Abstract:
This paper examines the hypothesis that there is a single economic market for the international steam coal industry and investigates the degree of steam coal market integration over time. A regression test of convergence is employed to test for group convergence within a panel of steam coal exporting countries. The long-run relations between international steam coal prices are tested through cointegration analysis and the Kalman Filter analysis is employed to examine the convergence path of the price series. Monthly Free on Board (F.O.B.) prices for Australia, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Poland and South Africa between January 1995 and July 2007 are used. Considering the outcomes of the three econometric techniques as a whole, we conclude that the international steam coal market is generally integrated.

Abstract:
The direction of the causality between energy consumption and income is an important issue in the fields of energy economics, economic growth, and policies toward energy use. The seminal work on the relations between energy consumption and aggregate income is Kraft and Kraft (1978). An extensive literature has followed, but the array of findings provide anything but consensus on either the existence of relations or direction of causality between the variables. The work in this paper extends this research by analysing the cointegrating and causal relations between income and three energy consumption series based on panel data and the latest panel methodologies. These relations are analysed for the 30 OECD countries and 26 non-OECD countries. The results support a finding of causality flowing from income to energy consumption for developed and developing economies, alike.

Abstract:
We explore the relationships among the North American, European and Asian natural gas markets for evidence of convergence and integration for the January 1997 through May 2011 period. The analyses are conducted under a multivariate framework, so the dynamics among the prices can be captured without the necessity of identifying an anchor price series. We find evidence of convergence among the Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and UK prices. The North American price displays behaviour that is distinct from this group of prices. We conclude that there is not a fully integrated international natural gas market. The integration between European (represented by NBP) and Asian geographic regions appears to be due primarily to underlying contractual mechanisms specifically linking natural gas prices to oil prices rather than the result of market supply and demand interactions. We also find that the relationship among the Asian markets has evolved with Japanese prices adjusting to changes in South Korean and Taiwanese prices.