• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.33-47
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• 2004

Even though the price of extracted but unprocessed coal has been available in Korea, the use of it as scarcity index would be inappropriate because of price subsidy. Following Halvorsen and Smith(1984), Kim and Lee(2002) derived estimates of the shadow price of unextracted coal by estimating the restricted cost function and differentiating with respect to the quantity of coal extracted. In Korea, however, due to the limited data the capital prices have been computed inconsistently case by case without relying on the robust formula like the Christensen-Jorgenson methodology used in US, which could result in biased estimators of the restricted cost function. In the paper the shadow prices of the resources in situ are obtained by measuring an input distance function defined by Shephard (1970), which requires only the data on the quantities of inputs and output. Empirical results for the Korean coal mining industry show that these shadow prices as a coal scarcity have increased fast by approximately three times in comparisons with those obtained by Kim and Lee.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.673-692
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• 2006

In order to test for the dynamic optimality condition for the use of nonrenewable resource, it is necessary to estimate the shadow value of the resource in situ. In the previous literatures, a time series for in situ price has been derived either as the difference between marginal revenue and marginal cost or by differentiating with respect to the quantity of ore extracted the restricted cost function in which the quantity of ore is quasi-fixed. However, not only inconsistent estimates are likely to be generated due to the nonmalleability of capital, but the estimate of marginal revenue will be affected by market power. Since firms will likely fail to minimize the cost of the reproducible inputs subject to market prices under realistic circumstances where imperfect factor markets, strikes, or government regulations are present, the shadow in situ values obtained by estimating the restricted cost function can be biased. This paper provides a valid methodology for checking the dynamic optimality condition for a nonrenewable resource by using the input distance function. Our methodology has some advantages over previous ones: only data on quantities of inputs and outputs are required; nor is the maintained hypothesis of cost minimization required; adoption of linear programming enables us to circumvent autocorrelated errors problem caused by use of time series or panel data. The dynamic optimality condition for domestic coal mining does not hold for constant discount rates ranging from 2 to 20 percent over the period 1970~1993. The dynamic optimality condition also does not hold for variable rates ranging from fourth to four times the real interest rate.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.77-98
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• 2013

China, the world's largest $CO_2$ producer, is likely to be obligated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the post-Kyoto protocol. This paper estimates a Shephard input distance function for the Chinese fossil-fueled power generation sector to measure the shadow price of $CO_2$ emissions, technical efficiency, and indirect Morishima elasticities of substitution between inputs. Empirical results show that, on average, it costs approximately 3.2 US dollars per year to reduce $CO_2$ emissions by one ton over the period 1981-2009. This finding indicates that Chinese power sector is expected to benefit from selling emission permits to other countries such as Korea and Japan, given that our estimate for China is lower than the ones previous literatures estimated for the power sector in these countries. The maximum attainable average $CO_2$ reduction potential amounts to approximately 25 million tons per year by improving technical efficiency. Capital is substitutable with both coal and oil and capital is relatively more readily substituted for these fuels.