We conducted a worldwide ranking of academic institutions that produce research in a list of thirty top research journals in economics. We also computed journal rankings for the same period and hence we do not rely on weights that were computed for research carried out in earlier periods. The United States is clearly the dominant force in the top‐fifty group, but European academic institutions are well represented in the group of the top 200 universities worldwide as are universities from Asia and the Far East in particular. (JEL: A14, A10)

We explore the importance of modeling strategies when estimating the emissions-income relationship. Using U.S. state-level panel data on nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, we estimate several environmental Kuznets curves using the standard parametric framework as well as a more flexible semiparametric alternative. Formal statistical comparisons of the results overwhelmingly reject the parametric approach. Moreover, the differences, particularly for sulfur dioxide, are economically significant. © 2003 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The existing literature on renewable energy consumption and economic growth nexus produces mixed results as the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth can be either positive, negative or not significant. This paper examines the causal link between renewable energy use and economic growth by employing a threshold model using a 103-country sample in the 1995 to 2015 period. We find that the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth depends on the amount of renewable energy used. Our results demonstrate that the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth is positive and significant if and only if developing countries or non-OECD countries surpass a certain threshold of renewable energy consumption. However, if developing countries use renewable energy below a given threshold level, the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth is negative. However, we also find that renewable energy consumption has no significant effect on economic growth in developed countries and a positive and significant effect on economic growth in OECD countries. The findings of this paper suggest that for developing countries to realize positive economic growth from their investment to renewable energy, they need to surpass a certain threshold of renewable energy consumption.

No abstract

We propose a consumer demand system approach to estimating the size of the black economy where alternative hypotheses affecting the empirical results can be tested in a nested framework. This approach allows for the estimation of the under‐reporting of household income from various sources, dispensing with the need to use arbitrary criteria to classify households by their main source of income. It also avoids potential bias in black economy estimates arising from mistaking preference heterogeneity (substitution) as income effects. We illustrate these arguments by estimating the extent to which self‐employment income in the UK is under‐reported using parametric and nonparametric techniques.