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| 1 |
ID:
174979
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| Summary/Abstract |
Using firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, this study investigates whether access to credit of a sample of Chinese manufacturing firms can affect the intensity of their energy use. Our empirical results show that firms with access to credit are associated with lower energy efficiency. In other words, firms with credit access tend to have significantly higher energy use per unit of output. This finding is robust to different measures of energy intensity and to varying specification of models. However, we find that local government environmental regulations can mitigate the financing-energy relationship: cities with stronger environmental regulations are able to reverse the relationship, in other words, firms’ access to financing is significantly associated with a reduction in their energy intensity. Our findings have important policy implications for Chinese authorities seeking more environmentally friendly development, and our conclusions suggest that energy efficiency should be considered as an additional condition for credit allocation to firms.
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| 2 |
ID:
150866
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| Summary/Abstract |
Policy makers presently lack access to quantified estimates – and hence an explicit understanding – of energy consumption efficiency within households, creating a potential gap between true efficiency levels and the necessarily assumed efficiency levels that policy makers adopt in designing and implementing energy policy. This paper attempts to fill this information gap by empirically quantifying electricity consumption efficiency for a sample of more than 7,000 households. Adopting the recently introduced ‘frontier demand function’ due to Filippini and Hunt (2011) but extending it into the metafrontier context – to control for structural heterogeneity arising from location type – it is shown that consumption efficiency is little more than 60% on average. This implies huge potential for energy reduction via the expansion of schemes to promote energy efficiency. City households, which are the wealthiest in the sample, are shown to define the metafrontier demand function (and hence have the potential to be the most efficient households), but at the same time exhibit the largest inefficiencies. These facts together allow for a potential refinement on the household energy ladder concept, suggesting that wealth affords access to the best technologies thereby increasing potential energy efficiency (the ‘traditional view of the household energy ladder), but complementary to this these same households are most inefficient. This has implications for numerous areas of policy, including for example the design of energy assistance schemes, identification of energy education needs/priorities as well more refined setting of subsidies/tax-credit policies.
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| 3 |
ID:
150707
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| Summary/Abstract |
The new century has witnessed phenomenal worldwide growth in renewable energy investments. China has been especially remarkable, surpassing both the US and the EU in 2013. Some recent facts, however, have raised the question of whether exuberant investment in China’s renewable energy sector is rational. This paper aims to contribute to the literature and to the debate in two ways. First, it tests the over-investment hypothesis based on the main stream finance methodology; second, it analyzes the role of capital structure in the performance of China's renewable energy firms. Empirical results show that overinvestment in the renewable energy sector exists. The problem is more significant in the biomass and wind sector. Capital structure is found to be more important to downstream firms, indicating that policy makers may provide support that enables these firms to finance their investments through corporate bonds, commercial credit, or long-terms debts.
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| 4 |
ID:
136211
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| Summary/Abstract |
We investigate the impacts that oil price shocks have on residential consumption in China. While it is well understood that oil prices affect consumption in a multitude of ways, the timing and directness of these effects on specific consumption categories is not clear. We demonstrate that the most immediate and direct effect passes through transportation consumption, as might be expected. But we also show that significant effects pass through consumption in other sectors—including “food and clothes”, “medical expenditure”, and other general “living expenditure”—with less immediacy. Given the results, particularly observed asymmetries with respect to rises and falls in international oil prices, we discuss some implications for future adjustments to domestic price policies, in particular the case for removal of domestic price regulation.
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| 5 |
ID:
166734
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| Summary/Abstract |
Inability or insufficient access to modern forms of energy is an important issue in development, which makes the notion of energy poverty a widely discussed topic. A consensus has been reached that energy poverty has serious health, education, and other socio-economic impacts for people in a country. However, measurements of energy poverty have generally been absent or inaccurate, especially for developing countries at the micro level. This paper begins with the multidimensional nature of energy poverty and uses household-level survey data in China to construct a quantitative measure of energy poverty, covering both affordability of and accessibility to a broad range of forms of energy. It then builds an econometric model to address empirically how much energy poverty affects health. A statistically significant and robust negative impact on health from energy poverty is confirmed. Our results have important policy relevance in terms of understanding the current status quo of energy poverty in China and its consequences. The concept can also be expanded to investigate similar issues in other developing countries.
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