• Energy Research

This article reexamines the long-run and short-run determinants of the aggregate residential demand for electricity in Greece using data spanning the period 1964-2006 and the recently advanced ARDL cointegrating procedure that has not been hitherto tried to Greek data. The results of the econometric analysis show the presence of an equilibrium relationship between the variables involved in both the long-run and short-run periods. These findings may shed new light on the contemplation of policies, which direct the residential demand for electricity to desired goals.

This paper uses bivariate VAR, Mixed Dynamic and Granger Causality Approaches, to analyze the news effect of oil prices on the stock market index in the U.S during the recent oil price hikes from the late eighties up to date. All used models show similar evidence. They suggest that oil shock negatively affect the stock market returns in the U.S. Oil prices granger cause movements in the stock market index. The Stock market index will absorb the information of oil price shocks and incorporate it into the stock price instantaneously. Oil price shocks have an immediate negative effect on the U.S stock market.

In this paper, we investigate changes in the impacts of world crude oil prices on domestic prices in Japan. First, we employ a time-varying parameter VAR (TVP-VAR) approach to confirm that the rate of pass-through of oil prices declined, both at the aggregate and sectoral levels, for the period 1980-2000. Second, by utilizing Input-Output Tables, we find that changing cost structure of Japanese firms goes a long way toward explaining this decline. That is, by the year 2000, oil had become a much smaller component of the Japanese production cost structure. We further find that much of this is attributable to changes in relative prices: as oil became cheaper, it became less important in the overall cost structure, and thus pricing behaviors of firms became less responsive to its prices. Substitution effects, namely firms' shifts toward less oil intensive production, on the other hand, appear to be less important. We also study the period 2000-2007. We find that, although pass-through rates of oil prices increase in many instances, those increases are small in comparison to the drastic resurgence of oil in the cost structure of firms. We present some possible explanations for this finding.

Using autoregressive distributed lag bound test framework, the dynamics of financial development, economic growth, energy prices and energy consumption was investigated in Nigeria for the period of 1972Q1-2011Q4. The finding signifies that variables were cointegrated as null hypothesis was rejected at 1% level of significance. In the short-run financial development has significant negative impact on fossil fuel consumption, economic growth also shows the same relationship. However, energy prices have positive and significant influence on the consumption of fossil fuel. In the long-run however, financial development has insignificant negative impact on energy consumption, and economic growth has negative but significant impact on energy consumption, while energy prices has positive and significant impact on fossil fuel consumption. The policy recommendation remains that Nigerian authority should try to explore other alternative sources of energy in order to curb the adverse effect of fossil fuel consumption on the financial market and overall economic growth. Exploring the potentials of green energy is paramount in Nigeria which is more eco-friendly and contain less carbon emissions.

This collection of papers in two volumes is the second in a series on China and East Asian Energy, a major project which is an initiative of the East Asia Forum in conjunction with the China Economy and Business Program in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University (ANU). The first volume was published in April 2007. The research program is directed at understanding the factors influencing Chinas energy markets. It also involves high-level training and capacity building to foster long-term links between policy thinkers in China and Australia. It provides for regular dialogue with participants from the energy and policy sectors in the major markets in East Asia and Australia. The backbone of the dialogue is an annual conference, the location of which has thus far alternated between Beijing and Canberra. The objective is to advance a research agenda that informs and influences the energy policy discussion in China, Australia and the region. This special edition of the Asia Pacific Economic Papers brings together papers presented at the second conference in the series. Due to their number and length, papers from that second conference are published across two volumes of the Asia Pacific Economic Papers. This volume includes the first half of the papers, while the next volume includes the second half. The third conference in the project is scheduled for July 2008.

Energy price rate is a significant economical factor in the optimization searches. The energy price rate seems to be continuously available as the energy reserves of the world decreases. The possible increases in energy price rate will be unavoidable due to the reduction in the energy reserves. This is natural with respect to the main law of economics. Previous studies on the energy price rate are searched and discussed in the present work.

This note provided some reasons that why the Iranian government should avoid removing subsidies in the current Iranian economy situation.

In the course of 2002 up to the end of 2007, very steep growth of oil prices, but no remarkable slowdown of either the world economy or the Czech economy, was observed. This phenomenon raises a question about the impact of oil prices on modern economies. Analyzing the available data we can conclude that notwithstanding the full dependence of the Czech economy on oil imports, its overall dependence on imported energy sources is relatively low. Compared to the EU15 level the energy intensity of the Czech economy is quite high. Nevertheless, further improvements in this area are expected. Furthermore, the appreciation of CZK and the set-up of the tax system significantly reduced the volatility of the consumer oil price between 2002 and 2007. Using a structural CGE model we quantify the impact of oil price changes on the Czech economy and demonstrate that it is not dramatic despite the oil price turmoil in the years 2000 to the end of 2007. We find that a 20% increase in the CZK oil price tends to decrease the GDP level by 1:5% and 0:8% in the short and long run, respectively. Short-run annual GDP growth decreases by 0:3 p.p. Concerning prices, inflation would accelerate by around 0:4 p.p. per annum in the short run.