• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.257-286
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• 2017

This paper estimates the effects of imaginary repeated increases in excise duties on fuel oil consumption and on their income redistribution according to changes in consumer price index, if the inflation indexation system was introduced right after the second Energy Tax Reform ended in July, 2007 in Korea. In fact, nominal excise rates have not been adjusted since 2007. As a result, the real excise rates on fuel oils have been diminished inversely proportional to the consumer price index. Own- and cross-price elasticities of fuel oils such as gasoline and diesel oil are estimated under the general equilibrium framework based on the linear expenditure system. Counterfactual analyses through microsimulation in a static model are adopted to estimate the effects of introducing inflation indexation into the fuel tax in 2007 when the second Energy Tax reform ended on the fuel consumption and income redistribution in 2014. Microsimulations suggest that its introduction could have reduced the consumption of gasoline and diesel oil by 8.8% and 5.4%, respectively, ending up with increased excise revenue by 11.9%. The revenue increase in spite of decreased consumption is mainly because their demands are price inelastic. It could also have increased positive income redistributive effect by 0.01%p (from 0.12% to 0.13%), which is measured in terms of percentage decrease in Gini coefficient. In other words, the fuel excise on the two fuel oils decreased by 0.13% the Gini coefficient of before and after fuel tax income in 2014. This implies that the inflation indexation could have enlarged the income redistributive effect up to 0.13% in 2014, if it is introduced in 2007.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.247-267
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• 2006

This paper formulates a monopolistic competition model by incorporating Leontief product function into Dixit and Stigliz model to analyze and compare the effects of two environmental policy instruments-fuel efficiency regulation and environmental tax-on a market which reflects characteristics of international vehicle market. As expected, both policy instruments raise equilibrium market prices. The effect of fuel efficiency regulation on firm output, the number of firms, and industry output, however, depends on three determinants-the increasing rate of the ratio of consumer expenditure to the income, the increasing rate of fixed cost, and the increasing rate of marginal cost. On the other hand, the imposition of the specific environmental tax reduces the firm output, but does not influence the number of firms. If these two instruments are assumed to lead to the same increasing rate of marginal costs, the environmental tax reduces the firm output as well as the industry output more than the fuel efficiency regulation. And it will induce more firms to exit the market than the fuel efficiency regulation if the increasing rate of the ratio of consumer expenditure to the income is larger than the increasing rate of fixed cost.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.809-850
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• 2012

A linkage of emissions trading schemes among Korea, China and Japan demonstrates overall increase in gross domestic product (GDP). However, it also demonstrates reductions in household consumption, and the impact of integration could be very unbalanced between the countries. In particular, the reductions in domestic marginal costs are high in both Korea and Japan. Therefore, household consumptions in the two countries decrease despite increases in GDP because Korea and Japan will be purchasers of emissions rights. China, on the other hand, will experience the opposite. The unbalanced impacts on real household consumptions are intensified when emission credits are allocated via paid auctions instead of free allocation. This was demonstrated to be the case because the circumstances of three countries are intensified when using a paid emissions credit allocation scheme, and their differences could potentially hinder the cooperation between the three countries. Under the free allocation scheme, the emission trading schemes' unbalanced impacts on consumption could be mitigated, but unavoidable negative impacts of free allocation schemes are also serious. Based on the analysis results, Korea, China, and Japan will individually face complicated impacts if their carbon markets are integrated. Although the GDP of three countries will increase as a result of carbon market integration, the benefits of integration will surely be unbalanced, and the three countries will experience negative impacts in terms of actual consumption or employment. In particular, increases in income and consumption, reductions in employment, and energy dependence by credit purchasers (Japan and Korea) and production reduction and possibility of offshoring faced by revenue producing countries (China) could serve as a barrier to carbon market integration. To maximize the positive influences of carbon market integration while reducing the risks of negative side effects, the development and application of complimentary policy tools, such as import duties or discounts for emissions credits, are required.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.591-642
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• 2006

This paper intends to analyze economic impacts of commitment period and initial allocation in emissions trading using computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling. The fully dynamic CGE model with perfect foresight assumption is employed to illustrate (i) how a model displays economic impact of $CO_2$ regulation upon different commitment periods: one-year budget clearing vs. 5-year commitment period, (ii) how major 8 energy-intensive industries respond to different ways to allocate initial allowances. According to the results of the analysis, it IS found that market players are motivated to bank the permits and tend to sell permits in earlier stage and to buy permits in later stage of commitment period. This implies that banking allows permit trading within a commitment period, which supports the conclusions of Kling and Rubin (1997). Other findings are related to efficiency. That is, emissions trading surpasses command and control, in terms of economic efficiency and longer terms of commitment period converge on lower permit price, In long term, initial allocation based on value-added performs the lowest GDP loss among different initial allocations.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.813-843
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• 2008

This paper investigates the presence of long-run and short-run price asymmetries in weekly gasoline prices from January 1997 to July 2008. In accordance with distribution channels, wholesale and retail stages are analyzed separately. An approach based on TAR and M-TAR cointegration tests, which entail matching asymmetric ECMs, is employed. For wholesale prices, asymmetries in the links with crude oil prices and exchange rates are found for both ECMs in the long-run and short-run. Exchange rates appear to play more significant role than crude oil prices in explaining the short-run price asymmetry. The rise in crude oil prices or exchange rates has statistically significant major impact on the increase of wholesale prices on the second week, not immediately as expected in the concept of 'rockets and feathers'. And asymmetrically, the fall does not have any statistically significant effect on the same period. The finding seems to be somewhat unusual. However, for retail prices, asymmetry m connection with wholesale prices is only revealed in the long-run. A symmetric price adjustment can be assumed in the short-run. Contrary to the long-run asymmetry found in the wholesale stage, in the retail stage, the speed of adjustment for negative deviations toward long-run equilibrium is faster than for positive ones, which is a phenomenon not favorable to consumers.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.271-300
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• 2004

We investigate the two recent simulations of the proto-type domestic carbon emission trading system in Korea and draw some policy implications. The first simulation includes the 5 electric power companies based on baseline and credit. But the second one is with the 7 energy-intensive companies based on cap and trade. The voluntary approaches in this paper revealed the instability of market equilibrium, i.e., price volatility or distortion, excess supply or demand. These phenomena stems from excess incentives to the players, asymmetric information, players' irresponsible strategic behaviors, and non acquaintance of trading system. This paper suggests the basic design for domestic carbon trading system in future and a stepwise introduction strategy for it including the incentive auction scheme, the total quantity of incentive needed, and how to finance it. Meantime, the further simulations on the various sectors based on voluntary participation must be essential for learning experiences and better policy design.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-53
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• 2015

In environmental policy areas, a greater use of economic instruments (EIs) has recently been observed in many countries. However, EIs are heterogeneous policy tools. The textbook case of a Pigouvian tax is far from widely used, mainly due to the information requirements and other structural and institutional constraints. The successful implementation of EIs might heavily depend on pre-existing structural and institutional conditions. Moreover, these institutional conditions are particularly unfavorable in developing countries. Using a simple analytical general equilibrium model, this paper examines how these constraints affect the welfare gain from the introduction of environmental taxes in developing countries. First, this paper solves for the second-best optimal Pigouvian tax and output tax in the presence of a distortionary tax on market use of labor. The result confirms that an environmental output tax achieves a socially-efficient level of emissions in the least-cost manner only if the nature of the linkage between the tax base and the environmental damage is fixed. Second, incorporating structural and institutional constraints into the model through a set of parameter values from China and the US, this paper calculates the net welfare effects of either using the ideal Pigouvian tax or instead using an output tax. The numerical simulation results show that the net welfare gain from the use of an ideal Pigouvian tax could be more than six times larger than that of an output tax in developing countries. On the other hand, the welfare gain is only 50 percent in developed countries. This means that the potential welfare disadvantage from using output taxes instead emissions tax for environmental purposes could be much greater in the case of developing countries.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.185-193
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• 2011

To investigate the influences of candidate genes on the birth weight and the early stages of life, genotyping of the prolactin receptor 3 (PRLR3) and retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4) genes was performed in 156 and 141 Berkshire pigs, respectively. The frequency of both PRLR3 alleles A and a was 0.50. The frequencies of the RBP4 alleles B and b were 0.42 and 0.58, respectively. Neither locus was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. No significant associations of the PRLR3 alleles with birth or weaning weights and of the RBP4 alleles with birth weight were observed. The proportions of the phenotype variances due to the genotypes of PRLR3 in the feeder weights was 4.0% and those of RBP4 in the weaning and feeder weights were 11.9 and 3.3%, respectively (P < 0.05). The dominance effect of PRLR3 and RBP4 on feeder weights was 2.40 and -1.86 kg, respectively (P < 0.01). The additive and dominance effects of RBP4 on weaning weights were 0.332 and -0.682 kg, respectively (P < 0.01). Even if no significant epistasis of PRLR3 and RBP4 was detected, a considerable trend of consistent positive epistasis estimates of AA/BB and Aa/Bb was observed for all traits. The results of this study may have a considerable impact on early-stage growth by both loci, and a selection strategy should be designed separately for each marker in Berkshire pigs.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.24-32
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• 2012

Natural gas hydrates have a high potential as the 21st century new energy resource, because it have a large amount of deposits in many deep-water and permafrost regions of the world widely. Natural gas hydrate is formed by physical binding between water molecule and gas mainly composed of methane, which is captured in the cavities of water molecules under the specific temperature and pressure. $1m^3$ methane hydrate can be decomposed to the methane gas of $172m^3$ and water of $0.8m^3$ at standard condition. Therefore, there are a lot of practical applications such as separation processes, natural gas storage transportation and carbon dioxide sequestration. For the industrial utilization of methane hydrate, it is very important to rapidly manufacture hydrate. However, when methane hydrate is artificially formed, its reaction time may be too long and the gas consumption in water becomes relatively low, because the reaction rate between water and gas is low. So in this study, hydrate formation was experimented by adding natural zeolite and Synthetic zeolite 5A in distilled water, respectively. The results show that when the Synthetic zeolite 5A of 0.01 wt% was, the amount of gas consumed during the formation of methane hydrate was higher than that in the natural zeolite. Also, the natural zeolite and Synthetic zeolite 5A decreased the hydrate formation time to a greater extent than the distilled water at the same subcooling temperature.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.154-161
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• 2010

The level of genetic differentiation and genetic structure in a Chinese native chicken breed, Bian chicken, and two controlled chicken populations (Jinghai chicken and Youxi chicken in China) were analysed based on 29 microsatellite markers. A total of 166 distinct alleles were observed across the 3 breeds, and 32 of these alleles (19.3%) were unique to only 1 breed. Bian chicken carried the largest number of private alleles at 15 (46.9%), followed by the Jinghai chicken with 12 private alleles (37.5%). The average polymorphism information content (0.5168) and the average expected heterozygote frequency (0.5750) of the Bian chicken were the highest, and those of the Jinghai chicken were 0.4915 and 0.5505, respectively, which were the lowest. Among 29 microsatellite loci, there were 15 highly informative loci in Bian chicken, and the other 14 were reasonably informative loci. The highly informative loci in Jinghai chicken and Youxi chicken were 17 and 14 respectively. Significant deviations from the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium were observed at several locus-breed combinations, showing a deficit of heterozygotes in many cases. As a whole, genetic differentiation among the breeds estimated by the fixation index (Fst) were at 6.7% (p<0.001). The heterozygote deficit within population (Fis) was 22.2% (p<0.001), with the highest (0.249) in Bian chicken and lowest (0.159) in Youxi chicken. These results serve as an initial step in the plan for genetic characterization and conservation of the Chinese chicken genetic resource of Bian, as well as Jinghai and Youxi chickens.