar Ahmadov (Central Bank of Azerbaijan Republic); Salman Huseynov (Central Bank of Azerbaijan Republic); Peter Pedroni (Williams College)
    Abstract: In this paper, we study oil price pass through into domestic inflation in a panel of oil exporting countries and propose a methodology to disentangle potential effects of different transmission channels. In particular, we investigate effects of three transmission channels, namely, import (cost) channel, exchange rate channel, and fiscal (demand) channel and quantify the relative importance of them. We find that the most important channel is the import channel and the least important one is the fiscal channel in contrast to wildly held belief. This finding, though surprising, can be explained by vast heterogeneity and rising integration among countries. We also find that institutional arrangements such as exchange regime, existence of fiscal rules and sovereign wealth funds are important pillars of a lower inflation environment in oil exporting countries.
    Keywords: Panel VAR, Oil Exporting Countries
    JEL: C22 C23 E31
    Date: 2018–01–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aze:wpaper:1801&r=all
  31. By: Maarten J. Punt (Circular Economy and Social Entrepreneurship, Windesheim Honours College, Windesheim, The Netherlands); Brooks A. Kaiser (Department of Sociology, Environmental and Business Economics, University of Southern Denmark)
    Abstract: Seismic surveys can increase hydrocarbon deposit information, lowering subsequent expected costs of hydrocarbon exploration. Survey noise, however, can interfere with marine mammals and fishes, reducing fitness. Ice-covered Arctic waters temporally constrain both surveying and marine mammal species; damage mitigation requires temporal and spatial planning. The survey noise externality is stronger than that for drilling (Erbe, 2012); there is additional cost to marine species’ habitat versus drilling alone. We develop a spatially explicit bio-economic and Value-of-Information (VOI) model examining these tradeoffs and illustrate it for oil exploration decisions off the Western Greenlandic coast. We use cost-effectiveness to identify implicit thresholds for sound habitat quality conservation as a function of regulatory choices that have different impacts under different assumptions about the relative spatial values of marine mammal habitat maintenance.
    Keywords: Value of Information (VOI); seismic surveys; marine mammals; marine habitat; marine noise pollution; hydrocarbon exploration;Arctic oil and gas exploration; evaluation of regulatory programs; spatial bio-economic modelling
    JEL: D83 Q53 Q57
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sdk:wpaper:2&r=all
  32. By: Ashok Sarkar; Sarah Moin
    Keywords: Energy - Energy Conservation & Efficiency Energy - Energy Policies & Economics Energy - Energy Privatization
    Date: 2018–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:30385&r=all
  33. By: null null (Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement (CNRS, Ecole des ponts, CIRAD, EHESS, AgroParisTech) (CIRED)); Eloi Laurent (Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques)
    Keywords: Fiscalité; Taxe carbone; Justice sociale; Transition écologique; Précarité énergétique
    JEL: H23 Q52 Q58
    Date: 2019–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/5j4beego4m8vk98ao7kolj4865&r=all
  34. By: Michael Hellwig; Dominik Schober; Luis Cabral
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ste:nystbu:18-03&r=all
  35. By: Wu, Jian-Xin; He, Ling-Yun; Zhang, ZhongXiang
    Abstract: This paper examines the long-run relationship between income and urban air pollution using a joint distribution dynamics approach. This approach enables to estimate the transition process and long-run distribution and to examine the mechanisms behind the evolution process. The approach is applied to a unique panel data of CO2, SO2 and PM2.5 (particulate matter smaller than 2.5μm) for 286 Chinese cities over the period 2002-2014. Strong persistence in the transition dynamics suggests that this convergence process may require a long time. The distribution dynamics analyses indicate that multiple equilibria are the major characteristics in the long-run relationship between income and urban air pollution in China, which implies that inter-regional technology spillover may be an important way to accelerate convergence. Our results further support the existence of poverty-environmental trap in PM2.5 concentrations. Thus, new environmental models are expected to be developed to explain this new stylized fact. The findings provide strong support for taking more aggressive measures that consider income and urban environment simultaneously to reduce poverty and air pollutions together in the Chinese cities.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2019–03–19
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:285027&r=all
  36. By: Oludele E. Folarin (University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria)
    Abstract: Nigeria adopted the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1986 after the crash in world oil price in the early 1980s. Financial reforms are part of the reforms implemented during the SAP. Since, industrialisation is seen as an engine of growth, we conduct an empirical assessment of the effects of financial sector reforms on industrialisation in Nigeria using an annual time series data over 1981 - 2015. Using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, our findings show that financial reforms have a positive and significant impact on industrialisation.
    Keywords: Financial reforms, Financial repression, Industrialisation, ARDL bounds test
    JEL: C32 E44 O14 O55
    Date: 2019–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:agd:wpaper:19/014&r=all
  37. By: Luca Tasciotti, Farooq Sulehria and Natascha Wagner (Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK)
    Abstract: Pakistan has the second highest fertility rate in South Asia with every women giving birth to 3.4 children on average. This paper uses three waves of the Demographic Health Survey data to empirically analyse fertility trends in Pakistan between 1990 and 2013; accounting for wealth and the use of contraceptives and birth spacing, this paper looks at three additional pathways for reducing fertility: (i) electrification, (ii) access to TV and (iii) family planning commercials broadcasted on television. The pooled regression results suggest that the direct effect that the access to electricity has on fertility is limited. In contrast, access to television had a significant effect in reducing fertility rates, especially after the 2000s. To further disentangle the contribution of television to the fertility decline, we assess the role of family planning commercials broadcasted on television. We provide complementary qualitative evidence on the content and evolution of Pakistani soap-operas and we argue that the role models, the typology of households and the messages conveyed by the soap-operas are possible drivers of the fertility decline. We show that a similar conclusion cannot be drawn in the case of radio. Our findings suggest that in one of worldís most populous country access to modern role models via soap-operas might be one of the most powerful fertility-reducing interventions.
    Keywords: Fertility, electricity, television, Pakistan, panel analysis
    JEL: J13
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:soa:wpaper:221&r=all
  38. By: Simon Dikau and Ulrich Volz; Ulrich Volz (Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK)
    Abstract: This paper examines to what extent climate-related risks and mitigation policies fit into the current set of central bank mandates and objectives. To this end, we conduct a detailed analysis of central bank mandates and objectives, using the IMF's Central Bank Legislation Database, and compare these to current arrangements and sustainability responsibilities that central banks have adopted in practice. To scrutinise the alignment of mandates with climate-related policies, we differentiate between the impact of environmental factors on the conventional core objectives of central banking, and a potential promotional role of central banks with regard to green finance and sustainability. Of the 133 central banks in our sample, only 12% have explicit sustainability mandates while 29% are mandated to support the government's policy priorities, which in most cases includes sustainability goals. However, given that climate risks can directly impact on traditional core responsibilities of central banks, most notably monetary and financial stability, even central banks without explicit or implicit sustainability mandate ought to incorporate climate- and mitigation-risks into their core policy implementation frameworks in order to efficiently and successfully safeguard price and financial stability.
    Keywords: Central banks, central bank mandates, green finance
    JEL: Q5 E5
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:soa:wpaper:222&r=all
  39. By: Sadik-Zada, Richard Elkhan; Gatto, Andrea
    Abstract: This paper investigates the major drivers of the public debt growth in 184 countries. Our analysis consists in a cross-country survey, which is conducted on the basis of the improved compilation of datasets on the central government debt for 2013. In order to differentiate between developing/transition and advanced countries, we generate dummy variables for the different country groups. Following existing literature, we employ military expenditure as a share of GNP, as a proxy of existent or potential conflict, induced driver of the public expenditure. The study finds that oil abundance, economic growth rate, the share of mineral rent in the total revenue, interest rate payments for foreign borrowings, and developing country dummy have statistically significant impact on the growth of the public debt. In contrast, defense spending, unemployment rate, and inflation rate do not have a statistically significant positive impact on the public debt rate.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2019–03–19
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:285026&r=all
  40. By: Erin T. Mansur; Glenn Sheriff
    Abstract: We compare the spatial distribution of emissions from Southern California’s pollution-trading program with that of a counterfactual command-and-control policy. We develop a normatively significant metric with which to rank the various distributions in a manner consistent with an explicit well-behaved preference structure. Results suggest trading benefited all demographic groups and generated a more equitable overall distribution of emissions even after controlling for its lower aggregate emissions. Upper-income and white demographics had more desirable distributions relative to low-income and some minority groups under the RECLAIM trading program, however, and population shifts over time may have undermined anticipated gains for African Americans.
    JEL: D63 Q52 Q53
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25666&r=all
  41. By: Keisaku Higashida (School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University)
    Abstract: Using a laboratory experimental approach, this study examines the effect of institutional changes in the responsibility for paying inspection costs for environmental regulations on the behavior of polluters and authorities. In particular, we compare two schemes: one is that authorities always bear the inspection cost and the other is that polluters bear the cost in a given situation. We find that polluters comply with regulations more frequently in the latter than the former scheme, while the inspection behavior of authorities does not change significantly. Moreover, the cost-bearing change in the scheme induces income redistribution between polluters and authorities (pollutees or society). In addition, we introduce uncertainty about the occurrence of environmental damage, and find that the frequency of inspection is greater in the latter than the former scheme. Because both inspection and compliance costs increase, total payoff may decrease by the partial shift of responsibility for inspection cost from authorities to polluters.
    Keywords: Compliance, environmental regulation, inspection cost, laboratory experiment
    JEL: K32 Q52 Q58
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kgu:wpaper:189&r=all
  42. By: Rubio, Santiago J.
    Abstract: This paper studies the impact of adaptation on the stability of an international emission agreement. To address this issue we solve a three-stage coalition formation game where in the first stage countries decide whether or not to sign the agreement. Then, in the second stage, signatories (playing together) and non-signatories (playing individually) select their levels of emissions. Finally, in the third stage, each country decides on its level of adaptation non co-operatively. We solve this game for two models. For both, it is assumed that damages are linear with respect to emissions which guarantee that emissions are strategic complements in the second stage of the game. However, for the first model adaptation reduces the marginal damages of emissions in a multiplicative way whereas for the second model the reduction occurs in an additive way. Our analysis shows that the models yield different predictions in terms of participation. In the first case, we find that the larger the gains of full cooperation, the larger the cooperation. However, in the second case, the unique stable agreement we find consists of three countries regardless of the gains of full cooperation. These results suggest that complementarity can play in favor of cooperation but that it is not a sufficient condition to obtain more participation in an emission agreement. Finally, we would like to point out that our research indicates that the way adaptation reduces damages plays a critical role over the outcome of the coalition formation game.
    Keywords: Research Methods/ Statistical Methods
    Date: 2018–08–31
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemth:276179&r=all
  43. By: Matveev, Aleksey (Матвеев, Алексей) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); Andreev, Alexander (Андреев, Александр) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); Zhizhin, Mikhail (Жижин, Михаил) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); Poyda, Alexey (Пойда, Алексей) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); Troussov, Alexander (Трусов, Александр) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration)
    Abstract: Incineration of associated petroleum gas (APG) is an economically and environmentally unsustainable way to utilize it. Availability of APG incineration data varies by country; often statistics are limited or irrelevant. At present, satellite monitoring is the only instrumental method for measuring gas flaring volumes that is not related to the activities of oil and gas companies. However, the development of a monitoring methodology is faced with the need to process large amounts of data and introduce an algorithm for estimating volumes of burned gas. This paper describes an algorithm developed for the VIIRS sensor, and an analysis of the data obtained on the territory of Russia for the observation period.
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rnp:wpaper:031959&r=all
  44. By: Manabu Asai (Faculty of Economics, Soka University, Japan); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa); Michael McAleer (Department of Finance, Asia University, Taiwan, Discipline of Business Analytics, University of Sydney Business School, Australia, Econometric Institute, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Department of Economic Analysis and ICAE, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, and Institute of Advanced Sciences, Yokohama National University, Japan)
    Abstract: The paper investigates the impact of jumps in forecasting co-volatility in the presence of leverage effects. We modify the jump-robust covariance estimator of Koike (2016), such that the estimated matrix is positive definite. Using this approach, we can disentangle the estimates of the integrated co-volatility matrix and jump variations from the quadratic covariation matrix. Empirical results for daily crude oil and gold futures show that the co-jumps of the two futures have significant impacts on future co-volatility, but that the impact is negligible in forecasting weekly and monthly horizons.
    Keywords: Commodity Markets, Co-volatility, Forecasting, Jump, Leverage Effects, Realized Covariance, Threshold Estimation
    JEL: C32 C33 C58 Q02
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:201925&r=all
  45. By: Manabu Asai (Faculty of Economics Soka University, Japan .); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, South Africa.); Michael McAleer (Department of Quantitative Finance National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan and Econometric Institute Erasmus School of Economics Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Department of Quantitative Economics Complutense University of Madrid, Spain And Institute of Advanced Sciences Yokohama National University, Japan.)
    Abstract: The paper investigates the impact of jumps in forecasting co-volatility in the presence of leverage effects. We modify the jump-robust covariance estimator of Koike (2016), such that the estimated matrix is positive definite. Using this approach, we can disentangle the estimates of the integrated co-volatility matrix and jump variations from the quadratic covariation matrix. Empirical results for daily crude oil and gold futures show that the co-jumps of the two futures have significant impacts on future co-volatility, but that the impact is negligible in forecasting weekly and monthly horizons.
    Keywords: Commodity Markets; Co-volatility; Forecasting; Jump; Leverage Effects; Realized Covariance; Threshold Estimation.
    JEL: C32 C33 C58 Q02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doicae:1912&r=all
  46. By: W. Walker Hanlon
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ste:nystbu:18-21&r=all
  47. By: Binder, Martin; Blankenberg, Ann-Kathrin; Welsch, Heinz
    Abstract: Pro-environmental behavior depends on the behavior of others. For a UK panel data set, we find that individuals' pro-environmental behavior increases in the behavior of peers in their region. This happens the more so, the greener the self-image of an individual. Diversity of regional green behavior plays a further role, with fractionalization negatively related to pro-environmental behavior and polarization positively so: peer pressure exerts a less strong influence when behaviors are diverse, and a stronger influence when behaviors are very polarized.
    Keywords: pro-environmental behavior,peer influence,prevalence,fractionalization,polarization,UKHLS
    JEL: Q53 Q56
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cegedp:367&r=all
  48. By: Wietschel, Martin; Kühnbach, Matthias; Rüdiger, David
    Abstract: [ Einführung ... ] Die Studie gliedert sich wie folgt. Im folgenden Kapitel 2 wird ein Überblick zu Bewertungsverfahren in der Praxis geben. In Kapitel 3 werden die Daten zu den Fahrzeugen dargelegt und einige ausgewählte Daten ausführlicher diskutiert, u. a. die Batterieherstellung. In Kapitel 4 werden dann verschiedene Szenarien für den Ladestrom herausgearbeitet und diskutiert sowie die sich daraus ergebenden THG-Emissionen des Strombezugs berechnet, was zum Teilmodellgestützt erfolgt. Im anschließenden Kapitel 5 werden dann die Ergebnisse der Berechnungen gezeigt. Daran schließt sich eine kritische Diskussion ausgewählter Aspekte an (Kapitel 6). Die Studie endet mit einer Zusammenfassung und einem Fazit (Kapitel 7).
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fisisi:s022019&r=all
  49. By: Matthew Gibson (Williams College); Jamie T. Mullins (University of Massachusetts-Amherst); Alison Hill (Analysis Group)
    Abstract: Applying a difference-in-differences framework to a census of residential property transactions in New York City 2003-2017, we estimate the price effects of three flood risk signals: 1) the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, which increased premiums; 2) Hurricane Sandy; and 3) new floodplain maps reflecting three decades of climate change. Estimates are negative for all three signals and some are large: properties included in the new floodplain after escaping flooding by Sandy experienced 18 percent price reductions. We investigate possible mechanisms, including selection of properties into the market and residential sorting. Finding no evidence for these, we develop a parsimonious theoretical model to study changes in flood beliefs. The model allows decomposition of our reduced-form estimates into the effects of insurance premium changes and belief updating. Results suggest that the new maps induced substantially larger belief changes than insurance reform.
    JEL: Q54 Q58 R30 G22
    Date: 2019–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wil:wileco:2019-02&r=all

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