Non-energy Goods Research Articles

Efficiency of regional export support measures and their influence on investments

Regions are active participants of foreign economic activity, with their contribution to the total export being significant. Therefore, data analysis of the volume and structure of exports and investments is important for determining the efficiency of support measures and for elaborating a further development strategy. A review of scientific sources demonstrates the role of investment and government support in stimulating exports. This article examines the efficiency of regional export support measures and their correlation with investments. Statistical data on exports, investments, and government support measures from 2012 to 2022 is compared. The research demonstrates the performance of the Irkutsk Region Export Support Center in the following spheres: in supporting exporters in concluding export contracts, in stimulating export activities of small and medium-sized enterprises, in engaging new exporters in foreign economic activities, as well as in promoting export diversification. Data on the increase in the share of nonresource, non-energy goods in the structure of the region exports confirms the efficiency of the undertaken supporting measures. The performance of the Export Support Center indicates its increasing popularity and efficiency. Moreover, the increasing number of exporters and the volume of export contracts demonstrates the positive impact of supporting measures on the export sector development and regional economy competitiveness. After considering the three main drivers of economic performance, i.e., consumer demand, exports, and investment, it can be concluded that the regional authorities use levers of influence over the latter two factors.

Несырьевой неэнергетический экспорт в регионах (на примере республики Саха (Якутия))

Theories of economic growth assume a significant impact of exports of processed goods. The state task of reorienting the raw material economy assumes real growth of exports of non-resource non-energy goods in the regions. In order to develop proposals for the development of NNE in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) with the analysis of data from the Federal Customs Service of Russia, official statistics and professional communities using general scientific and private methods, the authors conclude that the set goals can be achieved only as a result of taking cardinal measures to support exports with prioritization by sectoral principle

Pricing energy consumption and residential energy‐efficiency investment: An optimal tax approach

AbstractWe analyze a Pareto optimal income tax problem à la Mirrlees in which households consume three types of goods: energy goods, energy‐efficient investments, and nonenergy goods. The two main ingredients of our normative analysis are: (i) an indirect relationship between energy and the satisfaction of energy needs, as energy‐efficient investments transform energy into services, such as light, heating, and air conditioning; and (ii) imperfect information of the policy designer as regards the level of energy efficiency of households' housing and their labor market productivity. Each household differs with respect to these two latter characteristics, and the government designs a nonlinear income tax combined with energy and energy‐efficient investment nonlinear pricing that maximizes a weighted sum of households' utilities. We show that a benevolent social planner should distort energy prices in a way that depends on the difference between the saturation of energy needs and the complementarity between energy and the level of energy efficiency in the provision of energy services. A sufficient condition for energy consumption to be subsidized is that the rebound effect is small. Second, when individuals can invest in energy efficiency on top of energy consumption, these investments should always be subsidized and the marginal subsidy should always be higher than the one on energy consumption.

Export acceleration as a promising direction of state support for Russian exports of non-primary non-energy goods

Export acceleration as a promising direction of state support for Russian exports of non-primary non-energy goods

Эффективность российских институтов поддержки несырьевого неэнергетического экспорта

Current study analyzes the types of measures aimed at supporting exporters. The article focuses on the analysis of support for Russian exporters of non-resource non-energy goods, as well as institutions that act as government agents to provide this support. Hypothesis of the study: Russian export support institutions have had a positive impact on the growth of non-resource non-energy exports from Russia by increasing the efficiency of their work and provided support measures. In the course of testing the hypothesis, several nuances were revealed. In particular, Russian publicly available information on the volume of support for exporters, the volume of non-resource non-energy exports from Russia is quite scarce. At the same time, the available data indicate that Russia remains dependent on energy exports. The analysis showed that during the period of active promotion of exports from Russia since 2015, there are no obvious trends in the growth of exports of non-resource non-energy goods. At the same time, there are no obvious trends in improving the efficiency of support institutions and the provided support measures: it is shown on the example of one of the non-financial support measures that this measure is duplicated by information from international organizations. Based on the identified relationships, the article formulates conclusions regarding a possible increase in the efficiency of export support institutions, as well as the measures themselves. The findings also include streamlining the requirements for the provision of support, as well as strengthening interaction with international organizations.

Prospects for the growth of non-primary non-energy exports of the Russian Federation to the countries of North Africa

The relevance of the study is due to the increased interest in promoting non-primary non-energy exports of the Russian Federation to the markets of North Africa in the context of the emerging global trend of abandoning hydrocarbons, including from Russia. The article presents the results of the analysis of non-primary non-energy exports of Russia to the markets of North Africa by stages of processing based on statistical data on exports from Russia to these states over the past five years. The leading approach to the study of this issue is the method of economic and statistical analysis, which allows a comprehensive examination of economic processes in the sphere of non-energy exports. Also, by applying the Balassa index, an assessment of the comparative advantage of Russia by groups of commodity items in the markets of the countries of the region is given. Based on the data obtained, the author concludes that Russia has prospects for the growth of exports of goods of traditional export specialization, increasing the export of products of medium and upper stages of processing, promoting Russian consumer goods to the markets of North African countries and gives recommendations to support Russian enterprises when entering the North African markets. Also, this study raises the question of the definition of non-primary products, which is a key factor in determining the volume of exports of non-primary non-energy goods in the analysis. Discrepancies were revealed in approaches to classifying products as non-primary in the definitions of the international and Russian classification systems for export products.

THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL ENERGY PRICES ON WORLD TRADE: PANEL EVIDENCE OF GRAVITY MODELS FOR SELECTED COUNTRIES

The aim of this article is to examine the impacts of prices of energy and non-energy goods on world trade by including some variables that affect trade for selected countries within the framework of relative prices. The relevant literature confirms that the bilateral trade is theoretically analyzed by using the gravity models. The theoretical gravity models can be empirically applied by using the various panel regression techniques. In this study, three types of panel regression techniques are employed to define the effects of independent variables in the case of trade as the dependent variable. These are Stochastic Frontier, Random Effects, and Fixed Effects Filtered Estimator techniques. According to our panel regression findings, the price increases in the index of energy goods have negative effects on the exports, resulting in the terms of trade being against the countries in this case. Findings suggest that socio- economic policies preventing energy prices from rising need to be developed. Raising the supply to meet the increasing demand could be one of the major policies. Considering the other variables in the model, empirical evidence suggests that world trade volume can be increased not only by strengthening growth policies, ensuring competitiveness in the market, and providing effective logistics management but also by ensuring cultural cooperation, developing business partnerships among the similar income-level countries, and increasing and/or diversifying energy supply.

Voluntary actions in households and climate change mitigation

Governments foster voluntary actions within households to mitigate climate change. However, the literature suggests that they may not be as effective as expected due to rebound effects. We use a dynamic economy–energy–environment computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Catalan economy to simulate the effect of 75 different actions on GDP and net CO2 emissions, over a 20-year period. We also examine how a carbon tax could counteract the carbon rebound effects. We find energy rebound effects ranging from 61.77% to 117.49% for voluntary energy conservation actions, depending on where the spending is redirected, with similar carbon rebound values. In our main scenarios, where energy savings are redirected to savings and all non-energy goods proportionally, the rebound is between 64.47% and 66.90%. We also find, for these scenarios, that a carbon tax of between 2.4 and 3.6 €/ton per percentage point of voluntary energy reduction would totally offset carbon rebound effects. These results suggest that voluntary actions in households need additional measures to provide the expected results in terms of energy use reduction and climate change mitigation.

Non-linear impact of exchange rate changes on U.S. industrial production

This paper contributes to the literature on the nexus between production and exchange rate in the United States (U.S.) by considering non-linear adjustments of exchange rate effects on industrial production in several sectors of the U.S. economy. We employ a Non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lags (NARDL) model which is built upon the Solow model. We show that there exists a non-linear relationship between these two variables in some of the MMIGs. We document short-run non-linear effects of exchange rate on production of non-energy materials, durable manufacturing, consumer goods and business equipment. The short-run effects last into the long-run for all the sectors. While exchange rate changes have short-run linear effects on production of electricity in the U.S., there are no effects of exchange rate movements on the production of mining, and energy materials. Moreover, the paper finds misspecification error of the model for the case of durable manufacturing. The existence of non-linearities considering import content of exports, support our hypothesis and conclusions. Further, the factors that influence demand provide justifications for our results.

ВНЕШНЯЯ ТОРГОВЛЯ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ - ВРЕМЯ ПЕРЕОСМЫСЛЕНИЯ

The article analyzes the current features of Russian foreign trade. Positive shifts are evident – it was a success when overcoming the imbalance in trade relations with China, and in general, in 2018, the restoration of the positive dynamics of Russian Foreign trade and, above all, export, which began in 2017, continued. In addition, finally, the process of de-dollarization of Russian foreign trade was intensified. At the same time, one cannot fail to note unfavorable moments: first of all, a decrease in the share of non-primary and non-energy goods in the whole value of exports. Russia, of course, has a strategic vision of how to develop national exports. At the same time, given the uncertainty currently characterizing the state of the international trading system, it seems logical to take a break to rethink the global shifts that have not yet been completed and to focus on the de-dollarization of the Russian foreign trade as well as on most active participation in the formation of new contours of the system, in particular in the reformatting of the “WTO” into the “WTO plus”.

The impact of state support on the development of non-resource exports in the Russian Federation

This article aims to study the role of government instruments supporting export-oriented enterprises, which specialize in the production of non-resource and non-energy goods and services. In view of the increasing importance and potential of small and medium-sized enterprises, the authors, using economic analysis of the data of the Russian Federal Customs Service and the statistics of the Russian Export Center, have confirmed the need of such enterprises being the central element of the national system of support and development of exports. The results prove that the majority of export-oriented small and medium enterprises show interest in starting export activities, increasing its share, and seeking to expand the geography of their supplies. However, a number of factors prevent the foreign economic strategy, including lack of confidence and employees with export competencies, financial limitations, as well as complete inexperience when interacting with foreign counterparts and markets in general. The authors have determined that the insufficient level of competitiveness on part of the Russian producers requires a full-fledged support of the state authorities to stimulate non-resource and non-energy export. The statistical analysis of the recent years shows that the indicator of Russian competitiveness on foreign markets has not undergone serious changes due to the low competitiveness of the Russian exported goods, as well as insufficient knowledge and skills of export-oriented enterprises in terms of strengthening their position on new markets. The world experience shows that each nation puts their own priorities on the choice of export development direction. Based on a comparative analysis and classification of support measures in the European Union, the authors have identified the possibility of approximating the existing mechanisms for supporting small and medium export-oriented enterprises in the Russia. The results have revealed a linear relationship between the launch of programs to support export-oriented enterprises and the growth of foreign economic activity in general, as well as the relationship between such activities as the interaction with relevant ministries and agencies, the cooperation with key industry and business organizations, and the improvement of export conditions in Russia.

An integrated measurement of household carbon emissions from a trading-oriented perspective: A case study of urban families in Xuzhou, China

Abstract The measurement of household carbon emissions from a trading-oriented perspective has become increasingly important and urgently required due to the growing attention to personal carbon trading. From a trading-oriented perspective, this study established an integrated measurement system of household carbon emissions that consists of four modules: direct carbon emissions produced by energy use and private transport, and indirect carbon emissions produced by the consumption of a portion of non-energy goods and services and waste disposal. The emissions coefficient method and input–output model were then adopted to systematically calculate the carbon emissions coefficients of 31 items related to household activities. Furthermore, this study developed an integrated measurement scale of household carbon emissions that includes 23 questions based on the integrated measurement system. Additionally, the carbon emissions of three urban families in Xuzhou were measured and analyzed using the integrated measurement scale, which exhibits the simple, clear, and calculable characteristics of the integrated measurement system and integrated measurement scale. This study provides new perspectives for the measurement of household carbon emissions and valuable references for the research and implementation of personal carbon trading scheme, and then contributes to the reduction of households' carbon emissions.

Asymmetry in transport fuel demand: Evidence from household level data

Models for gasoline demand for transportation activities generally assume that demand is perfectly reversible with respect to gasoline price (and income). The small literature which relaxes the reversibility assumption in gasoline demand argues technological fixation leads to this asymmetry and utilizes aggregate time-series model to find evidence in favour of asymmetry. In this research it is suggested that there could also be behavioural factors behind this asymmetric response, possibly due to the loss aversion nature of human beings as described in the prospect theory. For the first time, household level data was used to understand asymmetry in gasoline demand in response to changes in gasoline price and income. There was statistical evidence that gasoline price and income both can induce asymmetric changes in gasoline demand among households. Specifically, elasticity with respect to rising prices and falling income is larger than the elasticity with respect to falling prices and rising income respectively, which is consistent with loss aversion in gasoline purchase behaviour. There was also some evidence of heterogeneity in the asymmetric responses between urban and rural households. The results have implications for transport-related energy tax policies or subsidies, while the method can be applied directly for non-energy goods as well.

A ‘Carbon Saving Multiplier’ as an alternative to rebound in considering reduced energy supply chain requirements from energy efficiency?

A growing area of research into rebound effects from increased energy efficiency involves application of demand-driven input-output models to consider indirect energy consumption effects associated with re-spending decisions by households with reduced energy spending requirements. However, there is often a lack of clarity in applied studies as to how indirect effects involving energy use and/or carbon emissions in supply chains of both energy and non-energy goods and services have been calculated. We propose that more transparency for policymakers may be introduced by replacing consideration of what are often referred to as ‘indirect rebound’ effects with a simple Carbon Saving Multiplier metric. We illustrate using results from a demand-driven input-output model that tracks supply chain activity at national and/or global level. We argue that this captures and conveys the same information on quantity adjustments in energy used in supply chain activity but does so in a manner that is more positive, transparent, understandable and useful for a policy audience. This is achieved by focusing (here via carbon emissions) on the net benefits of changes in different types of energy use at both household and supply chain levels when energy efficiency improves in households.

Assessment of the impact of the reduction of the gaseous emissions on growth in Poland. Assumptions and preliminary results

The paper presents a model aimed at assessing the process of technology conversion imposed by limits of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. These limits are being introduced in order to stop climate warming, but by themselves they also inevitably curb economic growth. The change signifies choosing cleaner but economically less efficient technologies. In effect, the nature of the long-term economic growth is thus changed from a relatively free growth constrained by the availability of resources, production factors and technical progress, to that codetermined by the new constraint: the emission limit. The analysis is performed by using a model based on assumptions different from those applied in the CGE modelling. The model consists of the following sectors: a) consuming (both households and public); b) producing non-energy goods purchased by the consuming sector; c) producing inter-mediary non-energy inputs used in all producing sectors; d) producing energy consumed in all sectors; and e) producing investment (capital) goods purchased by all producing sectors. All economic agents pursue a common goal of achieving maximum total discounted consumption over the whole period of analysis, while the outputs in sectors and technologies, investment in sectors and technologies, as well as net foreign trade in sectors are decision variables. The model is solved using linear optimization. The model results constitute a benchmark; no economic tools are indicated for achieving the optimum.

Rebound effect of efficiency improvement in passenger cars on gasoline consumption in Canada

The fossil fuel-driven transport sector has been one of the major contributors to CO2 emission across the world keeping it on the energy policy agenda for the past three decades. Canada ranks second in gasoline consumption among OECD countries and Canadian gasoline expenditure share has been increasing since the 1990s. Fuel efficiency policies aim to decrease gasoline consumption; however, the effect can be mitigated by changes in consumer behavior such as traveling more distances — a rebound effect. Thus, the effectiveness of fuel efficiency policy is dependent on the magnitude of the rebound effect. In this paper, we estimate the rebound effect for personal transportation in Canada using data from the household spending survey for the period 1997–2009. The model includes a system of expenditure share equations for gasoline, other energy goods, and non-energy goods specified by AIDS and QUAIDS models and estimated by the nonlinear SUR method. Our estimation results show a rather high average rebound effect of 82–88% but with significant heterogeneity across income groups, provinces, and gasoline prices. Specifically, the rebound effect ranges from 63 to 96% across income groups and provinces and increases with gasoline prices.

Whose Inflation Is It Anyway? The Inflation Spillovers Between The Euro Area and Small Open Economies

For the last two years inflation has been systematically falling across countries in the European Union and lately it exhibits rising deflationary pressures. Recent studies suggest that apart from global determinants influencing broad inflation measures, e.g. plummeting commodity prices, core inflation components are subjected to the rising influence of globalization. Our analysis focuses on two aspects: the extent of the HICP components infected with deflation and the spillovers of headline, core, non-energy goods as well as services inflation between the euro area and distinguished small open economies. In order to answer the question of inflation broadness we calculate the percentages of HICP components which dynamics fall into certain thresholds and introduce a simple measure - the Discrepancy Index showing the relative strength of deflationary and inflationary groups. To address the problem of quantifying the inflation spillovers across distinguished economies we use the Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) spillover indices. Results indicate that the share of deflationary groups for most countries has been consistently rising since 2010 with the Discrepancy Index approximating its all-time lows in the fourth quarter of 2014. Simultaneously we show that the spillover index for non-energy industrial goods and services inflation has lately risen considerably with the measure for headline inflation remaining elevated and for core inflation dropping. The euro area remains a net inflation transmitter in most cases.

Whose Inflation Is It Anyway? Inflation Spillovers Between the Euro Area and Small Open Economies

For the last two years, inflation has been steadily falling across the countries of the European Union, generating mounting deflationary pressures. Recent studies suggest that apart from the global determinants influencing broad inflation measures (e.g., plummeting commodity prices), core inflation components are subject to the rising influence of globalization. Our analysis focuses on two aspects: the percentage of Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) components affected by deflation, and the spillovers of headline, core, non-energy goods and services inflation between the euro area and selected small open economies. In order to address the issue of inflation broadness, we calculate the percentages of HICP components whose annual growth rates fall into certain ranges and introduce a simple measure, the discrepancy index, to show the relative strength of deflationary and inflationary groups. To address the problem of quantifying inflation spillovers across the selected economies, we use the Diebold and Yilmaz spillover indices. The results indicate that the share of deflationary groups for most countries has been consistently rising since 2010, with the discrepancy index approximating its all-time lows in the fourth quarter of 2014. Simultaneously we show that the spillover index for non-energy industrial goods and services inflation has recently risen considerably, with the measure for headline inflation remaining elevated and the one for core inflation dropping. The euro area remains a net inflation transmitter in most cases.

에너지 비사용제품의 자원순환성평가를 위한 모형 개발

에너지 비사용제품의 자원순환성평가를 위한 모형 개발

Energy efficiency policies and the timing of action: An assessment of climate mitigation costs

This paper assesses the sensitivity of climate change mitigation costs to energy efficiency policies, and gives policy insights for the timing of climate action. A hybrid general equilibrium model (Imaclim-R) is used to investigate numerically the interaction between technical change and economic growth. Energy efficiency in productive sectors lowers energy prices. Lower energy prices increase demand due to lower prices of non-energy goods and higher household revenues. Energy efficiency lowers the carbon price, shifting the emission constraint away from household energy consumption. Energy efficiency policies drive economic growth and reduce policy costs, but only if energy efficiency policies in industrialised regions are combined with measures to accelerate technology transfers towards other regions. The timing of efforts reveals a trade-off between short and long term costs. Early action triggers energy efficiency but shows high short-term costs and should be considered in combination with policies to accelerate technology diffusion. Late action shows high long-term costs, even when combined with policies to enhance innovation and accelerate diffusion. Early action could reduce the cost uncertainty induced by the controversy surrounding the appropriate discount rate for policy assessment, while late action would require additional measures to reduce long term costs, notably in sectors with significant inertia.