scarce collateral the term premium and quantitative easing abstract a model of money credit and banking is constructed in which the differential pledgeability of collateral and the scarcity of collateralizable wealth lead to a term premium an upward sloping nominal yield curve purchases of long maturity government debt by the central bank are always a good idea but for unconventional reasons a floor system is preferred to a channel system as a floor system permits welfare improving asset purchases by the central bank

development and application of a cost benefit framework for energy reliability using probabilistic methods in network planning and regulation to enhance social welfare the n 1 rule although electricity is crucial to many activities in developed societies guaranteeing a maximum reliability of supply to end users is extremely costly this situation gives rise to a trade off between the costs and benefits of reliability the dutch government has responded to this trade off by changing the rule stipulating that electricity networks must be able to maintain supply even if one component fails known as the n 1 rule even in maintenance situations this rule was changed by adding the phrase unless the costs exceed the benefits we have developed a cost benefit framework for the implementation and application of this new rule the framework requires input on failure probability the cost of supply interruptions to end users and the cost of investments a case study of the dutch grid shows that the method is indeed practicable and that it is highly unlikely that n 1 during maintenance will enhance welfare in the netherlands therefore including the limitation unless the costs exceed the benefits in the rule has been a sensible policy for the netherlands and would also be a sensible policy for other countries

tariffs and load management the french experience the aim of an electric public utility is the optimum control of the electrical energy generating and consumption system consistency is required between the means of control at level of supply and the means of control at level of demand on the demand side marginal cost pricing is an efficient tool to achieve a good management this paper presents the french experience in this field

optimal pricing in electrical networks over space and time an electrical system is modelled with a transmission network customers central generators and independent generators the system is subject to stochastic failures and stochastic demand parameters optimal spot prices are derived for the system they vary stochastically with space and time and depend on electrical load flow patterns the price difference between two locations or two voltage levels and the wheeling charge between them will change magnitude and sometimes sign over time as a function of events throughout the network current spatial pricing methods are significantly different from the spot price based methods derived here

industrial power demand response analysis for one part real time pricing demand side management dsm programs in the industrial sector appear to be economically feasible due to the large controllable loads and relatively low costs per control point innovative electricity tariffs provide one of the most important dsm alternatives because real time pricing rtp is considered as an excellent management option which reflects the real cost of generating electricity to the end user the electricity cost saving potential of rtp through demand management is presented in this paper a unique analytical approach is followed to describe the potential electricity cost savings mathematically in terms of variables familiar to both the end user and utility these variables include the installed power consumption capacity of the plant the plant s spare energy consumption capacity and terms that describe the structure of the rtp tariff

load management in europe marketing aspects different load management strategies and utility approaches are used to obtain efficient utilization of electric energy in europe this paper focuses on the use of pricing as a marketing tool the importance of pilot programs in marketing and especially on the broader approach to marketing used by utilities as the energy market becomes more complex several utilities extend their endeavours to comprehensive programs the utility either acts as co ordinator itself or as a part of a joint venture a broad utility approach to customers often as a total entrepeneur is becoming more common in europe

estimating the economic costs of electricity deficit using input output analysis the case of brazil the objective of this article is to present a methodology to estimate the marginal cost of electric energy deficit in the long term using input output i o analysis we obtain a deficit marginal cost dmc curve that is not limited to a small number of levels such as the curve used currently in brazil which is limited to four levels the marginal cost of deficit is an important exogenous parameter used in the model s chain to calculate the operation s marginal cost and short term market pricing the electric energy deficit is a temporary lack of continuity in meeting demand which is usually predictable and involves prior notice to the consumer the cause of this deficit may be a lack of investment and or low water inflows that impact the production of hydroelectric power plants in this study the marginal cost of the deficit is obtained from restrictions on the provision of electricity for productive sectors and by calculating the corresponding impact on the gross domestic product the proposed metho

estimation of the inconvenience cost of a rolling blackout in the residential sector the case of south korea abstract south korea is experiencing a serious imbalance in electricity supply and demand which caused a blackout in 2011 the korean government has planned to perform a rolling blackout to prevent large scale blackouts when the electricity supply reserve margin reaches less than 1 million kw this study attempts to estimate the inconvenience cost of household customers from a rolling blackout by using survey data to this end we apply a contingent valuation method cvm to measure their willingness to pay wtp in order to avoid a rolling blackout i e the suspension of electricity supply in this study we estimate the inconvenience costs stemming from both an unannounced and an announced rolling blackout as a result we find that the inconvenience cost of a sudden rolling blackout is estimated at 3900 67 krw 3 56 usd per month per household while that of an announced rolling blackout stands at 3102 95 krw 2 83 usd this difference in costs shows that people place value in receiving prior notice of a blackout and that inconvenience costs of between 166 0 billion krw 151 6 million usd and 174 3 billion krw 159 2 million usd per year can be reduced nationwide by giving households advance notice of a planned rolling blackout

developing marginal costs for real time pricing the authors describe an approach for forecasting day ahead hourly costs for real time pricing of electricity marginal costs have two components marginal operating costs and marginal outage costs the approach for estimating marginal operating costs is a modification of techniques developed for security constrained dispatch the approach for marginal outage costs involves estimating the economic damages associated with outages as well as the load related probability that an outage will occur data problems and procedures required for model validation are also addressed

outage costs in chilean industry this paper estimates the cost of energy shortages to chilean industry the information was obtained from a sample survey carried out shortly after the 1989 electricity restriction the results obtained show that a 10 one month equiproportional restriction involves an average net outage cost of us 7 7 kw h 1 in the same scenario the average outage cost drops to us 3 2 kw h 1 when a limited selective restriction is applied we show that under current legislation the outage cost in fact lies between the costs of an equiproportional and a selective restriction however subtle modifications to legislation would make it possible to allocate the scarce supply efficiently

cooperation productivity and profit sharing firm specific assets generate an ex post bargaining problem over surplus division and rational workers may collude to obtain a surplus share in nonpecuniary form through restriction of effort conversely profit sharing should motivate cooperation to increase productivity when work organization facilitates interaction and horizontal monitoring since productive effort yields positive externalities to workers under contractual surplus sharing in simultaneous tobit estimates we find a strong influence of profit sharing on factor productivity in a sample of medium sized metalworking capitalist firms in west germany proxies for human capital and organizational factors were included

optimal electricity supply reliability using customer shortage costs abstract this paper describes an economic cost benefit method for determining the optimal power system capacity and reliability of electricity supply using customer shortage costs the approach is based upon identifying a system plan that simultaneously considers cost of service as well as value of service and maximizes the net economic benefits taking into account the interdependence between electricity reliability price and demand in contrast to the existing literature on this subject which considers only customer outage costs this paper argues that it is the related but considerably broader notion of customer shortage cost that is more relevant in the context of optimizing the reliability of electricity supply the paper develops a method for estimating shortage costs and sketches an integrated framework for optimizing reliability using such costs

bank regulation as an antidote to price level instability abstract we use an overlapping generations model with a risky storage technology to describe a new type of sunspot equilibrium characterized by excessive price level volatility and overinvestment in stored goods the features of this equilibrium lead us to interpret it as involving speculation and as arising when banks create excessive quantities of money this interpretation provides welfare justification for imposing quantity limits on the bank money stock we argue that the monetary regime established in england under peel s act imposed such a quantity limit our findings support quantity theorists traditional view that the possibility of overissue provides a rationale for bank regulation

investment planning for hydro thermal power system expansion stochastic programming employing the dantzig wolfe decomposition principle this paper presents an application of the dantzig wolfe decomposition principle to the problem of investment planning in the electric power sector the formulation of the capacity planning problem incorporates uncertainties in long term load growth and in fuel supply availability in addition the formulation permits the inclusion of such demand side investment decisions as conservation as well as conventional and renewable supply investments and it allows flexibility in modeling system reliability reliability targets can be incorporated as constraints or reliability can be optimized by minimizing customer outage costs in addition to investment costs and operating costs results of an application to the pacific northwest involving problem sizes up to 30 000 rows and 54 000 columns are reported

short and long interest rate targets can both short and long term interest rates be targeted independently can the target of the term structure help solve the problem of multiplicity of equilibria that occurs when only the short rate is targeted both questions are addressed and the answer is yes to both

value of service reliability the authors present the value of service vos reliability evaluation approach which explicitly incorporates into the planning process customer choices regarding reliability worth and service costs using the least cost planning framework and taking advantage of the recent advances in the quantification of outage costs this approach determines the optimal level of reliability for the utility and its customers the approach considers system operational measures the so called emergency actions that the operators invoke in times of dwindling reserves information on customer outage costs associated with such actions is incorporated using a probabilistic framework this approach permits utilities to plan for levels of reliability commensurate with the customers willingness to pay the application of this methodology to planning problems is discussed numerical results for a large utility are presented

role of targeted policies in mainstreaming renewable energy in a resource constrained electricity system a case study of karnataka electricity system in india india is aggressively pursuing its renewable energy capacity expansion goals targeted policies such as feed in tariff fit renewable purchase obligation rpo and renewable energy certificate rec are introduced to stimulate renewable energy capacity expansion as well as generation currently indian power utilities treat rpo targets as a cost burden and therefore there is prevalence of non compliance even other policies such as fit and recs in their present form have failed to influence increase in renewable electricity supply this has lead us to raise an important question whether these policies are adequate for building a cost effective renewable energy based low carbon electricity system for india in this paper we discuss the impact of above targeted policies in increasing the share of renewable electricity generation in the case of karnataka state electricity system various scenarios are developed and analysed using mixed integer programming model to study the impacts the results suggest that optimally managed fit and rec schemes can provide opportunities for utilities to benefit from reduced costs overall the above policies are inadequate and introduction of market based incentives which expand the scope of trading in renewable energy certificates are essential to achieve the desired objectives

employment relations in dual labor markets it s nice work if you can get it jobs in big firms command higher wages i examine four theories that could explain this relation first large firms incur higher fixed employment costs including more specific training second monitoring costs are greater in big firms and can be spread by hiring more productive workers third large firms may choose to pay efficiency wages to deter shirking finally large employers organize production around teams and pay higher wages to get workers who comply with the discipline of team production the dispersion of wages and working conditions in the u s labor market reflect the heterogeneity of jobs employment relations and individuals

employer size wage effects evidence from matched employer employee survey data in the uk this paper employs a random sample of matched employer employee data from the uk to test seven possible explanations for the positive relationship between employer size and pay individual wage equations show a large employer size wage premium we then control for a range of establishment level variables based on seven hypotheses typically advanced to explain this premium each establishment level factor reduces the wage premium but a sizeable premium nonetheless remains in adjudicating on these hypotheses we find a strong association between the internal labour market and the employer size wage premium this finding supports the theory that the employer size wage effect may be due to the higher costs of turnover or monitoring in larger firms however we find contrasting effects for public versus private sector establishments

optimal blackouts empirical results on reducing the social cost of electricity outages through efficient regional rationing abstract the demand and supply of electricity must always balance if supply falls short of demand then price increases or voluntary demand reductions might help to maintain the balance in the system should these prove insufficient then rationing is necessary rationing means interrupting the electricity delivery to certain areas or specific electricity users in order to preserve system stability since the cost of an interruption differs among electricity users the social cost of different rationing mechanisms varies this paper explores the cost difference between efficient regional rationing minimizing social costs by rationing regions with low costs first and random rationing not taking into account social costs for this the value of lost load calculations of de nooij et al de nooij m bijvoet c c koopmans c c 2007 the value of supply security the costs of power interruptions economic input for damage reduction and investment in networks energy economics 29 2 277 295 are refined for the netherlands it is shown that efficient rationing can reduce social costs by 42 to 93

game theory approach to use of noncommercial power plants under time of use pricing the authors use the game theory approach for evaluating the impact of the introduction of customer owned noncommercial power plants ncp when time of use pricing is used various results from this analysis are derived some of which are that the conflict between ncp customer and the supplier forces the supplier to reduce the price of ncp customers perception of the situation in which they are involved in plays an important role in this conflict the game model analysis presented provides a detailed quantitative information on electricity prices and on the ways of using ncp

monetary fiscal policy interactions and fiscal stimulus abstract increases in government spending trigger substitution effects both inter and intra temporal and a wealth effect the ultimate impacts on the economy hinge on current and expected monetary and fiscal policy behavior studies that impose active monetary policy and passive fiscal policy typically find that government consumption crowds out private consumption higher future taxes create a strong negative wealth effect while the active monetary response increases the real interest rate this paper estimates markov switching policy rules for the united states and finds that monetary and fiscal policies fluctuate between active and passive behavior when the estimated joint policy process is imposed on a conventional new keynesian model government spending generates positive consumption multipliers in some policy regimes and in simulated data in which all policy regimes are realized the paper reports the model s predictions of the macroeconomic impacts of the american recovery and reinvestment act s implied path for government spending under alternative monetary fiscal policy combinations

firm size and job quality a survey of the evidence from germany small firms provide and create a large proportion of jobs in germany are these jobs worse than jobs in larger firms the mosaic picture that emerges from a review of several recent empirical studies using german individual or firm level micro data shows that all in all wages are lower non wage incomes fringes are lower job security is lower work organisation is less rigid institutionalized possibilities for workers participation in decision making are weaker and opportunities for skill enhancement are worse in small firms compared to large firms the weight of evidence therefore indicates that on average small firms offer worse jobs than large firms it is argued that there is no need for policy measures targeted to improve job quality in small firms because higher incomes in large firms can in part be seen as compensating differentials for more rigid work organisation and can follow from wage policies to reduce shirking and turnover that is more costly in large than in small firms furthermore a lower level of remuneration less protection against dismissals a lower level of workers participation and less opportunities for further training all contribute to lower costs in small firms that might be needed to compensate for size related cost disadvantages compared to large firms economic policy should concentrate on keeping barriers to entrepreneurs entry to markets low to foster new firm formation and creative destruction

a note on the existence of monetary equilibria in overlapping generations models with storage abstract wallace s result for an og model with nonstochastic storage is extended by provision of a necessary and sufficient condition for fiat currency to be valued in equilibrium in an og model with stochastic storage it is shown that a monetary equilibrium exists if and only if the real rate of return on currency that would obtain in the stationary monetary equilibrium exceeds the risk free real rate of return that obtains in the nonmonetary equilibrium

are family firms good employers family firms employ about 60 percent of the global workforce while it is widely assumed that they are good employers data about their conduct is mixed in this study we extend stewardship and agency theories to test competing propositions about the impact of family on employment practices using data from 14 961 private belgian firms over a 19 year period higher investments lower dividend payout and higher risk tolerance indicate that family firms are better financial stewards of their companies than nonfamily firms however family firms are worse organizational stewards than nonfamily firms they offer lower compensation invest less in employee training and exhibit higher voluntary turnover and lower labor productivity further and contrary to earlier research we find that financial practices in private family firms do not change over time and that the deleterious influence of family on employment practices rises with both firm age and with heightened family involvement together our findings suggest that a more nuanced understanding of stewardship and agency theory is needed to understand the impact of family on the governance of private firms

optimal production with uncertain interruptions in the supply of electricity abstract in this paper we develop a model to measure expected electricity outage costs in the industrial and commercial sectors four sources contribute to the costs of outage in these sectors foregone profits output possible reduction in productivity due to the outage damage to materials and payments to labor during the outage the beginning and duration of the electricity outage are random variables with known distribution functions thus the business customer maximizes his expected profits taking into account his ability or lack of ability to respond to the random electricity outage the model is applied assuming a quadratic production function to eleven industrial branches in israel the estimates indicate a large variation in customer preferences for reliability

the transmission of monetary policy through redistributions and durable purchases this paper studies a redistribution channel for the transmission of monetary policy using a tractable olg setting in which the government is a net debtor we show that standard open market operations omo conducted by central banks have signi cant revaluation eects that alter the level and distribution of wealth in the economy and the real interest rate expansionary omo generate a negative wealth eect the private sector as a whole is a net creditor to the government increasing households incen tives to save for retirement and pushing down the real interest rate this in turn leads to a substitution towards durables generating a temporary boom in the durable good sector with search and matching frictions a form of productive investment is added to the model and the fall in interest rates causes an increase in labour demand raising aggregate employment the mechanism can mimic the empirical responses of key macroeconomic variables to monetary policy interventions the model shows that dierent monetary interventions e g omo versus helicopter drops can have sharply dierent eects on activity

the relevance of financial policy when the asset market is incomplete equilibrium allocations are not invariant to changes in the financial policies of firms in the presence of secondary assets such as options whose payoffs depend nonlinearly on the price of equity the range of attainable reallocations of revenue varies as a firm alters its position in the asset market corporate financial policy is thus relevant when assets are nominal monetary policy implemented through open market operations is also effective

communicating the value of dispatchability for non utility generation projects electric utilities seeking to purchase power from nonutility generators nugs need to provide information to nug developers on the value to the utility power system of various attributes in order that the developers can design projects that maximize net benefits dispatchability is one key attribute this paper outlines three previous approaches to communicating to developers the value of dispatchability and describes a fourth approach the fourth approach presents a table of numbers representing the value of dispatchability as a function of the energy bid price and escalation rate it has the advantage of simplicity from the perspective of the developer while still providing a meaningful signal to the developer

public ends private means abstract this paper is an empirical investigation into the practices of the second bank of the united states during the decade preceding andrew jackson s veto of the bank a new monthly data set derived from financial publications and second bank records of the time is employed to investigate whether the bank operated in the public interest as argued by its supporters or to further its own monopolistic interests as argued by its detractors the paper analyzes the role played by this early central bank and provides an intriguing example of one experiment in the private provision of public goods

economic costs of electricity supply interruptions us and foreign experience abstract this paper investigates the costs of interruptions in electricity service to customers this information is a key input in planning power system reliability using an economic cost benefit approach the paper reviews the literature from the perspective of identifying alternate methodological approaches used their strengths and weaknesses and potential for bias it presents and compares outage cost estimates found in the literature on a common denominator basis it attempts to explain the sources of the wide range of variation observed in different study estimates and it identifies the need for further work on this important topic

power shortages in developing countries impacts and policy implications abstract this paper is concerned with the short and long run economic impacts of power supply inadequacy in developing countries the paper provides an overview of the methodology for assessing the economic costs of power shortages and presents monetary estimates of some components of these costs for several developing countries particularly india and pakistan the final section discusses the policy implications of the problem including the need for significant changes in investment planning and resource mobilization strategies efficiency improvements pricing reforms and the integration of public and private power suppliers

the willingness to pay by households for improved reliability of electricity service in north cyprus abstract this research examines households willingness to pay wtp for an improved electricity service households wtp is estimated using the payment ladder contingent valuation cv data from 350 in person interviews in north cyprus in order to avoid the cost of outages households are willing to incur a 13 8 increase in their monthly electricity bill a cost benefit analysis cba indicates that the annualized economic benefits of improved reliability of the electricity service would be approximately usd 35 6 million for the residential sector this figure is more than enough to finance the investments needed to completely eradicate any electricity outages in addition the fuel savings from substituting the generation of the new plants for the old plants would yield about usd 32 9 million per year in fuel savings hence a change from the current low reliability policy to one of providing a high quality service would yield an economic net present value to the residents of north cyprus of twice the investment costs or usd 173 3 million within five years

flexible strategies for load demand management using dynamic pricing the need for and potential role of flexible pricing options which offer an efficient means for achieving a utility s load demand management objectives are discussed the focus is on dynamic tariffs by incorporating real time features within one or more key parameters of the tariff such pricing options can be tailored to offer the degree of flexibility that is necessary and cost effective for achieving the given demand management objective s

earnings and caste an evaluation of caste wage differentials in the nepalese labour market abstractthis paper examines the sources of wage differentials among castes in nepal a country which had until 1963 an age old caste based social division of labour we use an extended oaxaca decomposition model with occupation and firm size augmenting the conventionally used measures of human capital endowments our results indicate that caste wage differentials in nepal are large and that human capital endowments and lack of access to better paying occupations and larger firms have a significant impact furthermore we find mixed evidence that the government policy of affirmative action has narrowed down the caste wage differential

least cost energy strategies for power system expansion abstract this paper describes a theoretical framework and practical procedure for identifying least cost energy strategies for power system expansion under such a strategy the socially optimal decision is defined by a least cost combination of not only conventional supply side generating options but also conservation and renewable resource options such that the cost of providing an incremental unit of electricity from all resources is the same in addition under a least cost energy strategy the reliability of electricity supply is determined on an economically optimal basis results of an actual case study of the pacific northwest region of the usa are presented

efficiency and internal organization works councils in west german firms efficiency voice theory has not explained why highly competent managers cannot maintain effective communication without formal or mandatory institutions of l abor s voice powerful west german works councils are negatively rela ted to productivity in the sample suggesting that the best managers can do better without councils however excessive pressure on worker s should encourage both unionization and councils to gain compensatin g differentials and the simultaneous wls tobit estimates also suppor t this effect general productivity benefits from formal voice organi zation are strongly rejected but evaluating welfare efficiency and causality directly requires data on job satisfaction and managerial ability copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

time of use pricing for load management programs in taiwan power company load management programs have been actively performed by the utilities to reduce peak demand and improve system load factor in recent years the time of use tou tariff based on the peak load pricing theory has been one of the most effective load management strategies proper tou rate structure can actually reflect the generation cost of electricity supplying and give a guideline for customers to modify the power consumption pattern so that the system load factor can be improved the inverse electricity pricing rule can be applied as the basis of tou pricing in this paper the price elasticities of industrial customers of taipower system are solved by the statistical regression model with 2620 data samples

the ties that bind monetary policy and government debt management the financial crisis and subsequent economic recession led to a rapid increase in the issuance of public debt but large scale purchases of bonds by the federal reserve and other major central banks have significantly reduced the scale and maturity of public debt that would otherwise have been held by the private sector we present new evidence that tilting the maturity structure of private sector holdings significantly influences term premia even outside crisis times our framework helps explain both the bond yield conundrum and the effectiveness of quantitative easing we suggest that these findings raise two important policy questions one is should a central bank contrary to recent orthodoxy use its balance sheet as an additional complementary instrument of monetary policy to influence as part of the monetary transmission mechanism the long term interest rate the second is how should central banks and governments ensure that debt management properly takes account of the implications for both monetary and financial stability

a classical model of a small fixed exchange rate economy abstract this paper develops a monetary model of a small fixed exchange rate economy prices are flexible and aggregate supply plays a key role the model combines the barro ricardo theorem that government bonds are not wealth to the residents of the country of issue with the ultra rational view that the domestic component of the money supply is also not wealth the short run and long run effects of monetary policy fiscal policy and devaluations are examined monetary policy is neutral in both the short and long runs devaluations and fiscal policy however are not necessarily neutral in either the short or long run

unexpected monetary disturbances during the gold standard era abstract this empirical paper uses the barro methodology of estimating unexpected monetary shocks to determine the effect these shocks had on real output in the u s during the gold standard era between 1880 and 1913 it also investigates whether changes in a measure of financial intermediation had real effects the results indicate that neither expected nor unexpected money shocks affected output changes in financial intermediation however were significantly correlated with output this result lends support to theories which stress the endogeneity of broad measures of the money supply

do newly founded firms pay lower wages first evidence from germany using a linked employer employee data set for germany this paper analyses wage setting in a cohort of newly founded and other establishments from 1997 to 2001 while theory provides alternative explanations for higher or lower wages in newly founded firms we show empirically that start ups tend to pay lower wages ceteris paribus on average wages in newly founded establishments are 8 lower than in similar incumbent firms this negative wage differential is substantially smaller in eastern than in western germany the wage differ ential is shown to decline over time as the newly founded firms become more mature

real time optimal interruptible tariff mechanism incorporating utility customer interactions an optimal power flow based framework is proposed to determine the incentive rates of an interruptible tariff mechanism itm on an hour to hour basis interaction between the utility and customers contracting interruptible load is incorporated in the analytical framework by formulating customer response functions to the itm it is shown that itm is able to reduce costs and aid in system operation during peak load periods the ieee 30 bus system considerably modified to represent different customer characteristics has been used for the study

customer preferences for reliable power supply using data on actual choices of back up equipment this paper empirically examines customer preferences for the reliable sources of electricity using data obtained from a survey of back up systems owned by large computer users in japan the empirical results based on probabilistic discrete choice models indicate that 1 customers face a trade off between the price and the reliability of the power supply and 2 customer characteristics such as types of business and levels of electricity usage have significant impacts on the choice of back up apparatuses the estimates of cost changes that would offset reliability changes imply that the financial and communications sectors are more concerned about reliability than are other sectors copyright 1994 by mit press

the pattern of changes in the long term development of establishment size hypotheses and analyses dealing with the expansion of small businesses are usually carried out over relatively short periods of time the patterns drawn from these examinations e g on the question of specific differences in the growth of size are usually influenced by configurations of the overall economy and limit the realization of regular processes to the phases they are based upon a second disadvantage lies in most cases in the fact that data sources are used for the empirical analyses that do not cover the economic system as a whole nor for all sizes of establishments this study attempts to present the development of the sizes of establishments in germany over a period of more than one hundred years 1882 to 1987 and thus avoids the narrow perspective of previous examinations it becomes evident that this development does not take a continuous course instead it follows a wave pattern since this discontinuous development pattern is common to almost all sectors it appears to be a general phenomenon this study reveals that the small establishments with more than five employees contrary to most theoretical assumptions are of utmost importance even when considered over a long period of time the growth of small establishments in recent years observable in all sectors may not be a unique phenomenon however in view of an overall growth of employment and the simultaneous shrinking of large establishments it occurs under a new constellation

the earnings function under test abstract earnings functions of the well known mincer type based on data from five samples of german male full time workers are estimated and tested the hypotheses of normally distributed homoscedastic errors and a correctly specified functional form are nearly always rejected

assessing energy supply security outage costs in private households abstract the objective of this paper is to contribute to the topic of energy supply security by proposing a monte carlo based and a survey based model to analyze the costs of power interruptions outage cost estimations are particularly important when deciding on investments to improve supply security e g additional transmission lines in order to compare costs to benefits but also other policy decisions on measures that have direct or indirect consequences for the supply security e g a phasing out of nuclear energy need to be based on results from outage cost estimations the main focus of this paper lies with residential consumers but the model is applied to commercial industrial and governmental consumers as well there are limited studies that have approached the problem of evaluating outage cost when comparing the results of these studies they often display a high degree of diversification as consumers have different needs and dependencies towards the supply of electricity because of varying circumstances and preferences a great diversity in outage cost is a logical consequence to take the high degree of uncertainties into account a monte carlo simulation was conducted in this study for the case of private households in germany

nominal prices and interest rates in general equilibrium endowment shocks the outstanding problem of neoclassical monetary theory has been to determine the effect of changes in the money stock on nominal prices and interest rates the classic result is that in the absence of money illusion contracts fixed in nominal terms and other such impedimenta money is neutral thus a doubling of the money stock results in a doubling of the nominal price level and in no change in nominal interest rates except at most for a temporary liquidity effect while the price level is rising to its new level during the adjustment period the nominal interest rate might temporarily drop this neutrality result has conventionally been proved in a static framework in intertemporal models it is necessary to distinguish between static neutrality and dynamic neutrality if a model displays dynamic neutrality fluctuations in the money stock immediately induce a proportional change in the nominal price level and no change in nominal interest rates or any real variable this property is different from and stronger than static neutrality which in dynamic models states only that if the money stock at all dates is doubled so will be the price level at all dates the effects of exogenous shocks in the monetary growth rate on nominal prices and interest rates are analyzed a representative individual rational expectations framework is adopted and a demand for money is generated by entering money in the utility function the effects of monetary shocks on inflation and interest rates are shown to depend on the autocorrelation of the monetary growth rate for example under serial independence the inflation rate equals the monetary growth rate and the nominal interest rate is nonrandom while under positive negative autocorrelation the nominal interest rate is affected positively negatively by positive growth rate shocks i am grateful to the staff of the federal reserve bank of philadelphia to the finance groups at the university of southem california and virginia polytechnic institute and to c j lacivita dan peled john seater and jon sonstelie for valuable comments on earlier drafts

the dynamics of inflation with constant deficit under expected regime change a model that describes the dynamics of inflation with a fully anticipated stabilization program is developed it is shown that with a constant deficit an economy tends to stay at the neighborhood of the lower of the two state inflation rates that are compatible with the deficit further increasing inflation rates prior to the stabilization are compatible only with deficits that are lower than the maximal feasible staedy state deficits and with a stabilization program that reduces the demand for real balances if these conditions are not met inflation decreases towards the stabilization date it is argued that the data generated by actual inflationary episodes fit the conditions described above and corroborate the model this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

evaluation of the marginal outage costs of generating systems for the purposes of spot pricing this paper describes a methodology based on quantitative power system reliability evaluation for calculating the marginal outage costs of generating systems the proposed method involves the calculation of the incremental expected unserved energy at a given operating reserve level and lead time and the multiplication of this value by the interrupted energy assessment rate of the system the method is illustrated in this paper by calculating the marginal outage cost profile of the ieee reliability test system and by examining the effect of various modeling assumptions on that profile

the determination of contract wages in west germany the determination of contract wages in west germany is studied within a bargaining framework taking into account some institutional features of the bargaining system as well as the influence of economic forecasts and wage concepts cointegration regressions suggest that in the long run nominal contract wages are linked to prices productivity each with a unit elasticity and unemployment in addition to these factors expectational errors concerning the inflation rate during the contract period and changes in the tax wedge affect real wage growth in the short run but these effects seem to be temporary rather than permanent

new firms and labor market entrants is there a wage penalty for employment in new firms in this paper we explore the role of new firms as an entry point to the labor market because the vast majority of new firms are short lived it is a risky decision to accept employment in a new venture it can be argued that individuals with little or no labor market experience are more willing to accept the high risks associated with employment in new firms hence new firms may work as an entry point to the labor market nevertheless some research concludes that one disadvantage of employment in a new firm is that new firms pay less shane in small bus econ 33 141 149 2009 however this empirical conclusion is primarily based on literature on the wage penalty of small firms in this paper we study whether the wage penalty of employment in a new firm persists if we focus solely on labor market entrants in the empirical analysis we employ an employer employee matched dataset that covers the swedish population during the period from 1998 to 2008 we use the propensity score matching method to study the wage differences between labor market entrants employed in new and incumbent firms we find an average wage penalty of 2 9 for labor market entrants employed in new firms over the studied period

estimating the willingness to pay for reliable electricity supply a choice experiment study abstract this research examines households willingness to pay wtp for an improved electricity service households stated wtp is estimated using the choice experiment ce method the data used in the estimations come from 350 in person interviews conducted during the period 5 22 august 2008 in north cyprus compensating variation cv estimates for a zero outage scenario are calculated using the parameter estimates from the mixed logit ml model these are 6 65 ytl turkish lira per month 3 02 usd for summer and 25 83 ytl per month 11 74 usd for winter in order to avoid the cost of outages households are willing to incur a 3 6 and a 13 9 increase in their monthly electricity bill for summer and winter respectively the wtp per hour unserved is 0 28 ytl 0 13 usd for summer and 1 08 ytl 0 49 usd for winter a preliminary cost benefit analysis indicates that the annualized economic benefits are approximately 42 7 million ytl 19 4 million usd for the residential sector this would justify an investment in additional generation capacity of approximately 268 mw which is far more than that which is needed to eliminate the service reliability problem

estimating the economic impacts of power supply interruptions abstract the cost of power system rationing which is a crucial parameter for determining optimal resilience investments is usually estimated using reduced form linear models or ordinary input output analysis however such methods do not properly address either consumers rational reactions to rationing policy or policy design nonlinearities to solve this problem this paper estimates the effects of power system rationing using a general equilibrium model the model solution shows that the power cut distribution among industries is a critical variable for quantifying policy effects and provides insights into optimal policy design