Energy-Saving Technological Change in Japan
Takeshi Niizeki
Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University
Abstract:
The energy-dependence of Japan's economy declined considerably following the first oil crisis in 1973. This paper examines what caused the sharp drop in the use of energy per unit of gross national product (GNP) observed in the 1970s and 1980s, using a simple neo-classical growth model with energy as a third production input. Two possible candidates are investigated: (i) the substitution effect due to changes in the relative price of energy, and (ii) energy-saving technological progress. The findings are as follows. First, the substitution effect alone is weak and alone cannot account for the decline in the energy-GNP ratio. Second, the estimated level of energy-saving technology more than tripled between 1970 and the late 1980s, and the model with energy-saving technological progress is able to explain the drop in the energy-GNP ratio well.
Keywords: Relative Energy Price; Energy-saving Technological Progress (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://gcoe.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/research/discussion/2008/pdf/gd11-218.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hst:ghsdps:gd11-218
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tatsuji Makino ().