Quantifying Central Hypotheses on Environmental Kuznets Curves for a Rich Economy: A Computable General Equilibrium Study

We investigate whether the future relationships between several pollutants and per capita income in rich countries may assume the inverted U‐forms of Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC). The emission‐augmenting effect of scaling up aggregate economic activity can be counteracted by greener composition of production and consumption, technological progress, and increased demand for environmental quality and policy. To quantify the importance of these central hypotheses, we use a CGE model with endogenous policy for Norway. Our results suggest significant future effects of all these three counteracting mechanisms. For most local and regional pollutants, they may be strong enough to prolong the falling emission trends. However, we cannot rely on reductions in emissions of climate gases and some transport‐related local pollutants. Our results also indicate that pollution leakages abroad are likely to take place.     

Brand loyalty and user skills

The paper develops the idea that brand loyalty is a rational thing for a consumer to have. The reason is that a consumer's experience with a brand creates user skills which make that brand more useful to the consumer than other brands, even though these, given the same experience, would be equally useful. In a brand switching model this implies that the consumer will switch brands only if there is an adequately large price differential and that the required price differential increases with user skills. The theory is related to standard search theory and it is shown that user skills and search costs have similar effects in the sense that either can support price dispersion in a market.     

An Analysis of Applicability using Quality Metrics for Ontologies on Ontology Design Patterns

Ontology design patterns (ODPs) provide best-practice solutions for common or recurring ontology design problems. This work focuses on content ODPs, which form small ontologies themselves and thus can be subject to ontology quality metrics in general. We investigate the use of such metrics for content ODP evaluation in terms of metrics applicability and validity. The quality metrics used for this investigation are taken from existing work in the area of ontology quality evaluation. We discuss the general applicability to content ODP of each metric considering its definition, ODP characteristics, and the defined goals of ODPs. The research process presented in this paper has two phases. In the first phase, we conducted a literature research in the area of metrics for assessing ontology quality. The second phase consisted of a two-step evaluation of the ontology metrics identified in the literature analysis. During the first step, we investigated whether the metrics are appropriate to differentiate between content ODPs of different quality. Metrics that proved to be applicable were calculated for a random set of 14 content ODPs. In the second step, a controlled experiment, the quality indicated by the metric value was contrasted with the perception of ontology engineers; that is, do ‘measured quality’ and ‘perceived quality’ match?. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Increasing Forest Conservation in Norway: Consequences for Timber and Forest Products Markets

This paper analyses the impacts on timber and forest products markets of increasing forest conservation in Norway. A partial equilibrium forest sector model is applied to analyse effects on roundwood and forest products prices, quantities and trade of four alternative conservation extents. These alternatives are based on a recent biological analysis of the conservation needs in order to protect biodiversity in Norway. Roundwood prices are projected to increase moderately when conservation increases domestically only, since the Norwegian forest industry substitutes imported fibre for domestic. The impacts on roundwood prices are more substantial if also Norways forest products trading partners increase the forest conservation. If forest owners voluntarily conserve forests subject to an economic compensation (which currently is the most likely policy in Norway), the model results imply that forest owners on average are better off with increased conservation. Domestic sawnwood production is projected to reduce when assuming increasing forest conservation, while the production level in the pulp and paper industry is almost unaffected in the short-run. Finally, increasing demand for forest products as a result of environmental good-will may increase roundwood prices and harvest levels in unaffected forest areas significantly.     

Culture and Economics

The question of how far it is necessary to include cultural factors in the analysis of economic processes has become topical again in recent years. The first contribution to this Forum introduces a cultural approach to economics. This is followed by an article that examines the transition processes in central and eastern Europe from an econocultural perspective. The next article deals with the concept of a country-specific national tax culture and its implications for tax policy, especially in the context of transformation processes. The final paper discusses Turkey’s economic culture and its possible impact on the country’s integration into the European Union. * This outline is in its main parts the result of cooperation with Bernd Remmele and Joachim Zweynert. The author wishes to express his indebtness to Inga Fuchs for central insights on this subject, and to Michael Wohlgemuth, who helped to finish this paper in a short period of time. ** This article originates in a research project on the historical and cultural path dependence of the transition processes in Central and Eastern Europe (with special focus on the Baltic Sea region). The project is carried out jointly by the Hamburg Institute of International Economics and the University of Hamburg and funded by the VolkswagenStiftung.     

Consumers with differing reaction speeds,scale advantages and industry structure

The development of an industry is seen as the outcome of a differential game in which market shares flow in response to price differences. It is hypothesized that while all consumers eventually react to price differences, some are slower than others. If scale advantages have some influence on marginal costs around average market share, then, under reasonable conditions, only skewed size distributions can be locally stable steady states. In addition, and contrary to common belief, the largest firm need not eventually monopolize the industry.     

Über verschiedene explicite Lösungen des Problems von der Berechnung des effektiven Zinsfusses bei Anleihen

Abstract

Das Problem der Berechnung des effektiven Zinsfusses bei Anleihen ist bekanntlich mit dem Probleme der Lösung einer Gleichung n-ten Grades identisch.     

Wood biomass use for energy in Europe under different assumptions of coal,gas and CO2 emission prices and market conditions

This study examines the effects of different coal, natural gas and carbon emission prices and market situations on the use of wood for electricity and heat production in the European Union. The analysis is carried out using the global forest sector model EFI-GTM expanded to cover electricity and heat production from wood, coal, natural gas, wind and solar energy. Analysis shows that with low coal and gas prices, use of wood for energy will be limited to low cost logging residues. With high coal, and especially natural gas prices, industrial wood also comes to be used for energy. At a carbon price of 100 €/tCO₂, some 32 Mm³ of industrial wood, in addition to 224 Mm³ of logging residues, are projected to be used for electricity and heat in the EU region (including Norway and Switzerland) in 2030. The relatively low quantity of industrial wood used by the energy sector despite the collapse of the use of coal is explained by the fact that under high CO₂ prices, other energy forms like natural gas, solar and wind energy become more and more competitive. However, the amount of industrial wood used for energy may substantially increase with subsidies for using wood for electricity and heat, even with relatively low carbon prices. With a high coal and gas price and a carbon price of 100 €/t, a subsidy of 30 €/MWh to the wood based and coal with wood co-firing electricity production will have a significant impact on the European wood based sector. Depending on the development of the market demand for forest industry products, such a subsidy may cause a 10–12.5% reduction in forest products production, a 6–9% increase in harvest level, about 30–60% increase in the pulpwood prices, and a 6–9 fold increase of wood imports in the EU, compared to the respective case without a subsidy in 2030.     

恪守诺言

文化教育领域的进步可能比其他任何政策都更能改进人文状况。所以国际社会自1960年以来确立了三个连续的目标期限来实现基础教育的普及（UPE），这也是联合国千年发展目标（MDGs）确定的2015年目标之一。但令人不安的是，最近的数据显示，撒哈拉以南的非洲地区完成小学教育的平均比例只有59％，远远低于确定的100％的要求。世界银行和国际货币基金组织发布的《2005年全球监控报告》注意到，按照当前的趋势，该地区直到2061年才能实现UPE。