future energy and emissions policy scenarios in ireland for private car transport in this paper we use a technological model of ireland s future car stock to simulate the impact of a range of policy measures on the baseline trend in energy demand in the period to 2030 the policies and measures modelled comprise meeting deployment targets for electric vehicles and compressed natural gas vehicles an eu regulation for the improvement of vehicle efficiency implementation of a national biofuel obligation as well as several behavioural measures encouraging modal shifting and reduced travel demand the impact of the different measures simulated is measured in terms of their contribution to meeting ireland s ambitious targets for energy savings for renewable energy penetration and for greenhouse gas ghg emissions reductions the results point to a possible improvement of 32 in car stock efficiency the achievement of 7 8 renewable energy share of road and rail transport and a 22 reduction in non ets private car co2 emissions relative to 2009 levels a scenario analysis on meeting the ev penetration target shows a significant range of co2 emissions reductions depending on the cars and mileage displaced and on the electricity generation portfolio

the role of price in multi attribute product evaluations the potentially multifaceted role of price in product evaluations is investigated with an empirical analysis of surveyed beliefs attitudes and intentions regarding automobile brands it is found that price beliefs both influence and are influenced by beliefs about a brand s quality thereby contributing to the attribution definition process however price is not a significant determinant of overall attitude it is also found that price becomes a negative factor when behavioral intentions are involved lending support to an economic interpretation of price

sectoral implications of farm program modifications the overall and distributional effects of farm programs and selected revisions are examined using a mathematical programming sector model the model incorporates market distortions caused by price supports target prices program participation deficiency payments and marketing loans current farm programs are found to increase producer prices depress consumer prices and in turn result in excess production and higher consumption and exports domestic and foreign consumers as well as domestic producers are subsidized by farm programs social deadweight loss occurs as government payments exceed welfare benefits received by consumers and producers society as a whole benefits from reductions in program provisions

the uk transport carbon model an integrated life cycle approach to explore low carbon futures abstract current debate focuses on the need for the transport sector to contribute to more ambitious carbon emission reduction targets in the uk various macro economic and energy system wide top down models are used to explore the potential for energy demand and carbon emissions reduction in the transport sector these models can lack the bottom up sectoral detail needed to simulate the effects of integrated demand and supply side policy strategies to reduce emissions bridging the gap between short term forecasting and long term scenario models this paper introduces a newly developed strategic transport energy emissions and environmental impacts model the uk transport carbon model uktcm the uktcm covers the range of transport energy environment issues from socio economic and policy influences on energy demand reduction through to life cycle carbon emissions and external costs the model is demonstrated in this paper by presenting the results of three single policies and one policy package scenario limitations of the model are also discussed developed under the auspices of the uk energy research centre ukerc the uktcm can be used to develop transport policy scenarios that explore the full range of technological fiscal regulatory and behavioural change policy interventions to meet uk climate change and energy security goals

generic advertising in an asymmetric cournot oligopoly we examine how benefits of mandated generic advertising vary with firm size in an asymmetric cournot oligopoly market generic advertising funded through a mandatory assessment changes demand but also increases firms costs the effect on a firm s profits depends upon the nature of the change in demand and the company s market share situations are identified in which generic advertising 1 disproportionately favors large small firms 2 decreases profits and 3 increases decreases social welfare our findings explain the concerns that are often raised on small firms being disadvantaged by generic advertising we discuss implications for policy and for firms advertising strategies copyright 2010 oxford university press

leader driven primacy using attribute order to affect consumer choice leader driven primacy uses initial product information to install a targeted brand as the early leader in a choice between two brands biased evaluation of subsequent attributes builds support for the targeted brand causing the choice itself to be biased study 1 finds evidence of this effect in choices between two equally attractive brands study 2 extends the finding to a situation where one brand is inferior and to conditions where participants do not explicitly identify their leader study 3 shows how leader driven primacy can be reduced by encouraging brand based processing

world transport energy demand modelling methodology and elasticities abstract this paper presents the international energy agency s iea approach of modelling transport energy demand fuel demand which is not a demand per se is derived whenever possible from the economic activity in the transport sector and not estimated directly ie using one equation or simultaneous equation system in general the transport models employ a two step approach in the first step transport activity the sector s relevant energy service is estimated econometrically in the second step the transport activity projections are then combined with estimates of efficiency improvements car turnover rates and diesel gasoline penetration assumptions in order to arrive at projections of fuel demand the principal advantages of this approach are that the relevant energy services are modelled and that for model simulation efficiency improvements can be dealt with explicitly the effectiveness of economic instruments is a function of the reaction of consumers and businesses to income and price changes an in depth understanding of income and price elasticities of transport demand and transport energy demand is important in order to be able to assess the effectiveness of policies considered the paper also shows the underlying long term income and price elasticities for oecd and non oecd regions

modelling future private car energy demand in ireland abstract targeted measures influencing vehicle technology are increasingly a tool of energy policy makers within the eu as a means of meeting energy efficiency renewable energy climate change and energy security goals this paper develops the modelling capacity for analysing and evaluating such legislation with a focus on private car energy demand we populate a baseline car stock and car activity model for ireland to 2025 using historical car stock data the model takes account of the lifetime survival profile of different car types the trends in vehicle activity over the fleet and the fuel price and income elasticities of new car sales and total fleet activity the impacts of many policy alternatives may only be simulated by such a bottom up approach which can aid policy development and evaluation the level of detail achieved provides specific insights into the technological drivers of energy consumption thus aiding planning for meeting climate targets this paper focuses on the methodology and baseline scenario baseline results for ireland forecast a decline in private car energy demand growth 0 2 compared with 4 in the period 2000 2008 caused by the relative growth in fleet efficiency compared with activity

defensive marketing strategies this paper analyzes how a firm should adjust its marketing expenditures and its price to defend its position in an existing market from attack by a competitive new product our focus is to provide usable managerial recommendations on the strategy of response in particular we show that if products can be represented by their position in a multiattribute space consumers are heterogeneous and maximize utility and awareness advertising and distribution can be summarized by response functions then for the profit maximizing firm it is optimal to decrease awareness advertising it is optimal to decrease the distribution budget unless the new product can be kept out of the market a price increase may be optimal and even under the optimal strategy profits decrease as a result of the competitive new product furthermore if the consumer tastes are uniformly distributed across the spectrum a price decrease increases defensive profits it is optimal at the margin to improve product quality in the direction of the defending product s strength and it is optimal at the margin to reposition by advertising in the same direction in addition we provide practical procedures to estimate 1 the distribution of consumer tastes and 2 the position of the new product in perceptual space from sales data and knowledge of the percent of consumers who are aware of the new product and find it available competitive diagnostics such as the angle of attack are introduced to help the defending manager this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 4 pages 319 360 in 1983

shale gas policy in the united kingdom an argumentative discourse analysis shale gas has become an energy policy priority in the united kingdom in light of profitable extraction activities in the united states since 2012 the coalition government has created key economic drivers to encourage shale exploration whilst growing activism in affected site communities has stirred significant media and academic commentary this study examines the growing national debate as a matter of discourse adopting an argumentative discourse analytic approach to assess data collected from stakeholder interviews n 21 and key policy actor statements quoted in broadsheet newspapers we explore three dominant storylines emerging in relation to shale gas policy 1 cleanliness and dirt concerns the relative framing of the environmental benefits and harms of shale gas 2 energy transitions pathways and diversions concerns geographic metaphors of transitions to carbon intensive and low carbon energy systems and 3 geographies of environmental justice concerns divisions of economic benefit distribution environmental impact and procedural fairness we find that central government policy rhetoric emphasises economic development regulatory oversight and distribution of benefits to site communities whilst minimising discussion of the implications of shale gas for anthropogenic climate change the role of these discourses in influencing shale gas policy is discussed

the demand for road diesel in canada abstract in this paper we estimate the demand for road diesel in canada using aggregate annual data for the period 1986 2008 using a partial adjustment model pam we find short and long run price elasticities of 0 43 and 0 8 respectively however using cointegration techniques we obtain price elasticities that are 30 to 50 lower the short run elasticity with respect to gdp per capita is evaluated at 0 5 with the pam and 1 55 with cointegration in the long run both estimation techniques indicate an income elasticity around 0 9 our results underline the importance of controlling for the expansion of the primary sector which has been characterizing the canadian economy in the 2000s

mergers with differentiated products the case of the ready to eat cereal industry traditional merger analysis is difficult to implement when evaluating mergers in industries with differentiated products i discuss an alternative which consists of demand estimation and the use of a model of postmerger conduct to simulate the competitive effects of a merger i estimate a brand level demand system for ready to eat cereal using supermarket scanner data and use the estimates to 1 recover marginal costs 2 simulate postmerger price equilibria and 3 compute welfare effects under a variety of assumptions the methodology is applied to five mergers two of which occurred and for which i compare predicted to actual outcomes

rising food prices food price volatility and social unrest can food prices cause social unrest throughout history riots have frequently broken out ostensibly as a consequence of high food prices using monthly data at the international level this article studies the impact of food prices food price levels as well as food price volatility on social unrest because food prices and social unrest are jointly determined data on natural disasters are used to identify the causal relationship flowing from food price levels to social unrest results indicate that for the period 1990 2011 food price increases have led to increases in social unrest whereas food price volatility has not been associated with increases in social unrest these results are robust to alternative definitions of social unrest to using real or nominal prices to using commodity specific price indices instead of aggregated price indices to alternative definitions of the instrumental variable to alternative definitions of volatility and to controlling for non food related social unrest

empirical estimates of the direct rebound effect a review beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

combining micro and macro data in microeconometric models or panel samples to improve accuracy of estimation in this paper we show how to do this efficiently we show that the gains from use of marginal information can be substantial we also discuss how to test the compatibility of sample and marginal information

measuring market power in the ready to eat cereal industry the ready to eat cereal industry is characterized by high concentration high price cost margins large advertising to sales ratios and numerous introductions of new products previous researchers have concluded that the ready to eat cereal industry is a classic example of an industry with nearly collusive pricing behavior and intense nonprice competition this paper empirically examines this conclusion in particular i estimate price cost margins but more importantly i am able empirically to separate these margins into three sources i that which is due to product differentiation ii that which is due to multi product firm pricing and iii that due to potential price collusion the results suggest that given the demand for different brands of cereal the first two effects explain most of the observed price cost margins i conclude that prices in the industry are consistent with noncollusive pricing behavior despite the high price cost margins leading firms are able to maintain a portfolio of differentiated products and influence the perceived product quality it is these two factors that lead to high price cost margins

what is the global potential for renewable energy abstract world energy demand is projected to rise to 1000 ej ej 1018 j or more by 2050 if economic growth continues its course of recent decades both reserve depletion and greenhouse gas emissions will necessitate a major shift from fossil fuels as the dominant energy source since nuclear power is now unlikely to increase its present modest share renewable energy re will have to provide for most energy in the future this paper addresses the questions of what energy levels re can eventually provide and in what time frame we find that when the energy costs of energy are considered it is unlikely that re can provide anywhere near a 1000 ej by 2050 we further show that the overall technical potential for re will fall if climate change continues we conclude that the global shift to re will have to be accompanied by large reductions in overall energy use for environmental sustainability

cropping activities in agricultural sector models a methodological proposal sector models may be constructed using two fundamentally different approaches first there are the large price endogenous reviewed in mccarl and spreen or cost minimizing reviewed in heady and srivastava sector models hereafter called sm second there are modeling systems which contain a large number of representative farms sharples and schaller walker and dillon or thomson and buckwell hereafter called rfsm the representative farm models not emphasized in this paper consist of many farm models which usually are iteratively solved into an equilibrium bell and hazell present an application in which simultaneous equilibrium is determined on the other hand the sm sector models divide a country into regions each containing aggregate activities and constraints typically these models exhibit a rather poor replication of regional crop mix e g schaller or burton flexibility constraints often are used to correct these deficiencies sahi and craddock sharples and schaller

competition and collusion in the american automobile industry the 1955 price war movements in total quantity and in quality adjusted price suggest a supply side shock in the american automobile market in 1955 this paper tests the hypothesis that the shock was a transitory change in industry conduct a price war the key ingredients of the test are alternative equilibrium models of oligopoly under product differentiation in nonnested cox tests of hypotheses a collusive solution is sustained in 1954 and in 1956 while a competitive solution holds in 1955 the result does not appear to be an artifact since it is robust in tests against alternative specifications copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

abandoning the concept of renewable energy abstract renewable energy is a widely used term that describes certain types of energy production in politics business and academia renewable energy is often framed as the key solution to the global climate challenge we however argue that the concept of renewable energy is problematic and should be abandoned in favor of more unambiguous conceptualization building on the theoretical literature on framing and based on document analysis case examples and statistical data we discuss how renewable energy is framed and has come to be a central energy policy concept and analyze how its use has affected the way energy policy is debated and conducted we demonstrate the key problems the concept of renewable energy has in terms of sustainability incoherence policy impacts bait and switch tactics and generally misleading nature after analyzing these issues we discuss alternative conceptualizations and present our model of categorizing energy production according to carbon content and combustion the paper does not intend to criticize or promote any specific form of energy production but instead discusses the role of institutional conceptualization in energy policy

a two stage analysis of the effectiveness of promotion programs for u s apples export promotion programs are intended to help u s exporters enter maintain and expand foreign markets but little is known of their success in achieving each of these goals in this paper we attempt to determine the effectiveness of export promotion in increasing both u s market share and total import consumption using apple imports by singapore and the united kingdom as case studies estimates of a two stage linear expenditure system les almost ideal demand system aids model show that promotion increases consumption of apples in both the united kingdom and singapore but increases u s market share only in the united kingdom the results suggest that free riding on u s promotion can be significant

phasing out of environmentally harmful subsidies consequences of the 2003 cap reform abstract subsidies linked to production have been classified as environmentally harmful by the oecd a core element of the eu 2003 common agricultural policy cap reform is to decouple income support from production this paper estimates the environmental consequences of this policy reform an agricultural sector model using a modified version of the positive mathematical programming method depicts the complex natural structural and political relationships of austrian farming changes in management measures can be analyzed with respect to their environmental effects by using appropriate indicators simulation results show that the 2003 cap reform will reduce the average cost of production and may improve environmental conditions regarding soil water and greenhouse gases when compared to a scenario without reform thus the new cap is likely to bring about outcomes which the previous reform agenda 2000 promised but did not deliver

burden of proof a comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100 renewable electricity systems an effective response to climate change demands rapid replacement of fossil carbon energy sources this must occur concurrently with an ongoing rise in total global energy consumption while many modelled scenarios have been published claiming to show that a 100 renewable electricity system is achievable there is no empirical or historical evidence that demonstrates that such systems are in fact feasible of the studies published to date 24 have forecast regional national or global energy requirements at sufficient detail to be considered potentially credible we critically review these studies using four novel feasibility criteria for reliable electricity systems needed to meet electricity demand this century these criteria are 1 consistency with mainstream energy demand forecasts 2 simulating supply to meet demand reliably at hourly half hourly and five minute timescales with resilience to extreme climate events 3 identifying necessary transmission and distribution requirements and 4 maintaining the provision of essential ancillary services evaluated against these objective criteria none of the 24 studies provides convincing evidence that these basic feasibility criteria can be met of a maximum possible unweighted feasibility score of seven the highest score for any one study was four eight of 24 scenarios 33 provided no form of system simulation twelve 50 relied on unrealistic forecasts of energy demand while four studies 17 all regional articulated transmission requirements only two scenarios drawn from the same study addressed ancillary service requirements in addition to feasibility issues the heavy reliance on exploitation of hydroelectricity and biomass raises concerns regarding environmental sustainability and social justice strong empirical evidence of feasibility must be demonstrated for any study that attempts to construct or model a low carbon energy future based on any combination of low carbon technology on the basis of this review efforts to date seem to have substantially underestimated the challenge and delayed the identification and implementation of effective and comprehensive decarbonization pathways

motor vehicle stocks scrappage and sales this paper offers a framework for forecasting aggregate sales of new motor vehicles this framework incorporates separate models for the change in the vehicle stock and for the rate of vehicle scrappage because this approach requires only a minimal set of assumptions about demographic trends the state of the economy consumer preferences new vehicle prices and repair costs and vehicle retirements it is shown to be especially useful as a macroeconomic forecasting tool in addition this paper presents a new historical annual time series estimate of motor vehicle stocks in the united states

the influence of generic advertising on brand preferences more than a billion dollars is spent annually on generic advertisements that promote the consumption of commodity goods generic advertising is designed to increase primary demand or the size of the pie without affecting selective demand or the share of the pie we find evidence to the contrary generic advertising increases the consumer s sensitivity to changes in price and systematically alters brand preferences these effects of generic advertising can be attributed to the tendency of generic ads to change the relative importance of the attributes used to evaluate the brands the results have implications for the public policy issue of how to effectively implement generic advertising without differentially benefiting certain brands and the managerial issue of how to integrate generic and brand advertising in order to achieve product category and brand differentiation goals

cooperative advertising models in supply chain management a review this paper reviews articles on cooperative advertising a topic which has gained substantial interest in recent years thereby we first briefly distinguish five different definitions of cooperative advertising which can be found in operations research literature after that we concentrate on vertical cooperative advertising which is the most common object of investigation it is understood as a financial agreement where a manufacturer offers to pay a certain share of his retailer s advertising expenditures in total we identified 58 scientific papers considering mathematical modeling of vertical cooperative advertising these articles are then analyzed with regard to their general model setting e g the underlying supply chain structure and design of the cooperative advertising program after that we explain the different demand and cost functions that are employed whereupon we distinguish between static and dynamic models the last dimension of our review is dedicated to the game theoretic concepts which are mostly used to reflect different forms of distribution of power within the channel

the economic consequences of substituting carbon payments for crop subsidies in u s agriculture there is a growing body of literature on the costs of sequestering carbon however no studies have examined the interplay between farm commodity programs and carbon sequestration programs this study investigates two dimensions of the interaction between farm commodity programs and afforestation programs using a price endogenous sector model of agriculture in the united states first this study compares the fiscal and welfare costs of achieving specific carbon targets through afforestation with and without current farm programs second it examines the welfare fiscal and carbon consequences of replacing existing farm subsidies wholly or in part with payments for carbon two approaches hicksian and marshallian are investigated in the first the sector model is used to quantify the carbon consequences and fiscal costs associated with various combinations of farm commodity and carbon sequestration programs that leave consumers and producers in the u s agricultural sector no worse off than under existing farm programs the second approach focuses on the carbon and welfare consequences of various farm commodity and carbon sequestration programs that hold total program fiscal costs constant at current levels althouth the methodology and data are applied to the united states the issues addressed are common in a number of developed nations particularly within the european union eu adapting existing sector models in these nations to perform similar analyses would provide policy makers with more precise information about the nature of the trade offs involved with second best policies for replacing farm commodity subsidies with tree planting subsidies

the procompetitive effect of demand enhancing check off programs this article explores demand enhancing check off programs and how such programs may influence both private programs as well as industry market structure under duopoly a firm may increase its sales through privately funding product quality improvements however such endogenous sunk costs may also be used to exclude a rival industry funded check off programs affect firms strategies and can be procompetitive the rationale lies not only in how the check off enhancement is perceived by consumers but also in the way the check off s crowding out effect reduces the ability of a firm to use its private expenditures to bar a rival s market access

the impact of tax reform on new car purchases in ireland we examine the impact of recent tax reforms in ireland on private car transport and its greenhouse gas emissions a carbon tax was introduced on fuels and purchase vehicle registration and ownership motor taxes were switched from engine size to potential emissions we use a demographic model of the car stock by age size and fuel and a car purchase model that reflects the heterogeneous distribution of mileage and usage costs across various engine sizes the model shows a dramatic shift from petrol to diesel cars particularly for large engines the same pattern is observed in the latest data on car sales this has a substantial impact on tax revenue as car owners shift to the lower tax rates the tax burden has shifted from car ownership to car use and that the overall tax burden on private car transport falls as diesel engines are more fuel efficient than petrol engines carbon dioxide emissions fall modestly or if we consider the rebound effect of travel costs on mileage minimally from the perspective of the revenue the costs per tonne of carbon dioxide avoided are very high

renewable energy carbon emission and economic growth a revised environmental kuznets curve perspective abstract renewable energy plays an important role in reducing global carbon co2 emission this paper builds a rer renewable energy consumption rate index to represent the energy structure of a country and proposes a u shaped rkc renewable energy kuznets curve hypothesis between rer and economic growth we also examine the dynamic relationship between rer and the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis using two panel data sets of 17 major developing and developed countries as well as six geo economic regions of the world during 1990 2014 panel co integration tests indicate that a long run relationship exists among economic growth rer and carbon emission we employ the fully modified ordinary least squares fmols and the dynamic ordinary least squares dols techniques to estimate the co integration coefficients of the panels and individual countries regions respectively the results verify both the ekc and rkc hypotheses indicating that a 10 rise in rer would to a 1 6 carbon emission reduction it is also found that the rkc turning points of individual countries and the entire samples in general take place before the turning points of the respective ekcs it suggests that promoting renewable energy consumption to make rkc cross its turning point earlier can accelerate ekc to reach its turning point more quickly this finding has important policy implications with respect to the development and utilization of renewable energy and environmental protection

simulating demand for electric vehicles using revealed preference data we have modelled the market for new cars in ireland with the aim of quantifying the values placed on a range of observable car characteristics mid sized petrol cars with a manual transmission sell best price and perhaps fuel cost are negatively associated with sales and acceleration and perhaps range are positively associated hybrid cars are popular the values of car characteristics are then used to simulate the likely market shares of three new electric vehicles electric vehicles tend to be more expensive even after tax breaks and subsidies are applied but we assume their market shares would benefit from an environmental premium similar to those of hybrid cars the environmental premium and the level of subsidies would need to be raised to incredible levels to reach the government target of 10 market penetration of all electric vehicles

transport energy demand in andorra assessing private car futures through sensitivity and scenario analysis abstract this paper presents a model which estimates current car fleet energy consumption in andorra and forecasts such consumption as a reference scenario the base year model is built through a bottom up methodology using vehicle registration and technical inspection data the model forecasts energy consumption up to 2050 taking into account the fleet structure the car survival profile trends in activity of the various car categories and the fuel price and income elasticities that affect car stock and total fleet activity it provides an initial estimate of private car energy demand in andorra and charts a baseline scenario that describes a hypothetical future based on historical trends a local sensitivity analysis is conducted to determine the most sensitive input parameters and study the effect of its variability in addition the scenario analysis explores the most uncertain future aspects which can cause important variability in the results with respect to the reference scenario and provides a broad estimate of potential energy savings related to different policy strategies

a critique of jacobson and delucchi s proposals for a world renewable energy supply abstract jacobson and delucchi have recently put forward a detailed case in support of the claim that renewable energy sources can meet total world energy demand the following argument is that this proposal is unsatisfactory primarily because it does not deal effectively with the problems set by the variability of renewable energy sources and also because its analysis of investment costs is inadequate

modeling agricultural supply response using mathematical programming and crop mixes mathematical programming models are widely used in agricultural sector analysis however the lack of micro level data as well as computational requirements necessitate the aggregation of individual producers into representative units when working at the sectoral level this usually leads to unrealistic extreme specialization in supply responses in 1982 mccarl introduced the historical crop mixes approach to avoid extreme specialization we extend this approach by generating additional synthetic crop mixes using supply response elasticities and systematically varied commodity prices in addition to avoiding extreme specialization this approach provides flexibility when future supply responses can be vastly different from past responses an application to u s biofuel policy analysis is presented

security independence and sustainability imprecise language and the manipulation of energy policy in the united states abstract this article examines the impact of imprecise terminology on the energy policymaking process in us focusing on the manipulation of discourse by different political economic interests seeking to sway popular opinion using the 2012 us presidential elections as a backdrop the analysis highlights the cooption of the concepts security independence and sustainability in energy debates by different and often opposing interest groups the article s first section traces the malleability of energy terminology to the vagueness of the term energy itself and notes how qualifying words like security independence and sustainability have been selectively exploited to introduce further ambiguity to an already fungible concept the second section notes that while energy is a critical and complex factor of macroeconomic production its main public visibility comes via a few partially representative numbers like gasoline prices this mismatch of broad social importance and piecemeal public understanding enables organized interests to leverage vague terminology in support of particular policy ideas the third section examines three policymaking tools 1 taxation 2 regulation and 3 technology promotion and compares these administrative instruments ultimately the article concludes that loosely defined terminology inhibits energy policy discussion and stifles meaningful public debate over and action on energy issues