Drivers of CO2-Emissions in Fossil Fuel Abundant Settings: (Pooled) Mean Group and Nonparametric Panel Analyses

The present inquiry addresses the income-environment relationship in oil-producing countries and scrutinizes the further drivers of atmospheric pollution in the respective settings. The existing literature that tests the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis within the framework of the black-box approaches provides only a bird’s-eye perspective on the long-run income-environment relationship. The aspiration behind this study is making the first step toward the disentanglement of the sources of carbon dioxide emissions, which could be employed in the pollution mitigation policies of this group of countries. Based on the combination of two strands of literature, the environmental Kuznets curve conjecture and the resource curse, the paper at hand proposes an augmented theoretical framework of this inquiry. To approach the research questions empirically, the study employs advanced panel cointegration techniques. To avoid econometric misspecification, the study also employs for the first time a nonparametric time-varying coefficient panel data estimator with fixed effects (NPFE) for the dataset of 37 oil-producing countries in the time interval spanning between 1989 and 2019. The empirical analysis identifies the level of per capita income, the magnitude of oil rents, the share of fossil fuel-based electricity generation in the energy mix, and the share of the manufacturing sector in GDP as essential drivers of carbon dioxide emissions in the oil-rich countries. Tertiarization, on the contrary, leads to a substantial reduction of emissions. Another striking result of this study is that level of political rights and civil liberties are negatively associated with per capita carbon emissions in this group of countries. Furthermore, the study decisively rejects an inverted U-shaped income-emission relationship and validates the monotonically or exponentially increasing impact of average income on carbon dioxide emissions.</jats:p

A note on revenue distribution patterns and rent-seeking incentive

This paper presents a simple model of rent-seeking incentive to explain the emergence and dominance of the rapacious rent-seeking policies in a number of oil abundant developing and transition economies. The Hubbertian distribution of the commodity exports over time, the magnitude of these revenues, and the availability of offshore havens for the illicitly appropriated rent explain the shift from productive public policies to rapacious rent-seeking. In addition, we show that the existence of the well-functioning democratic institutions prior to the revenue boom precludes the emergence of rapacious rent-seeking institutions due to prohibitively high costs of rent-seeking. The paper complements the existing literature by delivering a novel theoretical rationale for the predisposition of the oil-rich countries to the resource curse

A Note on Revenue Distribution Patterns and Rent-Seeking Incentive

This paper presents a simple model of rent-seeking incentive to explain the emergence and dominance of the rapacious rent-seeking policies in a number of oil abundant developing and transition economies. The Hubbertian distribution of the commodity exports over time, the magnitude of these revenues, and the availability of offshore havens for the illicitly appropriated rent explain the shift from productive public policies to rapacious rent-seeking. In addition, we show that the existence of the well-functioning democratic institutions prior to the revenue boom precludes the emergence of rapacious rent-seeking institutions due to prohibitively high costs of rent-seeking. The paper complements the existing literature by delivering a novel theoretical rationale for the predisposition of the oil-rich countries to the resource curse. Keywords: Rent-Seeking, Illicit Appropriation, Hubbert Curve, Point-Source Resources, Institutions, Offshore Havens JEL Classifications: D72, D73, L72, O1

Observational evidence for gravitationally trapped massive axion(-like) particles

Unexpected astrophysical observations can be explained by gravitationally captured massive particles, which are produced inside the Sun or other Stars and are accumulated over cosmic times. Their radiative decay in solar outer space would give rise to a `self-irradiation' of the whole star, providing the time-independent component of the corona heating source. In analogy with the Sun-irradiated Earth atmosphere, the temperature and density gradient in the corona - chromosphere transition region is suggestive for an omnipresent irradiation of the Sun. The same scenario fits other astrophysical X-ray observations. The radiative decay of a population of such elusive particles mimics a hot gas. X-ray observatories, with an unrivalled sensitivity below ~10 keV, can search for such particles. The elongation angle relative to the Sun is the relevant new parameter.Comment: 35 pages, LaTeX, 9 figures. Accepted by Astroparticle Physic

Beitraege zur zeitgenoessischen Afghanistanforschung: Vortraege auf einer Tagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Afghanistan am 6. und 7. Juli 1995 in Bochum

Available from Bibliothek des Instituts fuer Weltwirtschaft, ZBW, D-21400 Kiel C 207850 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Commodity Revenues, Agricultural Sector and the Magnitude of Deindustrialization: A Novel Multisector Perspective

This study puts forward a model of a multisector economy and embeds it in a novel theoretical framework to address the relationship between commodity revenues and manufacturing output with a special focus on the role of the agricultural sector. The three-sector model lays the groundwork for analyzing policy choices in more complex sectoral settings. Based on the theoretical analysis, the study identifies the weight of the individual economic sectors in the public revenue generation as a determinant of the magnitude of rent seeking epitomized in the crowding out effect of investments in manufacturing. We find that enclave agriculture contributes to the deindustrialization pressure in the face of natural resource windfalls. The central finding of the multisector analysis is the conclusion that not diversification per se but rather a diversification with the substantial domestic factor or market orientation has the capability to limit the magnitude of deindustrialization. For the empirical validation of the theoretical findings, the study employs fixed effects, fully modified OLS, dynamic common correlated effects estimators and dynamic fixed effects estimators for the dataset of 113 developing and transition economies for 1963&ndash;2014 period. The estimations reveal that natural resource revenues correspond with a higher level of the manufacturing sector output. In the economies with a low level of economic diversification, commodity bonanza leads however to the shrinkage of the manufacturing. In the commodity revenue dependent settings, nevertheless, agricultural sector exports have a negative impact on the performance of the manufacturing sector. These findings are in line with the predictions of the theoretical model

Income Vulnerability of West African Farming Households to Losses in Pollination Services: A Case Study from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in West African countries is developing rapidly in response to population growth and changing consumer preferences. Furthermore, UPA offers opportunities to secure income and social integration for the urban poor. However, little is known about household (HH) income security effects of the ongoing shift in UPA land use from crops that do not rely on insect pollinators for fruit development (e.g., sorghum and millet) to pollinator-dependent crops. In our study we developed a Household Vulnerability Index (HVI) for 224 HHs along a rural&#8315;urban gradient of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The HVI indicates to which degree total HH revenue could be affected by a decline in insect pollinators. HH specific relative reduction of agricultural revenue ranged from 0 to &#8722;0.83, a reduction in HHs&#8217; revenue of up to 83%, depending on the crops&#8217; level of pollinator dependency. Half of the studied HHs (n = 108) showed an HVI of 0 and remained unaffected by a decline in pollinators. Nevertheless, mean HVI was highest for urban HHs; making these HHs most vulnerable for loss of pollination services. As in urban areas changes in insect-mediated pollination services are expected, the development of resilient UPA systems must consider &#8220;pollinator-friendly&#8222; landscape management