Long- and short-run elasticities of residential electricity consumption in China: a partial adjustment model with panel data

While it has stabilized in developed world, the per capita residential electricity consumption (REC) in developing countries such as China is growing very rapidly and this trend is very likely to continue. Built upon a provincial level panel data, we employ a partial adjustment model to investigate the future trend of REC in China and factors that affect it. We estimate the income and price short-term and long-term elasticities for urban and rural China, respectively and compare the results with REC studies in other countries or regions. The findings provide useful information to understand how the REC would grow in China as household income increases and how effective that price could be as an intervention tool.     

Estimating the elasticities of gasoline demand: an instrumental variable approach

This article uses a new identification strategy to estimate the demand for gasoline. I show that the monthly gasoline price is endogenous to gasoline demand at the state level, and that gasoline tax and domestic oil first purchasing price together are strong and valid instruments to correct for the endogeneity bias. In addition to estimating the price elasticity, this article also provides an estimate of the income elasticity. These updated estimates are critical factors in evaluating the environmental effect of gasoline tax and forecasting gasoline consumption.     

Elasticity of demand,price and time: lessons from South Africa's plastic-bag levy

Policy makers in many countries have perceived plastic-bag litter as a problem, and have used a variety of regulatory tools to address it. South Africa's current legislation on plastic-bags came into effect on 7 May 2003. It increased the thickness of the plastic used, charged a small levy and required that bags be sold rather than distributed gratis. These regulations sharply reduced consumption of plastic bags in the short term, but unlike the Irish and Danish levies have failed to curb their use meaningfully in the long run. It is suggested that the initial sharp fall in use of bags was a result of loss aversion rooted in an endowment effect (the bags having long been a free good). Once consumers became accustomed to paying for bags, demand slowly rose to its historic levels.     

Pooling surveys in the estimation of income and price elasticities: An application to Tunisian households

This paper presents a methodological extension of Deaton's (1990) model for estimating price elasticities, by pooling Tunisian data from several surveys to improve the inter-cluster variability of unit values which is one of the key elements used in the derivation of these elasticities. Since the surveys cover a relatively long period, possible structural changes in consumption behaviour occurring over time are accounted for by postulating that certain response coefficients of the basic model vary from one survey to the other. The own price and cross price elasticities calculated using appropriate estimates of the extended model are satisfactory both from the economic point of view of their sign and the statistical point of view of their significance and superior to those obtained using a single survey. First version received: April 2000/Final version received: June 2001 RID="*" ID="*"  The authors would like to thank Angus Deaton and anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions.     

Group interaction, heterogeneity, rules, and co-operative behaviour: Evidence from a common-pool resource experiment in South Africa and Namibia

We present econometric evidence of how sociodemographic characteristics, economic background, group effects, and dynamic personal and group interactions influence the co-operative behaviour of individuals in a social dilemma situation. The data are from a framed common-pool resource experiment conducted in Namibian and South African farming communities. Our estimates suggest complex but stable social dynamics within groups over the course of the game. We conclude that group interactions may be significantly influenced by the degree of sociodemographic heterogeneity. Our study shows that the introduction of rules matters, as it improves co-operation, but that the concrete shape of such rules may be less important than the underlying social interaction.     

Nonlinearities and heterogeneity in environmental quality: An empirical analysis of deforestation

We use a panel data set of 59 developing countries over the 1972–1994 period to study the deforestation process. Relying on both parametric and semiparametric models, we examine nonlinearities and heterogeneity in the deforestation process. We first study the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and then analyze determinants of deforestation. Our data sample provides no evidence of an EKC. We also find that political institution failures may worsen the deforestation process in developing countries.     

Food security in Kenya: Insights from a household food demand model

This paper evaluates the household food security situation in Kenya in terms of access to food. We apply a quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS) model to nationally representative household survey data from Kenya, and estimate and interpret price and expenditure elasticities as indicators of household sensitivity to market shocks. Our estimation results show positive expenditure elasticities, close to unity, while all compensated and uncompensated own-price elasticities are negative and smaller in magnitude. A complementary welfare analysis shows high compensated variations in the long run, ranging between 34% and 131% across food groups. This suggests that rising relative food costs have led to deterioration of the food security situation in Kenya, and the most severely affected households seem to be those that rely on informal markets and reside in rural areas. To improve food security, targeted income support could be a more effective policy than price support, given the much higher estimated expenditure elasticities.     

Asymmetric responses of money demand to oil price shocks in Saudi Arabia: a non-linear ARDL approach

Saudi Arabia is an open oil-based economy with fixed exchange rates; therefore, it has limited monetary policy autonomy. Using non-linear autoregressive distributed lag approach, this article investigates the asymmetric effects of oil price shocks on the demand of money in Saudi Arabia over the period 1990:Q1–2014:Q4. The empirical results show evidence of positive long run but asymmetric effects of oil price shocks on the money demand. In particular, we find that the positive oil price shocks are more important than negative shocks. Therefore, two policy responses can be considered: either sustaining the fixed exchange rate regime and following an economic diversification policy or switching towards a flexible exchange rate regime to achieve price stability. In that case, the existence of a stable money demand function in Saudi Arabia is a necessary precondition for adopting a monetary policy strategy targeted to price stability using instruments like money targeting.     

Air conditioning and electricity expenditure: The role of climate in temperate countries

This paper investigates how households adopt and use air conditioning to adapt to climate change and increasingly high temperatures, which pose a threat to the health of vulnerable populations. The analysis examines conditions in eight temperate, industrialized countries (Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland). The identification strategy exploits cross-country and cross-household variations by matching geocoded households with climate data. Our findings suggest that households respond to excess heat by purchasing and using air conditioners, leading to increased electricity consumption. Households on average spend 35%–42% more on electricity when they adopt air conditioning. Through an illustrative analysis, we show that climate change and the growing demand for air conditioning are likely to exacerbate energy poverty. The number of energy poor who spend a high share of income on electricity increases, and households in the lowest income quantile are the most negatively affected.     

Heterogeneity in Consumer Demands and the Income Effect: Evidence from Panel Data

This paper uses unique Spanish panel data on household expenditures to test whether unobservable heterogeneity in household demands (taste, etc.) is correlated with total expenditures (income). The main finding is that tastes are indeed correlated with income for about half of the goods considered, implying that cross‐sectional estimates of income elasticities for these goods are biased. The goods are the following: food eaten outside home, alcohol and tobacco, transportation, and energy. The elasticity of alcohol and tobacco is more than halved when taking unobserved heterogeneity into account. For transportation, the bias is sufficiently large to misclassify the good as a luxury.     

Seasonal Cointegration and Long‐Run Neutrality of Money in the USA

Using the notion of seasonal cointegration and a monetarist model, this paper re‐examines the long‐run monetary neutrality hypothesis, based on the seasonally unadjusted quarterly data of the US over the period 1959Q1–2004Q4. The results indicate that money is cointegrated with price at all possible frequencies while real output is cointegrated with price only at an annual frequency. The cointegration between money and price at the zero frequency, and non‐cointegration between real output and money at all possible frequencies, suggests that money affects nominal but not real variables in the long run.     

Information age to genetic revolution: Embodied technology transfer and assimilation — A tale of two technologies

In this paper, a fifteen regions-fifteen sectors global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is calibrated. It offers quantitative enumeration of 5% exogenous biotechnological invention in USA in genetically modified crops namely, maize grains and soybean. Consequently, it results in endogenously transmitted productivity gains via traded intermediates in user sectors in donor and recipient regions. Sustained absorption and domestic usability of transgenic varieties depend on constellation of: human capital-induced absorptive capacity, governance, and structural congruence between source and recipients contingent on technology infrastructure and socio-institutional parameters. Such innovations result in higher production, welfare and global trade. Also, concomitant 4% exogenous productivity shock in information technology along with 5% productivity growth in the agro-biotech sectors further enhances such simulated impacts on global production and welfare. Regions with larger extent of technology capture aided by higher human capital, better governance, conducive institutional-structural features, and superior technological expertise perform better.     

Household-level analysis of the impacts of electricity consumption on welfare and the environment in Cambodia: Empirical evidence and policy implications

Cambodia’s biomass consumption is the most dominant energy source at residential sector, and its use is mainly for cooking and heating which could affect health due to indoor air pollution. The biomass is mainly sourced from wood cutting and forest-encroachment that could impact the environment due to reduction of forest at considerable scale. By using the data 2015 of Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey, the study investigates the impacts of electricity consumption on household welfare, such as earnings and the school performance of children in the households, and further to investigate its impacts on the environment. The study found that household’s access to electricity with ability to spend on electricity consumption contributes to the positive household welfare effects and environment via a reduction of biomass consumption, and the more household spends on biomass, the more they are prone to sickness of lung problem. The study also confirmed the important role of human capital formation for the positive impact on the welfare and the environment. These findings lead to policy implications that would improve affordable access to electricity to ensure that all households can use electricity for their basic needs and productivity, and also to reduce the negative effects on environment.     

Heroin Consumption,Prices and Addiction: Evidence from Self‐reported Panel Data*

Estimation models of drug demand should encompass the aspect of addiction. Here, we consider two static panel data regression models and two cross‐section models with lags or leads in drug consumption as additional regressors. Heroin injectors attending a needle exchange service in Oslo were interviewed twice, with a one‐year interval. Despite our relatively small sample, we obtain statistically significant price and income responses for nearly all of the models and specifications applied. The sample is split by dealing status, with dealers obtaining price elasticities in the range of [?0.15, ?1.51] and non‐dealers [?0.71, ?1.69]. Somewhat surprisingly, the estimates of the variance of the latent individual‐specific variable are rather low in the panel data models, although higher for non‐dealers than for dealers.     

Escaping the Middle‐Income Trap in Southeast Asia: Micro Evidence on Innovation,Productivity, and Globalization

Microdata studies on innovation, productivity, and globalization are relatively new to the Southeast Asian region. Evidence from microdata studies in middle‐income countries provide valuable evidence for policymaking aimed at graduating these countries to high‐income status. Globalization via trade and foreign direct investment should continue to be important development strategies. A more nuanced approach focusing on exporters and potential exporters, especially SMEs, are likely to be needed. The extent of foreign participation is also likely to have important implications for technological spillovers.     

Drivers of the real effective exchange rates in high and upper‐middle income countries

This paper revisits the nexus between real effective exchange rate (REER) and total factor productivity (TFP) by controlling for trade openness, financial development and natural resources rents. We use a sample of 60 high‐income and upper‐middle income countries over the period 1995–2015 and employ the GMM estimation framework. Our results advance the empirical knowledge on the drivers of REER by providing robust evidence that the impact of TFP is not uniform across different country clusters. We find that in high‐income countries, increasing productivity causes the REER to depreciate hence becoming more trade competitive while the opposite is true for upper‐middle income countries. Furthermore, financial development and natural resources rents have no meaningful impact in the case of upper‐middle income countries but retain a significant effect in high‐income countries. Trade openness plays a key role in explaining the variation in REER in both country clusters.     

Asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility on India's cross‐border trade: Evidence from global financial crisis and multiple threshold nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model

This paper examines the asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility on India's cross‐border trade with its major trading partners: Japan, Germany, the United States, and China. We extend previous studies in two ways. First, we examine whether global financial crisis changes the asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility on India's cross‐border trade. Next, we divide exchange rate volatility into quintiles and examine the effect of each quintile on cross‐border trade by using the multiple threshold nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (MTNARDL) model. Our findings from standard nonlinear ARDL (NARDL) indicate that the asymmetric relationship between exchange rate volatility and cross‐border trade changes as a result of global financial crisis. In addition, findings from MTNARDL indicate that in short‐run, exchange rate volatility symmetrically affects India's cross‐border trade with all sample countries whereas in long‐run it asymmetrically affects cross‐border trade. Overall, these findings are very important for policy implications and open a new dimension to exchange rate volatility and trade flows.     

Learning‐by‐Exporting Revisited: The Role of Intensity and Persistence*

Two non‐mutually exclusive hypotheses can explain the empirically established export premium: self‐selection of more productive firms into export markets and learning‐by‐exporting. This paper focuses on how the temporal dimension of firms' exporting activities and the intensity of exports influence the scope of learning effects. Using a panel of Swedish firms and dynamic generalized method of moments estimation, we find a learning effect among persistent exporters with high export intensity, but not among temporary exporters or persistent exporters with low export intensity. For small firms, exports boost productivity among persistent exporters with both high and low export intensity, but the effect is stronger for persistent export‐intensive small firms.     

A worldwide analysis of trend in crop yields and yield variability: Evidence from FAO data

The trend in crop yields and yield variability affects food security and impact agricultural and food policies. Recent studies in this area have either focused only on one country or performed global analysis on a handful of crops. We provide the first worldwide analysis of trend and variability for 8088 country-crop yield series taken from the FAO database, employing a robust estimator to cope with the adverse statistical effects of outliers. More than half of the series display a slowdown in yield growth due to a closing of the gap between realised and attainable yields as well as to agricultural policies promoting more sustainable agricultural practices. Around one fourth of the series show also an increase in yield variability as a consequence of climate change and changes in farm management practices. Yield variability is highest in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Middle East and North Africa, where food security may be threatened.     

食品价格上涨对城镇家庭消费与福利影响研究——基于EASI模型

文章基于与2015年度诺贝尔经济学奖得主迪顿的接近理想需求系统 AIDS 来源相同的EASI需求系统 ,采用CHNS调查数据 ,运用 EASI需求系统实证分析了各类食品价格上涨对不同收入等级城镇家庭消费与福利的影响 ,并比较了收入补贴与价格补贴的经济效果.研究发现:(1)我国城镇居民动物性食品消费支出占食品总支出的比重最大 ,其次是粮食和蔬菜 ,城镇居民的食品消费结构为"动物性食品+粮食+蔬菜" ,这说明动物性食品价格上涨对我国城镇居民日常膳食消费的影响相对较大.(2)粮食价格对困难户和最低收入家庭的福利影响最大 ,动物性食品价格对较低收入家庭的福利影响最大.(3)对低收入家庭而言 ,当动物性食品价格上涨时 ,收入补贴政策的效果优于价格补贴政策 ;当粮食价格上涨时 ,价格补贴政策的效果优于收入补贴政策.文章最后从生产、补贴政策和分配制度的角度提出了政策建议.