An Antidote to the Resource Curse: The Blessing of Renewable Energy

This paper empirically examines the validity of the resource curse in Europe and it is the first time renewable energy is inserted in this research context. The study uses panel data with a variety of explanatory variable proxies for investment, openness, rule of law, resource endowments and human capital. It employs a single equation fixed effects model with heteroskedasticity robust covariance and a simultaneous two equation model where renewable energy enters the structural equation as an endogenous variable. The resource curse is confirmed only for crude oil and resource productivity in the single equation model while renewable energy has a positive relationship to growth. In the simultaneous two equation model, countries with high oil production and emissions also have a higher production of renewable energies.  Keywords: Natural resource curse; economic growth, renewable energy; Europe; fixed effects model  JEL Classifications; O52; P28; P48; P52; Q2

Greece & Turkey; Assessment and Comparison of Their Renewable Energy Performance

This paper is a comparative review of the renewable energy performance of Turkey and Greece. Both neighboring countries sharing the same energy hub with a large potential for renewable energy production. Albeit having strikingly similar energy objectives and hindrances, they are currently challenged by different contexts. Turkey, although not a European Union member, it spends efforts to tacitly comply with European Union legislation and sets ambitious renewable energy targets. Greece on the other hand is afflicted by an economic crisis that threatens to retard its renewable energy developments unless Greece uses renewable energy sources as a means to escape the crisis. This paper is useful for potential renewable energy investors in the area of Greece and Turkey. Keywords: Greece; renewable energy sources; Turkey JEL Classifications: O13; O57; Q2

The ARDL Method in the Energy-Growth Nexus Field; Best Implementation Strategies

A vast number of the energy-growth nexus researchers, as well as other “X-variable-growth nexus” studies, such as for example the tourism-growth nexus, the environment-growth nexus or the food-growth nexus have used the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) bounds test approach for cointegration testing. Their research papers rarely include all the ARDL procedure steps in a detailed way and thus they leave other researchers confused with the series of steps that must be followed and the best implementation paradigms so that they not allow any obscure aspects. This paper is a comprehensive review that suggests the steps that need to be taken before the ARDL procedure takes place as well as the steps that should be taken afterward with respect to causality investigation and robust analysis

Towards a Global Energy-Sustainable Economy Nexus; Summing up Evidence from Recent Empirical Work

The recent trend in New Economics is the establishment of measures of sustainable wealth and welfare which take into account all the parameters of economic, environmental, and social life and progress, juxtaposed to the conventional and myopic GDP. This review summarizes results from a series of recent papers in the energy-growth nexus field, which have perused a proxy for the sustainable GDP instead of the conventional GDP and discusses the difference in results and policy implications. The energy-growth nexus field itself has generated a bulk of work since the seminal study of Kraft and Kraft (1978), but still the field needs new perspectives in order to generate results with a consensus. The bidirectional causality between energy consumption and sustainable economy provides evidence for the Feedback Hypothesis, a statement that essentially warns that it is too early for sustainability to be feasible without fossil energy consumption, and vice versa. The unidirectional causality reveals, on the one side, that an economy cannot grow without the plentiful consumption of energy (the Growth Hypothesis) and, on the other side, that the growth of the economy fuels energy consumption (the Conservation Hypothesis). Failure to corroborate causality between energy consumption and economic growth is evidence for the Neutrality Hypothesis

Growth and renewable energy in Europe: A random effect model with evidence for neutrality hypothesis

This is an empirical study on the causal relationship between economic growth and renewable energy for 27 European countries in a multivariate panel framework over the period 1997-2007 using a random effect model and including final energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and employment as additional independent variables in the model. Empirical results do not confirm causality between renewable energy consumption and GDP, although panel causality tests unfold short-run relationships between renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions and employment. The estimated cointegration factor refrains from unity, indicating only a weak, if any, relationship between economic growth and renewable energy consumption in Europe, suggesting evidence of the neutrality hypothesis, which can partly be explained by the uneven and insufficient exploitation of renewable energy sources across Europe.Europe Growth Panel Random effect model Renewable energy

Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline; will matching institutional and regulatory contexts lead to an effective bargaining and eventual consensus?

This paper employs Muthoo's bargaining principles/prerequisites for an effective bargaining result (Muthoo (2000). A Non-Technical Introduction to Bargaining Theory, World Economics 1(2): 145-166) to decide whether Greece and Bulgaria can form a successful energy coalition. Motivation for this is the proposed construction of the crude oil pipeline from the Bulgarian port Burgas to the Greek Aegean port of Alexandroupolis. The reason Turkey is the third country in the analysis despite its current non-membership in this venture, is that: (i) Turkey offers to host a competitive route of the pipeline, (ii) It is a transit, neighboring country to Greece forming an important geopolitical triangle together with Greece and Bulgaria and (iii) co-operates separately with Bulgaria and Greece in other energy pipelines. Therefore, the three countries engage to interwining energy and geopolitical futures. Whether B-A oil pipeline will be implemented or not, will be due to a mix of bargaining procedures. The paper shows that Muthoo's principles/prerequisites for an effective bargaining result, through their constituents (selected economy and energy figures and characteristics), are fulfilled by Greece and Bulgaria. A broader coalition with the inclusion of Turkey might also be permissible and promising based on this theory.Burgas-Alexandoupolis oil-pipeline Bargaining Energy economics