Surender Kumar | University of Delhi (original) (raw)

Papers by Surender Kumar

Empirical Economics, Jun 1, 2020

We estimate Carbon Mitigation Cost (CMC), and the factors determining change in CMC using environ... more We estimate Carbon Mitigation Cost (CMC), and the factors determining change in CMC using environmental production function. The CMC index is defined as the ratio of maximum production of electricity under unregulated and regulated production technology. Change in CMC index is decomposed into technical change, scale change and change in the level of CO 2 emissions. The production function is estimated for 45 coal-fired thermal power plants over the period of 2008-2012 using Data Envelopment Analysis. Decomposition of CMC change reveals that impacts of changes in scale of operation and CO 2 emissions were more than the reduced costs realized due to technical changes. We find that the sample plants in Indian coal-fired thermal power sector had to sacrifice about 3.5 percent of electricity production amounting to 2005US$ 1702 million of revenue loss over the 5 years due to regulation of CO 2 emissions.

Ecology, economy and society--the INSEE journal, Jan 23, 2024

Climatic Change, Sep 1, 2019

This paper examines the marginal effects of temperature on the growth rate and variability in gro... more This paper examines the marginal effects of temperature on the growth rate and variability in growth rate of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of a country, as measured by its production efficiency relative to a stochastic frontier. Using panel data for 168 countries for the period 1950-2014 to estimate a one-step stochastic frontier function, we find that temperature has a concave relationship with the growth rate of production efficiency and with the variability in this growth rate. We observe that hotter than the average temperature is not only detrimental to production efficiency growth but also makes the growth less stable than otherwise and these effects are larger in very hot countries with average annual temperature greater than 25 o C. More importantly, we observe that the detrimental marginal effects of higher temperature depend on the level of economic development of a country; they are larger for poor countries relative to rich countries. Our findings have implications for the specification of climate damage functions in integrated assessment models and estimates of country-specific social cost of carbon.

SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science, 2014

Burning of farm waste causes severe pollution of land and water on local as well as regional scal... more Burning of farm waste causes severe pollution of land and water on local as well as regional scale. The off-field impacts are related to human health due to general air quality degradation resulting in aggravation of respiratory (like cough, asthma, bronchitis), eye and skin diseases. This study finds that total annual welfare loss in terms of health damages due to air pollution caused by the burning of paddy straw in rural Punjab amounts to Rs. 76 million. These estimates could be much higher if expenses on averting activities, productivity loss due to illness, monetary value of discomfort and utility could also be considered. To avoid burning of rice (and wheat) stubble, management of agricultural waste for alternate uses is being practiced and promoted. Various departments and institutions are promoting alternative uses of straw instead of burning, e.g., rice residue as fodder, crop residue in bio thermal power plants and mushroom cultivation, rice residue used as bedding material for cattle, production of bio-oil, paper production, bio-gas and in-situ. Other uses include incorporation of paddy straw in soil, energy technologies and its use in thermal combustion for generation of electricity. Keywords Stubble burning • Alternate uses of rice stubble • Existing legislation on air pollution 7.1 Introduction Agriculture sector is the prime mover of economic growth in Punjab. It has been governed by factors of production such as land, capital, energy, nutrients, water and other agricultural inputs. With only 1.5 % of geographical area of the country, Punjab has produced about 20 % of wheat, 10 % of rice and cotton each, of the aggregate produce of these crops in the country. The State is the chief granary of India contributing 22.1 % of rice and 38.7 % of wheat to the Central pool in 2011-2012. Further, over 95 % of the foodgrains moved interstate to feed deficit areas through the Public Distribution System are the stocks procured from this State. It is characterized as the backbone of the Public Distribution System and a strong base for the food security of the country.

Research Journal of Economics Business and Ict, Jun 1, 2012

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011

Low Carbon Economy, 2012

The fast growing literature on economic impacts of climate change is inclined to assessing the im... more The fast growing literature on economic impacts of climate change is inclined to assessing the impacts on agricultural production and productivity and on human health. The economic impacts of climate change however, go beyond these sectors. In this paper, we attempted to review the scarcely available literature on the economic impacts of the change in the climate of the earth on some selected non-agricultural secondary and tertiary level of economic activities. It is attempted to summarize the ways through which the climate change can affect non-agriculture economic activities. The discussion on the literature can be synthesized as showing the impacts on secondary and tertiary level of economic activities are wide and complex and eventually may be larger than on the impacts on agriculture for those middle and high-income countries where the share of agriculture in national GDP is low.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2003

We examine the productivity and profitability changes in the US electric generating plants during... more We examine the productivity and profitability changes in the US electric generating plants during the SO 2 trading regime. Input distance function is used to compute the cumulative Malmquist productivity and Fisher productivity indexes. By exploiting the duality between cost and input distance functions, we obtain a measure of profitability, as an approximation for the Fisher productivity index. We measure productivity and profitability changes when SO 2 emissions are ignored in the production technology and when these emissions appear as bad output. We find that the productivity is higher when the bad outputs are modeled as weakly disposable in comparison to the situation when they are modeled as freely disposable. But we do not find any significant difference in profitability under these alternative methods of modeling of production technology concerning the disposability of bad outputs.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2004

This study investigates the water demand of Indian manufacturing plants. It adopts an input dista... more This study investigates the water demand of Indian manufacturing plants. It adopts an input distance function approach and approximates it by a translog form. Duality between cost function and input distance function is exploited to retrieve information concerning substitutability and the shadow price of water. The model is estimated, using linear programming approach, on a sample of 92 firms over the three years. The results show that the average shadow price of water is rupees 7.21 per kilolitre and the price elasticity of derived demand for water is high,-1.11 on average, a value similar to what has been found by other researchers working on developing countries (for example, China and Brazil). This indicates that water charges may be an effective instrument for water conservation.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2006

This study measures energy price induced technological change using directional distance function... more This study measures energy price induced technological change using directional distance function for a panel data of 55 countries over the period 1974 to 2000. The parameter estimates of directional distance function reveal the absence of neutral exogenous innovations and the presence of biased innovations either it is exogenous or energy price induced. We observe larger energy price induced technological change effects in developed countries in comparison to developing countries in the periods after first (1974), and second (1980) world oil crisis that caused substantial energy price increases. These findings concur with data that show most RDoccurs in high-income countries, particularly the US and Japan.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2008

Sustainability requires that the productive base measured in terms of comprehensive wealth of a s... more Sustainability requires that the productive base measured in terms of comprehensive wealth of a society should be increasing on per capita basis. Comprehensive wealth includes manufactured, human and natural capital along with knowledge base and institutions. This study offers methodological improvements and provides estimates of the growth rate of per capita comprehensive wealth over the period 1970-2006 for Indian economy. It considers air, water and soil degradation along with energy, minerals and forests depletion. To measure the value and composition of investment in natural capital, it estimates resource depreciation allowances on the basis of Hotelling rent; it adjusts education expenditure for depreciation in human capital; and uses the estimates of TFP that takes into account natural capital in the production of commodities and services. The empirical application suggests that Indian economy is barely sustainable. Growth rate of per capita comprehensive wealth was virtually near zero, it was only 0.15 percent per year for the study period. The growth rate was negative till 1983. Thereafter it became positive; however it was less than one percent in 1980s and 1990s. In recent years the growth rate was about 4 percent. Despite certain limitations, the study underscores the need for vigorous public policies that help in preventing excessive resource depletion and promoting higher genuine investment.

Abstract: Sustainability requires that the productive base measured in terms of comprehensive wea... more Abstract: Sustainability requires that the productive base measured in terms of comprehensive wealth of a society should be increasing on per capita basis. Comprehensive wealth includes manufactured, human and natural capital along with knowledge base and institutions. This study offers methodological improvements and provides estimates of the growth rate of per capita comprehensive wealth over the period 1970-2006 for Indian economy. It considers air, water and soil degradation along with energy, minerals and forests depletion. To measure the value and composition of investment in natural capital, it estimates resource depreciation allowances on the basis of Hotelling rent; it adjusts education expenditure for depreciation in human capital; and uses the estimates of TFP that takes into account natural capital in the production of commodities and services. The empirical application suggests that Indian economy is barely sustainable. Growth rate of per capita comprehensive wealth was...

Energy Economics

This study shows potential cost savings by adoption of emission trading in India. At the Paris Ag... more This study shows potential cost savings by adoption of emission trading in India. At the Paris Agreement, India pledged to reduce CO2 emissions intensity by about 30-35 percent by 2030 relative to 2005. Applying joint production function of electricity and CO2 emissions, we find that India could have saved about US$ 5 to 8 billion, if she had constituted an emission trading system, with the provision of banking and borrowing over the study period of 5 years. To our knowledge, this is the first study measuring foregone gains due to absence of a nationwide carbon emission-trading program in coal fired thermal power sector, using an ex-post analysis.

Economic and Political Weekly, 2013

This paper focuses on air and water pollution in India's cities, provides empirical evidence to d... more This paper focuses on air and water pollution in India's cities, provides empirical evidence to demonstrate the seriousness of the challenges, discusses the relevant policies of national and local government that are used to address the challenges, discusses relevant political economy issues related to introducing pollution taxes or other policies which are aimed at "green" cities.

Applied Economics, 2015

Elasticity of interfuel substitution between renewable and non-renewable energy is a key to estab... more Elasticity of interfuel substitution between renewable and non-renewable energy is a key to establish effective climate change policy.This is the first study estimating the elasticity of substitution between different fossil fuels and renewable resources. We use twelve manufacturing industry level data for the OECD countries over 1995 to 2009. We find complementally relationship from non-renewable energy to renewable energy in eight industries while substitute relationship holds for four industries. In particular, food and pulp industries have strong complementally relationship.

The Economics of Sustainable Development, 2009

The development of the power sector in India has proceeded so far with little attention paid to i... more The development of the power sector in India has proceeded so far with little attention paid to its environmental implications. Such a course of development, however, seems difficult to continue in the face of growing degradation of environmental quality and increasing public awareness of environmental problems in the country. The share of the thermal-power sector is about two-thirds of India's total electricity production. In the thermal-power sector, coal contributes the largest share of fuel consumption. Shrestha and Acharya (1992) have noted the fairly substantial contribution of thermal power to air pollution in India. Being a negative externality, this pollution adversely affects the welfare of society. Thermal-power plants in India have been asked to make compliance decisions to meet environmental standards that can involve the investment of millions of rupees. How could these pollution control efforts affect the production efficiency of this sector? The objective of this chapter is to study the impact of compliance decisions on the production efficiency of India's thermal-power sector.

European Journal of Law and Economics, 2013

This paper aims to measure the role of police modernization scheme in its performance in crime re... more This paper aims to measure the role of police modernization scheme in its performance in crime repression. We use output distance function as an analytical tool and estimate it using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) framework in a 'single stage'. We find that the police modernization scheme is helping the state police departments in enhancing their performance, i.e., the police departments which have more modern communication equipments and which are spending more money on the training of their police personnel are doing better relative to the others. The police density is found to be one of the major determinants of its efficiency along with the factors that create more social cohesion. The total factor productivity (TFP) is governed by the catch-up effect which is worsening over time though the technological progress has been observed in most of the states.