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Summary: This paper examines the role of foreign trade in the consumption of energy in Czechoslovakia through a bottom‐up approach in accounting for energy embodied in trade with manufactured goods. It provides a unique analysis of annual changes in energy embodied in trade in a country characterized by changing political regimes. On the whole, Czechoslovakia has been a net exporter of energy throughout the twentieth century with an average 12% of domestic energy consumption embodied in exports. The role of central planning was found to have a significant effect on the absolute levels of energy embodied in trade, which reached its peak in 1972, when Czechoslovakia had net exports of embodied energy of 29 gigajoules per capita, well above those of Sweden in 1970 or China in 2013. Increased product specialization with a shift toward heavy industrial goods also had a clear impact on the composition of energy embodied in exports. Despite this development, the energy intensity curve of Czechoslovakia does not change substantially when adjusted for foreign trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the role of technical advances and upscaling practices in the steel sector and the differences in these practices between planned and market-based economies. It focuses on the Czechoslovak steel sector, comparing it to other planned economies as well as Western economies. The primary method of analysis employed is the logistic-fit curve of technology diffusion, complemented with panel regression models. The paper draws two major conclusions: first, Czechoslovakia suffered from technological backwardness in the adoption of new steel technology with prolonged formation stage and high saturation levels as seen in some of the core steel markets. To some degree, this was due to the detrimental nature of central planning on new technology adoption. However, it was mainly linked to some specific characteristics of Eastern European markets, such as availability of scrap, the vintage of individual plants and the different structure of steelmaking costs. Second, the focus on Soviet-style large scale production was visible not only at the industry level but also at the level of the individual furnaces. It was this large-scale production that can be linked to improvements in relative energy efficiency - through economies of scale and learning-by-doing effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new concept of comparative carbon advantage as a potential climate mitigation tool. According to the concept, welfare gains in terms of reduced global CO2 emissions can be achieved by exploiting cross-country sectoral differences in carbon intensity and decarbonized electricity system. The paper empirically tests the concept by utilizing annual data of Sweden between 1995 and 2008. Overall, the results show that Sweden contributed nearly 590 million tons of potential CO2 emissions savings through its exports by having an efficient and low-carbon production and electricity system. This total amount of 590 million tons of CO2 emissions relates to the total savings made if the same amount and composition of Swedish exports was produced using the world average technology. Furthermore, the contribution of Sweden's low carbon electricity generation was over 34% of the total savings, of which some 20% were direct exports of electricity and 80% was electricity embodied in exported products. This research provides a critical understanding of the impact of efficient production and low carbon electricity in generating relative comparative carbon advantage—a policy relevant aspect for the increasingly globalized, and carbon-constrained, world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]