2002 World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists

The paper examines the role of 13 sectors in aggregate energy-productivity developments for 14 OECD countries during 1970-1997. The analysis is based on a database that merges energy data from IEA Energy Balances, economic data from the OECD Databases ISDB and STAN including sectoral data on investment, value added, openness and energy prices. In search for patterns of international and sectoral energy-productivity developments we performed a decomposition analysis to separate out the impact of structural developments in terms of both energy- and labour productivity. Using panel data, we found that in most sectors the dispersion of energy-productivity levels or s-convergence is relatively large - compared to dispersion in labour productivity levels - but declining. Testing for absolute and conditional b-convergence shows support for the hypothesis that lagging countries catch up with technological leaders. The evidence suggests that energy productivity growth was responsive to energy prices in the energy-intensive sectors only but not to investment shares.



	Paper Title:	Trends In Energy Productivity. A Sectoral Cross-Country Analysis For The Period 1970-1997
	Presenting Author:	Peter Mulder (Institute For Environmental Studies)
	Coauthor 1:	Henri De Groot
	Coauthor 2:
	Coauthor 3:
	Abstract:	The paper examines the role of 13 sectors in aggregate energy-productivity developments for 14 OECD countries during 1970-1997. The analysis is based on a database that merges energy data from IEA Energy Balances, economic data from the OECD Databases ISDB and STAN including sectoral data on investment, value added, openness and energy prices. In search for patterns of international and sectoral energy-productivity developments we performed a decomposition analysis to separate out the impact of structural developments in terms of both energy- and labour productivity. Using panel data, we found that in most sectors the dispersion of energy-productivity levels or s-convergence is relatively large - compared to dispersion in labour productivity levels - but declining. Testing for absolute and conditional b-convergence shows support for the hypothesis that lagging countries catch up with technological leaders. The evidence suggests that energy productivity growth was responsive to energy prices in the energy-intensive sectors only but not to investment shares.
	Link to paper:	http://weber.ucsd.edu/~carsonvs/papers/761.pdf

	Session / Day / Time	8I / Tuesday / 4:00 - 6:00 pm

	Please use your browser's "back" button to get to the previous page.