Energy consumption of urban households in China

We estimate China urban household energy demand as part of a complete system of consumption demand so that it can be used in economy-wide models. This allows us to derive cross-price elasticities unlike studies which focus on one type of energy. We implement a two-stage approach and explicitly account for electricity, domestic fuels and transportation demand in the first stage and gasoline, coal, LPG and gas demand in the second stage. We find income inelastic demand for electricity and home energy, but the elasticity is higher than estimates in the rich countries. Demand for total transportation is income elastic. The price elasticity for electricity is estimated to be −0.5 and in the range of other estimates for China, and similar to long-run elasticities estimated for the U.S.     

能源稀缺性与关键要素把握:缘于国际比较

从物理性稀缺和经济性稀缺两方面对中国能源稀缺性程度(包括煤炭、石油和天然气)的分析表明,中国三大能源之中煤炭价格相对较低,原油价格基本与世界持平,而天然气价格相对较高。鉴于中国现阶段主要是以煤炭消费为主的能源格局,提高煤炭价格肯定会影响经济增长和人民生活水平,应该根据各地的煤炭稀缺性程度来调整。     

美国政府直接支付对农业投入的影响分析

利用美国的统计数据分析政府直接支付对农业购买性投入、资本消费和雇工补偿的影响,分析得出的主要结论是,前期生产者/价格支持直接支付对购买性投入和雇工补偿的影响为正,表明政府直接支付能在一定程度上弥补农业短期生产费用、减弱农民风险厌恶程度;前期保护直接支付对当期资本消费产生正的影响,表明在某种程度上保护直接支付通过项目收益资本化能增加农业资本消费。     

Substitutability and Accumulation of Information Technology Capital in U.S. Industries

The substitution toward information technology (IT) capital fueled by the rapid decline in IT prices is regarded as an important source of U.S. economic growth. Using data on 41 U.S. industries for the period from 1984 to 1999, this article examines the degree of substitutability between IT capital and other inputs and quantifies the contribution of IT substitution to the accumulation of IT capital per hour worked. Estimates of various elasticities of substitution indicate that IT capital and other factors of production are substitutes. In particular, the substitution of IT capital for other inputs is salient in the industries with less IT capital. Among the sources of IT capital deepening, IT substitution accounts for about 60% of growth in IT capital per hour worked.     

Some aspects of employment in Indian agriculture

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of structural differences (due to size of holding) on employment in Indian agriculture. Translog cost function is applied, and restrictions are tested using a likelihood ratio test. For small- and medium-size farms, joint estimation of a non-homothetic cost function with cost share equations is conducted, and Allen elasticities of substitution and price elasticities of demand for eight different inputs are derived. Inputs are classified as substitutes and complements using Slutsky-Hicks-Allen-Schultz definition. Each source of labor against hired labor is a substitute for small farms (0–5 hectares). Some policy analysis of rural employment and a fertilizer subsidy scheme is presented using price elasticities of demand for small and medium farms.     

Price and income elasticities: evidence from commodity trade between the U.S. and Egypt

Elasticity approach to balance of payments postulates that a country can enjoy an improvement in its trade balance in the long run if sum of import and export demand price elasticities exceed unity, a condition known as the Marshall-Lerner condition. Previous research tested this condition either using aggregate trade data between one country and rest of the world or between two countries and provided mixed results. They are all said to suffer from aggregation bias. To remove the bias, in this paper we concentrate on trade flows of two countries, i.e., the U.S. and Egypt and disaggregate their trade flows by commodity. The estimates reveal that the ML condition is met in 28 out of 36 industries that trade between the two countries.     

Production Costs,Scale Economies,and Technical Change in U.S. Textile and Apparel Industries

The elimination of quotas in textiles and apparel poses new threats from import competition. To survive, the sectors need to find least-cost methods of production. The production–cost structure of the U.S. textile and apparel industries is examined using a dual cost framework. A translog cost function is used to measure substitution elasticities between inputs, scale economies, and the nature of technical change. The scope for factor substitution in textiles remains limited with all substitution elasticities being less than unity. Labor and materials are complements in apparel production, but there is evidence of substitution between capital and labor. The rate of technical change is higher in textiles than in apparel. Given the intense import competition from low wage countries, in both industries, technical progress is labor saving. Overall, economies of scale are larger in apparel; however, scale economies have continued to increase in textiles.This research was supported by a grant from the National Textile Center.     

Sectoral elasticities of substitution between labour and capital in venezuelan manufacturing: A cross-sectional micro analysis

This paper presents estimates of the elasticities of substitution between capital and labour for 19 Venezuelan manufacturing industries. The elasticities are estimated using micro data collected from the 1970 Venezuelan Census of Manufacturing. Estimates of these elasticities are generally not significantly different from unity. This suggests that the traditional view of limited substitution possibilities in manufacturing sectors of less developed countries does not apply in the Venezuelan case. Moreover, the Cobb-Douglas functional specification may be appropriate for estimating industrial production functions. In addition, the ‘market’ position in the current ‘structuralist versus market’ controversy concerning the labour absorption problem plaguing LDCs is supported.     

中国制造业产品出口的“母市场效应”——基于ISIC面板数据的研究

本文采用2002～2008年中国与OECD国家双边贸易ISIC(国际标准工业分类法)两位数面板数据对中国制造业各行业"母市场效应"的存在性进行检验。检验结果发现食品、饮料和烟草制造业、木制品业、纸制品和印刷品制造业、化学产品制造业、其他非金属矿产品制造业、机械设备制造业、运输设备制造业、杂项制品及废弃资源回收业这8个行业存在显著的"母市场效应",而纺织、服装及皮革制造业、炼油及核燃料的制造、橡胶和塑料、基本金属和金属制品等行业则不存在"母市场效应",其中炼油及核燃料的制造、橡胶和塑料这两个行业甚至呈现微弱的"逆母市场效应"。检验结果对中国扩大内需同时带来新的出口优势的部门提供了政策支持的理论依据。     

Power to the people: working-class demand for household power in 1930s Britain

The 1930s witnessed an intense struggle between gas and electricity suppliers for the working class market, where the incumbent utility—gas—was also a reasonably efficient (and cheaper) General Purpose Technology for most domestic uses. Local monopolies for each supplier boosted substitution effects between fuel types—as alternative fuels constituted the only local competition. Using newly-rediscovered returns from a major national household expenditure survey, we employ geographically-determined instrumental variables, more commonly used in the industrial organization literature, to show that gas provided a significant competitor, tempering electricity prices, while electricity demand was also responsive to marketing initiatives.     

Changing Elasticities of Labor Demand in U.S. Manufacturing

This paper provides a link between long-standing labor demand elasticity estimates in U.S. manufacturing and recent studies of wage patterns and labor demand shifts in response to technical change and international trade. We document asymmetric changes in labor demand elasticities including an absolute and relative increase in own-wage elasticity of demand for production workers. Separate estimates of substitution and scale responses imply that skill-biased technical change dominates increased product market competition as a source of the observed changes in labor demand elasticity.     

Home Market Effects of Foreign Trade in China＇s Manufacturing Sector： Analysis Using International Standard Industry Classification Panel Data

In this paper,we use 2002-2008 International Standard Industry Classification two-digit bilateral trade panel data for manufacturing industries in China and the OECD countries to test for the existence of home market effects.We find that significant home market effects exist in 8 out of 12 industries.These industries include the food,beverage and tobacco industry, wood products,the paper products and printing industry,chemical products,other nonmetallic mineral products,machinery and equipment,transport equipment,and miscellaneous products and waste resources recycling industry.Textile,clothing and leather manufacturing,oil refining and nuclear fuel manufacturing,rubber and plastics,and basic metals and fabricated metal products industries do not exhibit home market effects.Indeed, strong reverse home market effects occur for oil refining and nuclear fuel manufacturing and for the rubber and plastics industry.The empirical results reveal that certain industries benefit from new export opportunities due to the expansion of domestic demand in China.     

Reinvestigating the Oil Price–Stock Market Nexus: Evidence from Chinese Industry Stock Returns

The present study investigates the influence of international oil prices on China's stock market returns across 29 different industries. The paper attempts to account for any structural breaks and nonlinearity in this relationship. The results reveal that the effect of changes in the international price of oil on stock returns differs substantially across industries. The stock returns of the coal, chemical, mining and oil industries are found to be positively affected by crude oil price movements. Conversely, electronics, food manufacturing, general equipment, pharmaceuticals, retail, rubber and vehicle industries are found to be negatively affected by movements in the price of crude oil. The results of the estimations also suggest that the majority of Chinese industries have been significantly affected by oil prices since 2004. The influence of international oil prices on Chinese stocks also has a stronger effect in the presence of high volatility but the effect varies across industries.     

Elasticities of substitution in industry: What do we learn from econometric estimates?

If elasticities of substitution differ systematically among industries, different sets of econometric estimates should reveal this by yielding similar industry rankings. Ranking experiments are carried out for 12 sets of US, and four sets of developing country, two digit level estimates. In general, industry rankings differ significantly from study to study, and it is not possible to identify industries with either high or low elasticities of substitution. This may indicate that substitution elasticities vary significantly at different times and places, that variation of elasticities within two digit industries is great enough to obscure differences between industries, or that theoretical and data problems make current estimates unreliable.     

燃料乙醇产业的经济学分析

中国经济发展凸显能源问题,作为一种新型可替代能源,燃料乙醇产业的发展令人瞩目,国内燃料乙醇产能扩大已经成为无法阻挡的趋势。中国燃料乙醇的生产技术、原料、供应、产业开发、政府扶持政策等方面都有了初步起色,具有乐观的经济前景。     

Ownership and Energy Efficiency in Indonesian Manufacturing

Using 1996 and 2006 census data on medium-large plants in Indonesian manufacturing, we examine whether foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) and stateowned enterprises (SOEs) used purchased energy more efficiently than local, private plants, finding that the correlation between plant ownership and total energy intensity, gas intensity, and coal intensity was generally weak in both years. Second, we ask whether energy efficiency in private plants was affected by the presence of MNEs or SOEs in high-energy-consuming industries. In 1996, private energy intensities were often positively correlated with the presence of SOEs and majorityforeign MNEs and negatively correlated with the presence of wholly foreign or minority-foreign MNEs, but in 2006 the corresponding results differed substantially. This suggests that ownership-related differentials in energy intensity and intra-industry energy-intensity spillovers are not pronounced. If policymakers are concerned with improving energy efficiency in Indonesian manufacturing, plant ownership should not be a major consideration.     

Environmental consequences of fuel price shocks in China

This study investigates the environmental consequences of fuel price shocks, using a rich dataset from the Chinese megacity of Hangzhou. Our identification strategy is mainly aided by instrumenting fuel price using exogenous global oil prices. We find that a 10% increase in fuel price leads to a 10.29%–11.45% decrease in driving demand, reflected by road congestion index, and a 17.6%–20.27% decrease in industrial activities, measured by electricity consumption. The decreases in driving demand and industrial activities are indeed correlated with air quality improvement and decline in major pollutant concentrations. While the findings shed light on the short-term environmental outcomes of price-based measures, the negative effects of fuel price increases on industrial activities may generate undesirable impacts on macroeconomy in the long-term perspective. Despite ample evidence demonstrating that drivers respond to fuel price changes, considerably fewer studies investigate their environmental and economic consequences. This study addresses this gap in the literature and contributes to a better understanding of the effects of fuel price shocks on air pollution and economic activities.     

基于VAR模型的能源消费与废气排放量关系研究——以山西省为例

为了实现碳中和目标，通过VAR模型分析能源消费与废气排放量关系，进而提出改变能源生产消费方式的建议。基于山西省2007—2021年煤炭消费量、石油消费量、焦炭消费量和废气排放量数据，通过单位根检验、约翰逊协整检验、建立误差修正模型和向量自回归(VAR)模型，格兰杰因果检验，做出出脉冲响应图并进行方差分解，得出山西省煤炭消费量、石油消费量、焦炭消费量和废气排放量的长短期均衡关系和影响力度。研究表明，煤炭消费使废气排放量呈高排放状态，石油消费未曾大的影响废气排放，焦炭消费使废气排放量先升后降。研究提出山西省能源生产消费的节能减排路径，包括应用先进煤化工和煤电技术、开发石油生产消费低碳技术、促进新能源技术的普及和应用、开发能源互联网及绿色金融等新兴产业等。     

Tariff pass‐through in the middle products model

I use the middle products model of Sanyal and Jones to study the pass‐through of a tariff on the price of non‐traded final goods. I extend their analysis by comparing the short‐run effect of the tariff, when all factors are immobile, with the effects when labor is mobile between all sectors. It is shown that the short‐run pass‐through may vary from zero to a magnified effect on the price of the final product, depending on the elasticities of substitution in consumption and production. The relative magnitude of these elasticities determines whether the pass‐through with labor mobility is greater or less than the short‐run pass‐through.     

Errors-in-variables, supply side effects, and price elasticities in foreign trade

Errors-in-Variables, Supply Side Effects, and Price Elasticities in Foreign Trade.—Previous estimates of price elasticities in foreign trade are likely to be biased upward due to errors-in-variables, omission of supply side influences, aggregation, bad measurement of price competitiveness, and misspecification of the estimation equations. This paper incorporates the supply side into the traditional demand for export equation and uses a panel data approach for OECD manufacturing to provide unbiased estimates of price elasticities. The estimates indicate that the sum of the absolute import and export price elasticities is close to one and that currency depreciations are likely to adversely affect trade balances in the long run due to supply side influences. JEL no. E3, F1, F4