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Much of New South Wales and southern Queensland suffered from extreme drought from 2017 to 2019. This study models drought and bushfires impacts using VU‐TERM, a multi‐regional, dynamic CGE model. Prolonged drought pushed national real GDP to 0.7 per cent or more below base in 2018–2019 and 2019–2020. NSW’s real GDP fell relative to forecast by 1.1 per cent or $6.9 billion in 2018–2019 and 1.6 per cent or $10.2 billion in 2019–2020. These impacts reflect a severe diminution of farm output, given that agriculture accounts for around 1.6 per cent of NSW’s income. Bushfires exacerbated 2019–2020 losses. We assume that there is a full recovery in seasonal conditions in 2020. However, prolonged drought and bushfire destruction deplete farm capital through depressed investment and diminished herd numbers. Consequently, the income earning capacity of farms in recovery remains below that of a no drought base. The net present value of the national welfare loss is $63 billion, split between $53 billion in losses from drought and $10 billion from bushfires. The latter excludes any valuation of human lives lost, flora, fauna or forestry destruction. In the longer term, adaptation and policy responses will need to reflect the expectation of increased frequency of adverse climatic events.

South Africa is an emerging and industrializing economy which is experiencing remarkable progress. We contend that amidst the developments in the economy, the role of energy, trade openness and financial development are critical. In this article, we revisit the pivotal role of these factors. We use the ARDL bounds [72], the Bayer and Hanck [11] cointegration techniques, and an extended Cobb–Douglas framework, to examine the long-run association with output per worker over the sample period 1971–2011. The results support long-run association between output per worker, capital per worker and the shift parameters. The short-run elasticity coefficients are as follows: energy (0.24), trade (0.07), financial development (−0.03). In the long-run, the elasticity coefficients are: trade openness (0.05), energy (0.29), and financial development (−0.04). In both the short-run and the long-run, we note the post-2000 period has a marginal positive effect on the economy. The Toda and Yamamoto [91] Granger causality results show that a unidirectional causality from capital stock and energy consumption to output; and from capital stock to trade openness; a bidirectional causality between trade openness and output; and absence (neutrality) of any causality between financial development and output thus indicating that these two variables evolve independent of each other.

This study hypothesizes that employees’ positive perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities at the individual level have a negative effect on employee deviance—a negative job-related behavior—and that anomie plays a mediating role in this relationship. In order to verify the relationship, this study conducts an empirical analysis with a questionnaire survey on employees of firms that implement CSR activities at the company level. Based on Social identity theory, this study examines the causal relationship between the employees’ perceptions of CSR activities and their deviance, and mechanisms by which anomie decreases in the process. The findings are as follows. First, employees’ perceptions of CSR activities had a negative effect on employee deviance. Second, employees’ perceptions of CSR activities had a negative effect on anomie. Third, anomie had a positive effect on employee deviance. Fourth, anomie fully mediated the relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR activities and employee deviance. This study is the first to document this relationship, which has great practical and academic significance, as it indicates the importance for companies to consider employees’ perceptions of CSR activities. In addition, the study identifies the mediating role of anomie as mentioned above. The results suggest that methodological considerations of CSR awareness enhancement at the company level be discussed more in depth, helping top management and middle managers understand that enhancing employees’ positive perceptions of CSR activities should be the first priority for reducing collective normlessness under the pressure of goal attainment and resolving ethical conflicts among employees.

This paper presents estimates of short-run sectoral and economy-wide effects of the introduction of a carbon tax in Australia. The results are derived using an enhanced version of the ORANI multi-sectoral model of the Australian economy. We simulate the introduction of a carbon tax at a rate of 1991-92 $25 per tonne, designed to achieve the Toronto target of a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions below the 1988 level by 2005. We find that the macroeconomic impact would depend critically on the extent to which price rises flowed through into wage rates. Assuming fixed money wages, real GDP would be decreased by an estimated 0.9 per cent, and employment by 1.2 per cent. To maintain a given employment level in the face of the carbon tax would require a reduction in the foreign-currency-equivalent wage rate estimated at 2.8 per cent. This would also entail a decrease in the real wage rate (defined with respect to the consumption price deflator) of 2.8 per cent. Government could promote lower wage outcomes by returning the carbon tax revenue to the community through reductions in other taxes. Enhancements to ORANI used in this simulation include disaggregation of the fossil fuel sector and provision for carbon taxation.

The belief that the price mechanism can be used exclusively to combat problems arising from growing energy shortages has led to the neglect of the repercussions of energy conservation on the macroeconomic problems of growth and development. Moreover, many studies consider only the direct effects of energy use and concentrate on petroleum shortages, so underestimating the total repercussion and structural dependence associated with changes in energy demand in Australia. This study attempts to overcome these gaps by modifying input-output modelling to estimate all primary energy demand for fossil fuels in Australia. The complex interactions between energy conservation and macroeconomic goals are investigated at sectoral levels. The optimal sectors that meet macroeconomic goals and energy constraints simultaneously have been identified using simple, but powerful, analytical tools. The tradeoffs between energy use and macroeconomic objectives are quantified using energy as a numeraire. The conflicts that emerge between macro-planning criteria and energy use efficiency are exemplified and the need to reconcile them using the value judgements of political decisionmakers is clarified. The limitations and the scope for refinement of the methodology are also discussed.

In this paper, we examine the effects of world energy price shocks on China's macroeconomy over the past two decades. We begin by showing that the use of oil prices as a proxy for more general energy price dynamics is not appropriate for the case of China. Having established this fact, we propose a new energy price index which accurately reflects the structure of China's energy expenditure shares, and intertemporal fluctuations in international energy prices. We then employ a sufficiently rich set of time varying VARs, identified through a new set of agnostic sign restrictions, to estimate the effects of energy price shocks on China's macroeconomy. Our main result is that positive energy price shocks generate statistically significant reductions in real GDP growth and increases in inflation. Interestingly, both the sets of responses have consistently declined over the sample period. Next, the interest rate responses are found to be consistently positive over the sample period. Given the aforementioned stagflation result, this suggests that the PBOC is more focused on inflation stabilization as compared to facilitating output growth. All presented results are shown to be robust under both official national data and those developed by Chang et al. (2015), thus strengthening our conclusion that energy price shocks have significant time varying effects on China's macroeconomy.

An extensive number of studies uses trade-to-GDP as a proxy for globalisation in environmental research. Globalisation encompasses much more than just trade in goods. Globalisation is the integration of various countries and includes spillovers of ideas and technology, financial flows, the worldwide movement of labour, and national governments meeting on an international level in a bid to solve social and political problems. This study considers the effect of globalisation on carbon dioxide emissions by using a more flexible and comprehensive measure based on the KOF globalisation index for a panel of 21 OECD nations covering the period 1970–2014. Since the globalisation process is not uniform across countries and time, we use a fully-fledged nonparametric technique to estimate the time-varying coefficient and trend functions. Our results show that the effect of globalization on CO2 emissions is positive up until 2000, then switches to turns negative thereafter.

AbstractTechnology developments have made significant impacts on both humans and the environment in which they live. However, there is limited whole-of-system understanding of ancient technology development. This paper aims to uncover the evolutionary pattern of the ancient Chinese agricultural technology system that focused on land and water mobilisations from 8000 BC to 1911 AD. Our findings show that agricultural technology in China transitioned through an extremely slow, S-shaped pathway, increasing only ten fold in over 8000 years. The technology system was initially driven by tangible tools (40% of growth), then by technological theories and practices that contributed more than 50% of growth. Its development was spatially inclined to the Yellow River then to the Yangtze River region, where over 45% of technologies were developed. This study provides an empirical baseline for comparative studies between pre-industrial and industrial technologies. Greater understanding of the mechanisms of technology development will be required to reorientate technology development for present and future generations.