On the nonlinear relationship between energy use and CO2 emissions within an EKC framework: Evidence from panel smooth transition regression in the MENA region

This paper proposes a new approach for analyzing the dynamic relationships between carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, energy use, and income for the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. Our study implements a class of regime-switching models, namely a nonlinear panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) framework. Two kinds of estimates for carbon emissions are provided. On the one hand, we measure the impact of energy consumption on CO₂ concerning the level of income per capita, as countries with a similar energy usage level would have different levels of energy intensity. On the other hand, we estimate the impact of output growth on emissions concerning energy usage variation, as a higher economic growth does not necessarily mean energy-intensive activities. Our empirical findings support these intuitions as they indicate that pollutant emissions respond nonlinearly to energy consumption and GDP growth. We find an inverted U-shaped pattern for the impact of energy on CO₂, in the sense that environmental degradation is declining beyond a given income threshold, which is estimated endogenously within the PSTR model. Also, our results underscore that GDP growth significantly impacts carbon emissions only for higher energy consumption growth.     

银行分支机构、经济增长与城乡收入差距

本文基于VAR模型,运用协整检验、误差修正模型和格兰杰因果检验实证分析了银行分支机构变动对经济增长和城乡收入差距的长短期影响。研究结果表明：一是精简银行分支机构数量长期有利于我国经济增长,但是短期效果不显著,1998年后推动的国有商业银行分支机构撤并改革对于促进我国的经济增长有重要意义;二是精简银行分支机构数量长期来看会扩大城乡收入差距,在短期内精简银行分支机构却有利于城乡收入差距的缩小;三是1998年的国有银行机构调整是一种＂制度性进步＂。因此,需要进一步深化我国银行机构改革,在提升银行机构经营效率的同时,加大对农村地区的银行机构布局力度。     

我国民生保障支出与居民消费的关系分析

本文从理论和实证两个角度分析了我国民生保障支出对居民消费的影响。一方面,本文通过描绘消费者的消费模式图,指出阶段性＂大额刚性支出＂的存在抑制了居民消费水平的提高;另一方面,我国现行的财政分权体制和官员激励制度促进政府投资,挤压居民消费。在此理论基础上,文章构建了居民消费与收入、民生支出的计量模型。本文以1978—2011年的相关数据,分别进行单位根检验、协整、向量误差修正模型、格兰杰因果关系检验等深入分析了民生支出对居民消费的影响。理论和实证结果均表明,政府增加民生保障投入能够促进居民消费。     

Foreign direct investment,exports and economic growth: ADRL and causality analysis for South Africa

The article empirically investigated economic growth as a function of foreign direct investment and exports in South Africa. The article applied the autoregressive distributed lag model, known as the ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration for the long run relationship between economic growth, foreign direct investment and exports. The error correction model was used to examine the short run dynamics; and the VECM Granger causality approach was used to investigate the direction of causality. The article confirmed cointegration between economic growth, foreign direct investment and exports. The article indicates that both foreign direct investment and exports spur economic growth contrary to some studies, which found that FDI does not cause economic growth. The VECM Granger causality analysis found unidirectional causality between economic growth and foreign direct investment running from foreign direct investment to economic growth, unidirectional causality between foreign direct investment and exports running from foreign direct investment to exports and bidirectional causality between economic growth and exports. The article confirms the FDI-led growth hypothesis for South Africa. On the policy front, the government could stimulate foreign direct investment through incentives to investors, creation of a good macroeconomic environment and a careful utilisation of loose monetary policy to grow the economy.     

Total Factor Productivity and Energy Intensity: An Empirical Study of China’s Cement Industry

China is the largest cement producer and consumer in the world. The cement industry’s rapid growth has led to a large demand of energy. This study reviews China’s cement industry in terms of energy intensity and examines the effects of technological progress on energy intensity. It also discusses the feasibility of achieving China’s energy reduction targets. We employ the Granger causality test and find that the total factor productivity or technological progress causes the energy intensity of the cement industry. Impulse responses analysis also proves that in the long run the technological change contributes to the decline in energy intensity of cement production.     

Modeling the relationship between European carbon permits and certified emission reductions

Recent years have seen an expansion of carbon markets around the world as various policymakers attempt to reduce CO2 emissions. This paper considers two of the major types of carbon permits: European Union Allowances (EUAs, arising from the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, EU ETS) and certified emissions reductions (CERs, arising from agreements made under the Kyoto Protocol). The rules of the EU ETS allow for some use of CERs in place of EUAs by EU firms, but this substitutability is only partial. Allowing for carbon permits from different sources to substitute for one another should help achieve CO2 emissions reductions at least cost. Understanding the degree and nature of linkages (if any) between the markets for EUAs and CER is, thus, an important policy issue. In this paper, we jointly model the spot and future prices of an EUA along with the price of a CER using flexible multivariate time series methods which allow for time-variation in parameters. We find evidence of contemporaneous causality between these three variables with the EUA futures price playing the dominant role in driving this relationship. We also document time-variation in this relationship which is associated with macroeconomic events such as the financial crisis of late 2008 and early 2009. We find very little evidence of volatility spillovers or of Granger causality among any of the variables. We discuss how these empirical findings are consistent with markets which are loosely linked, but are not tightly linked as would be found for perfectly substitutable assets in efficient financial markets.     

中国农村金融发展与农民收入增长--基于综合指数分析

对于中国农村金融发展与农民收入间关系的实证检验,迄今尚无定论。借鉴时间序列因子分析,本文考察了农村金融发展综合指数与农民收入之间的关系。研究发现,中国农村金融发展与农民收入间有单向格兰杰因果关系。协整方程表明,在长期内,农村金融发展水平每提高1个单位,实际农民收入可以提高48.1%。MS-VAR模型表明,在短期内,农村金融发展依然能够促进农民收入增长,当国家实施农村偏向型经济政策时,这一促进效果更加明显。     

基于VAR模型下粮食价格、农业生产成本与农民收入的实证研究

通过脉冲响应函数得出农业生产资料价格与粮食价格,同时上涨,部分或者完全抵消了粮食价格上涨以及国家试图提高农民收入、调节收入分配而出台的各项优惠政策对农民收入的增加效应。Granger因果检验说明粮食价格、农民收入分别是农业生产成本的Granger原因。为此,政府必须将农业生产资料价格的上涨幅度控制在合理区间,改善农村物流现状,规范农资市场的经营等。     

Determinants of Exchange Market Pressure in Turkey: An Econometric Investigation

This paper investigates the hypothesis that there is a causal relation between speculative pressure and real exchange rate overvaluation, banking-sector fragility, and the level of international reserves in Turkey. An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds-testing procedure and Granger causality within vector error-correction models (VECM) are applied to the period after the liberalization of capital flows (August 1989-August 2006). The results of the ARDL bounds test support the theory that exchange market pressure is in a long-run equilibrium relation with the three hypothesized variables over the sample period. On the other hand, the results of the short-run and long-run Granger causality tests indicate the existence of Granger causality running from the three variables to exchange market pressure. The findings further suggest that a feedback relation exists between banking-sector fragility and exchange market pressure.     

中国房地产价格波动财富效应的理论与实证研究

总结和借鉴前人理论,结合我国房地产市场的现状,采用协整理论、误差修正模型和Granger因果关系检验,对中国房地产市场与消费增长之间的关系进行实证分析.结论表明:中国同西方主要发达国家一样,房地产市场表现出了显著的财富效应,这种财富效应将随着时间的推移而增强.     

城镇化推进与居民消费关系的实证：伪城镇化及其破解

伪城镇化是以经济为导向的生产要素的城镇化而非以人为本的城镇化。从居民消费水平的角度可以考察城镇化的质量并判断城镇化的“真伪”。利用1978~2014年城镇化率和居民平均消费支出的时间序列,通过协整检验、建立误差修正模型及 Granger 因果检验后发现：居民消费与城镇化在长期中存在均衡关系;居民消费显著提高了城镇化率,但后者并未显著引起前者的提高,故两者是带动与被带动的单一关系而非相互促进的双向关系;且居民消费对城镇化率的作用存在滞后效应。这表明我国当前的城镇化已经呈现出较为明显的伪城镇化特征。为此,应将要素城镇化转变为人本身的城镇化,在推进人口城市化的同时必须兼顾农业部门的发展,减少地方政府的行政干预,并以收入政策为核心扩大农村居民消费。     

A method for evaluating the extreme risk sources of financial markets: The case of stock markets in China

Risk contagion has attracted increasing research attention in recent years. In this paper, we combined conditional Value at Risk (CVaR), Bayesian quantile regression and Granger causality test to propose a Bayesian CVaR–Granger causality test method, which is an efficient tool in analyzing sources of extreme risks in a financial market. Using this method, we determined the sources of extreme risks in major stock markets in China.     

银行竞争与经济增长的协整和因果关系分析

文章运用中国1979—2006年的时间序列数据,从中国金融变革路径的角度,分析了经济增长和银行集中度的关系,考虑到中国金融体制改革的轨迹,用非国有银行的信贷余额占整个信贷余额的份额作为银行竞争的指标。利用协整和因果关系分析得出：非国有银行信贷余额的份额和经济增长存在长期的协整关系．其信贷余额的增加能够促进经济增长;非国有银行信贷余额比例的增加是促进经济增长的原因,而反之则不是。说明了由政府主导而不是由市场诱发的中国高度集中的银行体制改革促进了我国经济的发展,尤其在中国的劳动密集型行业大发展阶段。考虑到我国地区发展不平衡及沿海产业转移的背景,本文提出中西部地区应该发展中小银行,而东部地区应该适当加大银行的集中度等政策建议。     

Does insurance activity promote economic growth? Further evidence based on bootstrap panel Granger causality test

This study applies the bootstrap panel Granger causality test to test whether insurance activity promotes economic growth, using data from 10 OECD countries over the period of 1979–2006. Empirical results indicate that one-way Granger causality running from all insurance activities to economic growth for France, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK, and economic growth Granger causes insurance activities in Canada (for life insurance), Italy (for total and life insurance) and the USA (for total and non-life insurance). There is a two-way Granger causality between life insurance activity and economic growth in the USA, while no causality between insurance activities and economic growth is found in Belgium (for all insurance), Canada (for total and non-life insurance), Italy (for non-life insurance) and Sweden (for life insurance). Our results also confirm the finding of Ward and Zurbruegg [Does insurance promote economic growth? Evidence from OECD economies. Journal of Risk and Insurance 67, no. 4: 489–506] showing that the insurance–growth nexus varies across countries, since their paper have previously demonstrated heterogeneity in this vein. In an analysis of a broader, though overlapping 17-country sample and taking into account banking activities, the results suggest the importance of including banking activities when investigating the insurance–growth relationship.     

Investor attention and cryptocurrency: Evidence from wavelet-based quantile Granger causality analysis

This paper investigates the relationship between investor attention and the major cryptocurrency markets by wavelet-based quantile Granger causality. The wavelet analysis illustrates the interdependence between investor attention and the cryptocurrency returns. Multi-scale quantile Granger causality based on wavelet decomposition further demonstrates bidirectional Granger causality between investor attention and the returns of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin for all quantiles, except for the medium. Among them, the Granger causality from investor attention to the returns is relatively very weak for Ethereum. In the short term, the Granger causality from these cryptocurrency returns to investor attention seems symmetric, but in the medium- and long- term, the causality shows some asymmetry. The Granger causality from investor attention to these cryptocurrency returns is asymmetric and varies across cryptocurrencies and time scales. Specifically, investor attention has a relatively stronger impact on the cryptocurrency returns in bearish markets than that in bullish markets in the short term.     

How Efficient Is China’s Heavy Industry? A Perspective of Input–Output Analysis

Heavy industry accounts for nearly 65% of the energy consumption and over 60% of the electricity consumption of China. Under the framework of real savings and green GDP, the huge energy consumption and carbon emissions will bring in huge natural resource losses, and then affect the total factor productivity (TFP) seriously. When taking the input–output relationship into consideration, the natural resource losses of heavy industry will decrease significantly. As the upstream of the industrial chain, heavy industry offered a large number of subsidies to the downstream industries by providing energy, raw materials, and taking on carbon emissions. This article verified the transfer of natural resource losses among industries, and estimated the real TFP of heavy industry from input–output and traditional perspective, respectively. The results showed that there was an increasing trend in the growth rate of heavy industry’s TFP in the perspective of input–output.     

Cash-rich firms and carbon emissions

We investigate whether corporate cash holdings affect carbon dioxide emissions. Using a sample of 5402 firm-years observations from 943 U.S. firms during 2007–2017, we find that carbon emissions are lower in firms with higher corporate cash holdings. The effect of cash holdings on carbon emissions is more pronounced in firms with low leverage and less financial constraints. Our channel analysis further unveils that renewable energy consumption and carbon abatement investment are higher in cash-rich firms, which transmit lower carbon emissions. Our findings are robust to different identification strategies and alternative measures of cash holdings and carbon emissions. Overall, our paper provides novel evidence on the role of corporate cash holdings in mitigating carbon emissions.     

Price discovery analysis of green equity indices using robust asymmetric vector autoregression

Covering the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2008–2012), we perform a price discovery analysis to determine Granger causality relationships for a range of prominent green equity indices with the broader equity and commodity markets. Three pivotal contributions are made. Firstly, an expanded database is used that gives greater depth to the price discovery analysis relative to previous literature. Prominent global, regional and sectoral green equity indices are considered, as well as a broader set of commodities including crude oil, natural gas and emissions. The inclusion of natural gas recognises its role as the transition fossil fuel to a low carbon economy. In addition to the main European Union Allowance traded under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, Certified Emissions Reduction (CER) prices are also included in the emissions database to capture activities under the global Clean Development Mechanism. Secondly, a problem with conventional symmetric vector autoregression is that its implementation commonly leads to large occurrences of insignificant parameters. Therefore, as a first layer of robustness, we utilise an asymmetric vector autoregression model to perform the Granger causality testing, which addresses this limitation by means of allowing different lag specifications among the system variables. Thirdly, explicit recognition is made in our study of the multiple comparisons bias inherent in our high-dimensional testing framework, which is the non-negligible likelihood of identifying statistically significant results by pure chance alone. As a second layer of robustness, we utilise a generalised Holm correction method to control this source of bias. At conventional statistical significance levels, we find that the FTSE 100 and FTSE Global Small Cap equity indices have a causal effect on all of the green equity indices, with limited evidence of causality in the opposite direction. Within the green equity markets, we find evidence that the chosen sectoral index has a Granger causal effect on one of the two global indices considered and also the regional index. This price transmission provides modest evidence that the global green economy is becoming ever more integrated. NBP gas is shown to have a causal effect on all of the green equity indices, whereas we find no such evidence for Brent oil. The former observation may reflect the increasing role of gas as the transition fuel to a low carbon economy, playing a key role in decisions on power generation mix and associated capital investment. Finally, we find no evidence that EUA or CER prices have a causal effect on green stocks, consistent with previous findings and likely reflecting the excessively low prices being commanded for compliance permits in the European emissions markets.     

Climate transition risk in sovereign bond markets

Is climate transition risk factored into sovereign bond markets? We find that carbon dioxide emissions, natural resources rents, and renewable energy consumption—as measures of transition risk—significantly affect yields and spreads. Countries with lower carbon emissions incur lower borrowing costs. Advanced countries with reduced earnings from natural resources rents and increased renewable energy consumption are associated with lower borrowing costs, which differ from the effects in developing countries. Given the threat that climate change poses to the global economy and the fast materialization of transition risk, we advocate an increase in the significance of climate transition risk factors as determinants in sovereign bond markets.     

A closer look at financial development and income distribution

This paper analyzes the under-investigated relationship uniting financial development and income distribution. We use a novel approach taking into account for the first time the specific channels linking banks, capital markets and income inequality, the time-varying nature of the relationship, and reciprocal causality. We construct a set of annual indicators of banking and capital market size, robustness, efficiency and international integration. We then estimate the determinants of income distribution using a panel Bayesian structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model, for a set of 49 countries over the 1994-2002 period. We uncover a significant causality running from financial sector development to income distribution. In addition, the banking sector seems to exert a stronger impact on inequality. Finally, the relationship appears to depend on the characteristics of the financial sector, rather than on its size.