International inequality in energy intensity levels and the role of production composition and energy efficiency: An analysis of OECD countries

The Environmental Kuznets Curve and the Structural Change Hypothesis

“…1 and despite the fact that the heterogeneity across countries is high, we can assert that structural change is an important driver of the carbon intensity reduction experienced by European countries between 1995 and 2009 (especially in Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Germany and Estonia where structural change is responsible for more than 50 % of the change in carbon intensity). Note that, even if from a slightly different perspective (focusing on energy intensity instead of carbon intensity), other studies such as Duro et al (2010) and Mulder et al (2014) support our conclusion that shifts towards a service economy have contributed greatly to lower the environmental pressure of economic activity. Specifically, Duro et al (2010) find that differences in sectoral structures account for almost half of energy intensity inequality between OECD countries in 2005.…”

“…Note that, even if from a slightly different perspective (focusing on energy intensity instead of carbon intensity), other studies such as Duro et al (2010) and Mulder et al (2014) support our conclusion that shifts towards a service economy have contributed greatly to lower the environmental pressure of economic activity. Specifically, Duro et al (2010) find that differences in sectoral structures account for almost half of energy intensity inequality between OECD countries in 2005. Mulder et al (2014) also find that the shift towards services in OECD countries has contributed to reduce energy intensity even though the service sector shows a very modest decrease in energy intensity in comparison to the energy efficiency improvements in the manufacturing sector.…”

Dynamics and determinants of energy intensity in the service sector: A cross-country analysis, 1980–2005

“…The latter contains sector-specific measures of output, inputs and productivity, derived from a consistent framework of national accounts and supply-and-use tables, and processed according to agreed procedures by EU KLEMS consortium partners with cooperation of national statistical offices. Since the EU KLEMS database includes information on energy inputs, our analysis does not rely on an ad-hoc combination of energy data and economic data from different sources, which typically characterizes empirical cross-country studies in the field of energy economics (see, for example, Duro et al 2010, Duro and Padilla 2011, Mairet and Decellas 2009, Miketa and Mulder 2005, Mulder and De Groot 2007, Unander 2007. Another major advantage of this dataset is its high level of sector detail, which enables us to make a consistent comparison of sector-specific energyintensity trends across countries.…”

On the automatic application of inequality indexes in the analysis of the international distribution of environmental indicators

“…Among others, the following studies have been made: Wodon (1997, 2000), Sun (2002), Alcántara and Duro (2004), Hedenus and Azar (2005), Padilla and Serrano (2006), Duro and Padilla (2006), Ezcurra (2007), Cantore and Padilla (2010) or Duro, Alcántara and Padilla (2010). 1 The literature on the measurement of inequality, which initially focused on the analysis of income distribution, has a long tradition and was strongly influenced by the work of Theil (1967), Atkinson (1970), Sen (1983) and Cowell (1995).…”

“…Ezcurra (2007) performs an analysis of the international distribution of energy intensities using, among other descriptive tools, the CV and the standard deviation of logarithms. Duro, Alcántara and Padilla (2010) use T(0) to analyse the inequality of energy intensity levels between OECD countries.…”