Essays on the Economic Drivers of CO2 Emissions and Renewable Energy Transition

本论文包括六篇独立的文章，涉及两个不同的研究主题：二氧化碳排放和可再生能源消费，这两者都是在减缓气候变化的背景下进行研究的。除了第1章的介绍，论文的每一章都是一篇论文，独立解决一个具体的研究问题。前三篇文章研究了二氧化碳排放的影响因素，其余三篇论文集中探讨了可再生能源转型的驱动因素，以此作为解决二氧化碳排放和气候变化的解决方案。第一篇文章（第2章）研究了工业化对尼日利亚二氧化碳排放的影响。文章采用Kaya恒等式框架并使用时间序列分析技术。结果表明，工业化与尼日利亚的二氧化碳排放有负相关关系，这与传统上论文工业结构转型对环境有害的观念相悖。在第一篇文章的基础上，第二篇文章（第3章）通过研究经济发...This thesis comprises six self-contained essays and deals with two distinct research topics - CO2 emissions and consumption of renewable energy - as they relate to climate change mitigation. In addition to Chapter 1 which is the introduction, each essay represents one chapter of the thesis and addresses a specific research question. The first three essays look at the influencing factors of CO2 emi...学位：经济学博士院系专业：经济学院_能源经济学学号：3132013015441

Economic growth, exchange rate and remittance nexus : evidence from Africa

This paper examined the nexus between economic growth and exchange rate, remittances, trade, and agricultural output based on data sourced from 1980 to 2018 for 10 selected African economies. We employed both the Dumitrescu and Hurlin time-domain Granger causality test and the Croux and Reusens frequency domain Granger causality test. Results from the timedomain test suggests that causality only exists between economic growth and both exchange rate and trade, with no significant relationship between economic growth and both remittances and agricultural output. When we employed frequency domain model in our analysis, the results suggested that there is a bi-directional temporary and permanent causality between economic growth and exchange rate, trade, agriculture, and remittances. Our results suggest the validity of both the J-Curve and Marshall–Lerner hypotheses in the studied economies. Our study offers some relevant policy implications.DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : Data for the study were sourced from World Development Indicators (various issues) https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators.The Management of Bowen University, Iwo Nigeria for funding the article processing fee.https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jrfmEconomic

Are the recent VAT and social investment reforms in Nigeria conducive for social and economic inclusion?

Poverty, inequality and unemployment are major development challenges in Nigeria. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), poverty, inequality and unemployment are currently about 40.1% (2019), 35.1% (2019) and 33% (2020) respectively. These challenges inspired the government to introduce the cash transfer programme to cushion the effects of these trio. The cash transfer programme gives cash of N5,000 monthly to registered households. However, to raise funds to finance the cash transfer and other programmes, the government increase the VAT rate from 5% to 7.5%. This, this paper examines the macroeconomic and welfare impacts of the cash transfer programme, and further investigates the effects of the VAT increase on the effectiveness of the cash transfer programme. The PEP-1-1 CGE model calibrated on Nigeria’s updated social accounting matric (SAM) is used to carry out the impact analysis. The results show the cash transfer programme increases household consumption, household welfare, and real GDP growth while reducing unemployment rate. But the effects are much higher if the cash transfer programme is financed mainly through the budget than when it is financed by the increase in VAT rate. More so, the welfare of rural household increases than that of urban household. The cash transfer programme also induces the purchasing power of the households, leading to higher prices of commodities, and increase in consumer price index. Financing it through an increase in the VAT rate further aggravates the price effects. Meanwhile, financing the cash transfer programme through the increase in the VAT rate only improves government finances marginally. Thus, it is recommended that the while the government may provide cash transfers to household, increasing the VAT rate to fund the cash transfer might undermine the positive welfare-enhancing effects of the cash transfer

Are the recent VAT and social investment reforms in Nigeria conducive for social and economic inclusion?

Poverty, inequality and unemployment are major development challenges in Nigeria. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), poverty, inequality and unemployment are currently about 40.1% (2019), 35.1% (2019) and 33% (2020) respectively. These challenges inspired the government to introduce the cash transfer programme to cushion the effects of these trio. The cash transfer programme gives cash of N5,000 monthly to registered households. However, to raise funds to finance the cash transfer and other programmes, the government increase the VAT rate from 5% to 7.5%. This, this paper examines the macroeconomic and welfare impacts of the cash transfer programme, and further investigates the effects of the VAT increase on the effectiveness of the cash transfer programme. The PEP-1-1 CGE model calibrated on Nigeria’s updated social accounting matric (SAM) is used to carry out the impact analysis. The results show the cash transfer programme increases household consumption, household welfare, and real GDP growth while reducing unemployment rate. But the effects are much higher if the cash transfer programme is financed mainly through the budget than when it is financed by the increase in VAT rate. More so, the welfare of rural household increases than that of urban household. The cash transfer programme also induces the purchasing power of the households, leading to higher prices of commodities, and increase in consumer price index. Financing it through an increase in the VAT rate further aggravates the price effects. Meanwhile, financing the cash transfer programme through the increase in the VAT rate only improves government finances marginally. Thus, it is recommended that the while the government may provide cash transfers to household, increasing the VAT rate to fund the cash transfer might undermine the positive welfare-enhancing effects of the cash transfer

Do race and nationality matter in getting a job? : field experiment and survey of employment discrimination in China

Globalisation has brought people closer. The world, however, is divided into distinct categories that are marked through global racial and ethnic taxonomy (Desmond and Emirbayer, 2009). In the struggle to survive, discrimination along racial and nationality lines in the job market, have continued to influence who gets what, when and how.<br> While a few studies (e.g. Wilson et al, 2006) have examined the determinants of racial disparities in developed countries such as the United States, the emergence of China in the global economic order and the influx of migrants to the country, whose demographic structure suggests an elastic supply of workforce, gives concern on the prospects of employment for migrants from developing and developed countries alike. Findings from earlier studies (e.g. Wilson, 1997; Royster, 2003) have shown that the difficulty of migrants to get jobs in developed countries, for instance African Americans relative to White Americans, is due to lack of relevant skills and experience needed for success. Such studies, however, do not say if experience and skills would still matter if the same level of skills and experience were to be found on the CV of a set of workers with different nationality and race. Who would get called for interview and who would not

Testing mean-reversion in agricultural commodity prices: Evidence from wavelet analysis

This study examines the validity of the random walk hypothesis for some selected soft agricultural commodity prices within the context of heterogeneous market hypothesis and mean reversion hypothesis. The study employs a battery of traditional unit root tests, GARCH-based models and a novel frequency-based wavelet analysis to analyze daily data sourced from 6th of Jan 1986 to 29th Dec 2018. Contrary to other existing studies that employed only traditional time domain unit root tests, our results reveal that soft commodity prices are mean reverting, suggesting the existence of potential excess returns for investors. Overall, our results show that the selected soft commodity series are inefficient when we factored in heteroscedascity and frequency domain into our model. Our study is an improvement on the existing studies as we analyze our data using both time and frequency domain estimates. Besides, unlike other studies that did not offer structural breaks, the current study provides structural break dates with major events in the global socioeconomic space, which are key to identifying the date of bubbles and potential signs of commodity price bubbles. Our findings have some critical implications for investors, policy maker

Using mixed methods to construct and analyze a participatory agent-based model of a complex Zimbabwean agro-pastoral system.

Complex social-ecological systems can be difficult to study and manage. Simulation models can facilitate exploration of system behavior under novel conditions, and participatory modeling can involve stakeholders in developing appropriate management processes. Participatory modeling already typically involves qualitative structural validation of models with stakeholders, but with increased data and more sophisticated models, quantitative behavioral validation may be possible as well. In this study, we created a novel agent-based-model applied to a specific context: Zimbabwean non-governmental organization the Muonde Trust has been collecting data on their agro-pastoral system for the last 35 years and had concerns about land-use planning and the effectiveness of management interventions in the face of climate change. We collaboratively created an agent-based model of their system using their data archive, qualitatively calibrating it to the observed behavior of the real system without tuning any parameters to match specific quantitative outputs. We then behaviorally validated the model using quantitative community-based data and conducted a sensitivity analysis to determine the relative impact of underlying parameter assumptions, Indigenous management interventions, and different rainfall variation scenarios. We found that our process resulted in a model which was successfully structurally validated and sufficiently realistic to be useful for Muonde researchers as a discussion tool. The model was inconsistently behaviorally validated, however, with some model variables matching field data better than others. We observed increased model system instability due to increasing variability in underlying drivers (rainfall), and also due to management interventions that broke feedbacks between the components of the system. Interventions that smoothed year-to-year variation rather than exaggerating it tended to improve sustainability. The Muonde trust has used the model to successfully advocate to local leaders for changes in land-use planning policy that will increase the sustainability of their system

Economic Growth, Exchange Rate and Remittance Nexus: Evidence from Africa

This paper examined the nexus between economic growth and exchange rate, remittances, trade, and agricultural output based on data sourced from 1980 to 2018 for 10 selected African economies. We employed both the Dumitrescu and Hurlin time-domain Granger causality test and the Croux and Reusens frequency domain Granger causality test. Results from the time-domain test suggests that causality only exists between economic growth and both exchange rate and trade, with no significant relationship between economic growth and both remittances and agricultural output. When we employed frequency domain model in our analysis, the results suggested that there is a bi-directional temporary and permanent causality between economic growth and exchange rate, trade, agriculture, and remittances. Our results suggest the validity of both the J-Curve and Marshall&ndash;Lerner hypotheses in the studied economies. Our study offers some relevant policy implications