Several developing economies have announced carbon emissions targets for 2020 as part of the negotiating process for a post-Kyoto climate policy regime. China and India¹s commitments are framed as reductions in the emissions intensity of the economy by 40-45% and 20-25% respectively between...

This study uses a stochastic production frontier to model trends in energy efficiency over time in a panel of 85 countries. No a priori structure is imposed on technological change over time though differences in the level of technology across countries are modeled as a stochastic function of...

Interfuel substitutability has been of longstanding interest to energy economists and policy makers. However, there has been no quantitative meta-analysis of this literature. This research report fills this gap by analysing a broad sample of studies of interfuel substitution in the industrial...

A recent paper in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management points out that time effects are not uniquely identified in reduced-form models, such as the environmental Kuznets curve. This Research Report proposes a solution that assumes the time effect is common to each pair of most...

The aim of this study is to measure and understand the long-term factors behind trends in energy and carbon intensity in different economies. It also looks at how improvements in energy efficiency are spread to countries around the world. Of particular interest is the rate at which efficiency...

The relative cost of carbon emissions reductions across regions depends on whether we measure cost by marginal or total cost, private or economy-wide cost, and using market or purchasing power parity exchange rates. If all countries are on the same marginal carbon abatement cost curve then lower...