ENERGY ECONOMICS REVIEW
Year:2011 | Volume:7 | Issue:27|Papers Count:10

This research studies the existence and direction of causality between energy consumption, carbon emission, urban population and economic growth by using the Yamado- Toda approach in Iran for the period 1981-2006. Results indicate that there is a unidirectional causality between urban population, energy consumption, and GDP and CO2 emissions. There is also a one way directional causality from energy consumption and urban population to GDP. Based on these causality results, relationships between causal variables and CO2 emissions was estimated by using the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) method. The results indicate that the EKC hypothesis is valid for CO2 emissions and GDP. Moreover, the elasticity of CO2 emissions with respect to urban population is positive and less than unity. The elasticity of CO2 emissions with respect to energy consumption is positive and higher than unity.

This paper examines the cointegration and causality relationship between disaggregated energy consumption and total final energy consumption by the industrial sector with industrial production in Iran within a multivariate framework Iran using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach developed by Pesaran and Pesaran [Pesaran, M.H., Pesaran, B., 1997. Working with Microfit 4.0. Camfit Data Ltd, Cambridge] and Pesaran, Shin and Smith [Pesaran, M.H., Shin, Y., Smith, R.J., 2001. Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships. Journal of Applied Econometrics 16; 289–326] and vector error correction model (VECM) for the period 1346-1386. After examining the relationship between different disaggregated forms of energy consumption with industrial production in the second stage we investigate the relationship between total final industrial energy consumption and industrial production. Our results imply that industrial production, employment and capital stock are effective long-run variables that influence final industrial energy consumption of all souorces of energy except coal. The VEC results indicate unidirectional strong causality running from industrial production to petroleum products, electricity and final industrial energy consumption, while we find bi-directional strong causality between natural gas consumption and industrial production. Thus, as far as final industrial energy consumption, petroleum products and electricity consumption are concerned, there is evidence in support of the energy conservation hypothesis and the feedback hypothesis of energy consumption with respect to natural gas consumption. The findings have practical policy implications for decision makers in the area of macroeconomic planning, as they indicated that energy conservation is a feasible policy option with no damaging repercussions on economic (industrial) growth.

A Growing literature deals with an increasing number of aspects of the resource curse. One of the main areas of active research is Dutch Disease, which refers to a situation when a booming export sector increases the relative price of non-tradable goods and services, thus hurting the rest of tradable goods sector. In this study we investigate the relationship between natural resource abundance, Dutch Disease and economic growth in major petroleum exporters by using panel data for the period 1960 to 2008.The findings show that the negative effect of natural resource abundance and deficiency of institutional factors on economic growth remains after controlling for other variables such as physical investment, openness, government expenditure and changes in terms of trade that are important in a growth model. The main findings of this study show that natural resource abundance tends to increase the growth of service sector value added and the ratio of service value added to manufacturing value added in GDP and decrease the growth of manufacturing value added and share of manufacturing exports in total exports. To the extent that the service sector proxies the non-tradable sector and manufacturing the non-resource tradable sector, this provides some corroboration of the predictions of the Dutch Disease. The findings also show that the growth of manufacturing value added, changes in the share of manufacturing exports in total exports and the ratio of value added of manufacturing to services are positively correlated with economic growth.Given the direct relationship of these variables with economic growth, we can conclude that natural resource abundance, combined with structural weaknesses, leads to weakening of the industrial sector as a tradable sector and reduces industrial exports, thus lowering the growth rate of these countries. We can minimize such negative impact by minimizing exports of raw materials, as well as share of such revenues in the public budget, supporting non-oil sectors and creating modalities such as oil stabilization and reserve funds.

Given the high share of energy subsidies in Iran (25.9% of GDP in 2006), an assessment of likely inflationary impacts of their removal is needed to provide policy makers with the requisite guidance for appropriate decision making. This paper thus assesses the likely inflationary impacts of adjusting energy prices using an input- output model to evaluate cost push and demand pull inflationary impacts under scenarios of sudden and gradual changes. The results indicate that if the prices of all energy sources are increased at once, the consumer price index (CPI) will increase by 48.6 per cent and producer prices will rise by 63.6 percent. On the other hand, if prices are increased gradually over four years the average annual additional inflation will be 10.5 percent. The model further predicts a deman pull inflation of the order of 2.7 percent, which will result in an overall additional inflation of 4 percent, taking into account the money multiplier of 1.5.

As environmental issues gain importance, all countries are trying to achieve their economic goals while minimizing environmental damage through appropriate planning methods. Accomplishment of this goal is not possible without knowing the relationship between economic activities and environmental pollution and their mutual interactions. This is particularly important for developing countries like Iran which are still in early stages of growth and economic development.This paper attempts to analyze the short and long-run relationships between economic growth, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission (as an indicator of environmental pollution) by using time series data for the period 1965-2008 in Iran. The Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) econometric method is used to evaluate the relationships amongst these variables. According to the results, carbon dioxide emission is non-elastic relative to economic growth but it's value is higher in the long-run. Carbon dioxide emission has an elastic relationship to energy consumption in both the long and short-run. In addition, the inverted U shape of the environmental Kuznets Curve is not confirmed for Iran.

In economic and financial literature, the relationship between exchange rate of the US dollar and oil price is defined as a causality relationship between them which can be studied for long and short term periods. The mentioned relationship can be examined from a structural perspective by examining the demand and supply relationship for crude oil. On the other hand, information transmits reciprocally from one market to another. In order to investigate the mentioned relationships, this article has used the VECM-Multivariate GARCH method. The results of this study indicate that the causality relationship between the dollar market and crude price is unidirectional in the long term from the foreign exchange to the crude market, while there is no causality in the reverse direction. The relationship between the exchange rate of the dollar and crude prices is a negative one. Thus, while forecasting the long term price of crude and finding the elements which have long term effect on it, the trend rate of exchange of the US dollar has to be considered. In terms of the spillover effect or risk transfer, we recognize that there is no spillover effect from crude to exchange rate markets while fluctuations of exchange rate market have a spillover effect on crude markets and part of the crude oil risk comes from the volatility of the exchange rate market.

There are many difficulties associated with economic evaluation of technologically complex mega projects. Given the dependence of the economic viability of such projects on an extensive set of technical and economic information, a major part of which have stochastic behavior and are subject to uncertainty, in this study we use actual data from a particular case study.The case study is the Papua New Guinea LNG (PNG LNG) project, which is forecast to deliver direct capital investment of around US$10 billion in real terms over the 25 year life of the project.Recurrent operating expenditure, including a significant level of local spending on support services, is expected to average $680 million per year. Total operational expenditure over the first 25 years after commencement of production from the project is expected to be around $23 billion. We aim to assess if this costly project would remain economically feasible, if one changes the assumptions with respect to LNG prices We assess the market sale price risk by studying the 10 year time series data of crude oil prices, based on the notion of equivalent pricing of LNG and using Monte Carlo simulation. We assess the economic feasibility of the project for different price scenarios.Notions of capital costs (CAPEX) and operating costs (OPEX) are subject to a high level of uncertainty and increasing the margin of error from 5% to 10% can jeopardize the viability of the project.Varying the assumptions on items such as Dollar and Euro exchange rates, LNG price formula, predicted project income, marketing issues and project management in the operational period have major effect on viability of the project.In this study, based on given assumptions on the main variables of LNG price, we calculate the IRR and NPV of the project and its sensitivity to changes in the value of this variable.

Energy is an important and key input in the whole economy and agriculture sector production. In recent years due to the increase in the financial burden of energy subsidies, targeting these subsidies has been considered. Given the likely impact of targeting on energy consumption, this study forecasts the consumption of energy carriers (oil products and electricity) in agriculture using ARIMA and ARCH models. The selected period covers 1347-1384 (1968-2005), with the last three years used to test the forecasting ability of the models. The results of the study indicate a small increment in energy consumption in agriculture. Prediction error of ARIMA was lower than the ARCH one except for oil products.