• Energy Research
• 2021-2025close
• 1. No poverty close
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Out of the climatic variables such as temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloud cover, etc., electricity demand has been found most responsive to changes in temperature [Parkpoom and Harrison (2008); Al-Hamadi and Soliman (2005); Hor, et al. (2005)]. According to National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the decade from 2001 to 2010 was the warmest worldwide while the rise in surface temperatures of South Asia region by the end of the century is projected around 3.3oC average annually (IPCC);1 not only are the average temperatures rising but the range of extreme temperatures is also widening. Increase in temperatures can affect human lives significantly; the present study focusses on examining the impact of climate change on demand for electricity in Pakistan.

The effect of oil price shocks on global economy has been a great concern since 1970s and has instigated a great deal of research investigating macroeconomic consequences of oil price fluctuations. Later on, the instability in the Middle East and recent oil price hike confirmed the enduring significance of the issue. Though a voluminous body of literature has evolved examining the bearings of oil prices for internal sectors of economies [to name a few, e.g., Barsky and Kilian (2004); Kilian (2008a,b); Hamilton (2008)], the studies analysing the external sector response to oil price shocks are very few [see, e.g. Kilian, et al. (2007)]. The determination of current account and exchange rate—the two major indicators of external sector—has been studied widely in theoretical and empirical literature but mostly the discussion of the two variables largely remained separate [Lee and Chinn (1998)]. Similarly, investigation of simultaneous response of these two variables to an oil price shock remained relatively less ventured avenue of research. Initial work done on the relationship between current account and oil price could not ascertain conclusive link between these two variables.1 Recent work on the issue revealed the diversity of responses of current account of different countries to an oil price shock. For instance, oil price increase deteriorates current account balance of developing countries [OECD (2004); Rebucci and Spatafora (2006); Killian, et al. (2007)] but may improve it if the country happens to be a net oil-exporter. This implies that the relationship depends on the number of factors among which oil dependency of country, oil-intensity of production process2 and responses of non-oil trade balance3 and sources of oil price fluctuations4are of particular significance.

We investigate whether risk, time, environmental, and social preferences affect single family homeowners’ investments in energy efficient renovations and energy quality of their house using established experimental measures and questionnaires. We find that homeowners who report to be more risk taking are more likely to have renovated their house. Pro-environmental and future-oriented renovators, i.e. renovators with lower discount factors, live in homes with higher energy efficiency. Controlling for the energy efficiency of houses, we further find that energy consumption as measured by heating and energy costs are lower for future-oriented and pro-environmental individuals. Social preferences measured in a dictator and a generosity game play a mixed role for investments in energy efficiency and energy consumption.

Energy sector has a vital influence on an economy, on both demand and supply sides. Therefore, energy production and consumption bear great importance for the developing world. The oil embargo of 1970‘s and its impact on major macroeconomic variables throughout the world attracted many economists to examine the relationship between energy and economic prosperity. The researchers have been unable to establish a definitive direction of causality between the two variables. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the dynamic relationship between energy use and economic growth in the D8 countries. The evidence gathered through application of VAR Granger Causality, Johansen Cointegration and VECM proves existence of short-run and long-run correlation between energy use and economic development in all countries. The results supported either uni-directional or bi-directional causality in the D8 countries except for Indonesia in short-run where non-causality was established between the two variables. JEL classifications: C22; Q43. Keywords: Energy Use, Economic Growth, D8, VAR Granger Causality, Cointegration, VECM

The questions concerning the prevalence of poverty and the deepening gulf between rich and poor have always been the burning issues all over the world. These issues, irrespective of their causation factors, bear far reaching economic and political consequences. The federation of Pakistan displays complex regional diversities; the component units differ not only in linguistic, cultural, and social characteristics but also in the level of economic development. Although the constitution of Pakistan guaranties equitable shares for all provinces in national resources, the level of growth across regions has not been uniform. During the past half a century, investment in physical and social sectors concentrated in selected parts of the country, particularly in big cities. This practice has led to creation of economic disparities and a number of socio-political problems like terrorism, regional tensions, weakening of the federation and difficulty in arriving at consensus on issues of national interest. Growth theory provides a powerful analytical framework to analyse the issue of regional convergence. Given the assumption of perfect markets, the countries within a geographical region are supposed to converge overtime to a common steady state level of income, provided they are similar in other socio-economic conditions. Put differently, if countries differ significantly in these conditions, then each unit is likely to follow an independent growth path. This is also true for different regions within the same country/ political entity. The objective of this study is to investigate empirically if there is any evidence of convergence across different regions of Pakistan. The study utilises the conventional analytical tools and time series data over the period 1979-2005 for the four provinces, disaggregated into rural and urban sectors. As expected, no evidence of absolute convergence could be observed obviously due to presence of vast differences across the provinces in terms of the growth determinants. In contrast, the income disparities across the regions exhibited a widening tendency during the period under reference. However, the data did support conditional convergence, which implies that different regions followed independent growth paths. The findings further indicate that certain socio-economic conditions are crucial to explain the persistence of income disparities. The question as to why these conditions differ so widely across the different parts of Pakistan is often discussed at different economic and political forums. The study concludes with some policy recommendations that may improve the situation. JEL classification: 047, R11, O53, C33 Keywords: Economic Growth, Convergence, Regional Disparities, Human Capital

The widespread and growing phenomenon of power load shedding has emerged as one of the principal supply-side constraints to growth of the economy of Pakistan. Not only has this led to significant losses of output, employment and exports but also during periods of high outages there have been large-scale protests, particularly in Punjab and KPK. Households have faced severe disruptions due to the high and growing incidence of load shedding. These have led to mass protests on streets resulting in disruption of other economic activities. As such, the economic return of reducing outages and of facilitating the process of adjustment to these outages is likely to be high. This paper provides an approach and methodology for quantifying cost of load shedding to households in Pakistan. It is organised as follows: Section 2 highlights some key trends in the power sector of Pakistan. Section 3 will present a detailed literature review on the methodology used for quantification of costs due to outages. Section 4 describes the methodology used for qualification of costs due to outages and for estimation of willingness to pay. Section 5 presents estimates of the cost of load shedding in the domestic sector of Pakistan. Finally, Section 6 highlights the major policy implications emerging from the research.

Energy, being an essential component of every production process, plays a pivotal role in the growth process of a country. The production process has undergone a massive transition from labour intensive to energy intensive techniques [Stern and Cleveland (2004)]. Now, it is widely recognised that industrialisation is an energy-intensive process; hence, uninterrupted supply of energy is necessary to keep the production process in run. In addition, high percapita energy consumption is considered as an indicator of the level of economic development. This positive correlation between energy consumption and output growth (and development) led many countries, particularly developing ones, to design policies for subsidised energy provision with focus on supply-side in late eighties. At the same time, some European countries (i.e. Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden) formulated energy policy focusing on demand-side (energy conservation), and achieved smaller growth rates in energy consumption without any reduction in economic growth [Pintz (1986)].

This research paper analyzes the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity in quantity terms, value of production in monetary terms and food security in India. The study undertook state wise analysis based on secondary data for the duration of 1980 to 2009. Climate variation affects food grain and non-food grain productivity and both these factors along with other socioeconomic and government policy variables affect food security. Food security and poverty are interlinked with each other as cause and effect and vice versa, particularly, for a largely agrarian economy of India. Regression results for models proposed in this study show that for most of the food grain crops, non-food grain crops in quantity produced per unit of land and in terms of value of production climate variation cause negative impact. The adverse impact of climate change on the value of agricultural production and food grains indicates food security threat to small and marginal farming households. The state wise food security index was also generated in this study; and econometric model estimation reveals that the food security index itself also gets adversely affected due to climatic fluctuations.