efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading we consider bargaining problems between one buyer and one seller for a single object the seller s valuation and the buyer s valuation for the object are assumed to be independent random variables and each individual s valuation is unknown to the other we characterize the set of allocation mechanisms that are bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational and show the general impossibility of ex post efficient mechanisms without outside subsidies for a wide class of problems we show how to compute mechanisms that maximize expected total gains from trade and mechanisms that can maximize a broker s expected profit journal of economic literature classification number 026

stabilization adjustment and the poor abstract this paper attempts to survey the recent literature on the impact of stabilization and adjustment programs upon the poor and to consider some of the key issues in the context of a particular equity oriented low income country tanzania after looking at some of the approaches of earlier studies this paper analyzes the effects of restructuring policies macroeconomic restraint and strategic policy change the author then reviews available evidence on the recent experience of tanzania with external shock efforts at stabilization and relations with the imf in conclusion the author argues that in order to better understand their impact on poverty we need more detailed analyses of specific countries experience with different kinds of macroeconomic imbalance and different short to medium term policy responses however he does indicate with some certainty that when equivalent external blows impact upon very low income countries there must be a presumption that other things being equal including the distribution of income the proportion of households and people pushed over the line into absolute poverty will be greater than in middle income countries the international community should provide external finance to aid these low income countries in limiting the negative impact on the poorest

the energy ladder theoretical myth or empirical truth results from a meta analysis abstract modern fuels are an important enabler of social and economic development still over 2 billion people rely on traditional biomass for their daily energy needs to overcome the negative effects of traditional energy on human health and the environment and to enhance the livelihood conditions of the poor a transition towards cleaner and more efficient forms of energy is needed understanding household fuel choice and fuel switching behaviour is of vital importance in search for policies to support such a transition process this paper adds to the existing energy transition literature in two ways first we provide a novel conceptual framework to analyze the decision environment underlying energy and fuel choices second we apply this framework in a meta analysis of existing choice models investigating energy switching and stacking behaviour in urban and rural areas in developing countries the meta analysis shows that socio economic household characteristics appear to receive most attention so far in identifying groups of fuel users while relatively little information is available on the impact of the external decision context on household energy choices

stacking up the ladder a panel data analysis of tanzanian household energy choices energy use statistics in tanzania reflect the country s low level of industrialization and development in 2016 only 16 9 of rural and 65 3 of urban inhabitants in mainland tanzania were connected to some form of electricity we use a nationally representative three wave panel dataset 2008 2013 to contribute to the literature on household energy use decisions in tanzania in the context of the stacking and energy ladder hypotheses we firstly adopt a panel multinomial logit approach to model the determinants of household cooking and lighting fuel choices secondly we focus explicitly on energy stacking behaviour proposing various ways of measuring what is inferred when stacking behaviour is thought of in the context of the energy transition and presenting household level correlates of energy stacking behaviour thirdly since fuel uses have gender differentiated impacts we investigate women s bargaining power in the decision making process of household fuel choices we find that whilst higher household incomes are strongly associated with a transition towards the adoption of more modern fuels especially lighting fuels this transition takes place in a context of significant fuel stacking in tanzania government policy has been aimed mostly at connecting households to the electric grid however the public health environmental and social benefits of access to modern energy sources are likely to be diminished in a context of significant fuel stacking lastly we present evidence that the educational attainment of women in the household is an important aspect of household fuel choices

an alternative approach to estimate the wage returns to private sector training summary this paper follows an alternative approach to identify the wage effects of private sector training the idea is to narrow down the comparison group by only taking into consideration the workers who wanted to participate in training but did not do so because of some random event this makes the comparison group increasingly similar to the group of participants in terms of observed individual characteristics and the characteristics of planned training events at the same time the point estimate of the average return to training consistently drops from a large and significant return to a point estimate close to zero copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

energy demand substitution from biomass to imported kerosene evidence from tanzania abstract we analyze domestic household energy demand and use patterns in tanzania using a detailed household survey of purchase transactions a multivariate probit model and the quaids modeling framework the main fuel sources that we study are kerosene charcoal and firewood these three accounted for 96 5 of spending on energy by households charcoal and firewood are used for cooking while kerosene is used for lighting and cooking kerosene is almost exclusively imported while charcoal and firewood are produced domestically these fuel sources are important given the impacts of wood harvesting on the environment and kerosene imports on public finances we find a statistically significant response in kerosene demand to charcoal prices suggesting a pattern of substitution but no strong substitution relationships between other fuel pairs these results which we use in a simulation of tariff change imply that policies centered on price changes may not be effective in changing consumer behavior unless alternative sources of energy are readily accessible

investment in human capital and gender wage differences evidence from the nlsy this paper uses data from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy to investigate gender differences in returns to various forms of human capital since the nlsy includes relatively detailed information regarding on and off the job training we place special emphasis on measuring gender differences in the incidence of and returns to formal post school training also considered is the role of nonhuman capital factors such as industry and occupation in explaining the wage gap it is found that about 60 of the gender wage gap in the sample is explained by mean differences in individual characteristics and market circumstances this suggests a smaller role for discrimination in explaining the wage gap than previous research has found the research indicates that training does not affect the gender wage gap also it is found that there is no statistically significant difference in the rate of return to other measures of human capital for women versus men our research suggests that the largest factor

migration and fuel use in rural mexico many households in developing countries rely on renewable natural resources as their main source of energy collecting and burning firewood requires a considerable amount of time has negative health consequences and can cause deforestation and depletion of local resources if forests are not properly managed a transition from traditional to modern fuels can benefit households by reducing these negative effects migration a quintessential feature of development may facilitate this transition but its impacts on fuel choice are theoretically ambiguous it can reduce the household labor available for firewood collection and provide cash to purchase substitutes however it has an income effect that changes the demand for home cooked food and energy to cook it firewood or gas could be used to meet the increase in energy demand to resolve this theoretical ambiguity we use an instrumental variables method with household panel data from rural mexico and investigate the impact of mexico to us migration and remittances on gas expenditures and household labor allocated to firewood collection sending a migrant to the united states causes a significant decrease in reliance on firewood collection and an increase in both stove and gas purchases these findings have potentially far reaching environmental implications as labor moves off the farm

the determinants of occupational success in britain this paper is concerned with measuring the true impact of certain human capital variables on an individual s occupational position the particular variables which are analysed are training qualifications and spells of sickness and unemployment the longitudinal nature of the data enables us to control for all relevant individual attributes which remain fixed over the period of the sample this is vitally important because these attributes are strongly correlated with the variables of interest and would seriously corrupt estimates derived from a single cross section a method of generating consistent estimates as n oo t fixed for a dynamic model with fixed effects is also illustrated

equity externalities and energy subsidies the case of kerosine in indonesia abstract this paper examines two arguments used to justify the subsidy provided kerosine the primary commercial fuel of indonesian households one argument holds that the subsidy reduces deforestation externalities resulting from wood gathering econometric analysis of a large cross section of households finds that firewood kerosene substitution is very limited in java where the deforestation problem is most severe so that kerosene subsidy is not an effective means of alleviating the problem the second argument holds that social equity requires the subsidization of basic needs such as kerosene it is found that the kerosene subsidy disproportionately benefits urban and wealthier households

job matching and on the job training conventional analysis predicts that workers pay part of their on the job training costs by accepting a lower starting wage and subsequently realize a return to this investment in the form of greater wage growth missing from the conventional treatment of on the job training is a discussion of the process by which heterogeneous workers are matched to jobs requiring varying amounts of training this matching process constitutes a key feature of the on the job training model presented in this article and tested with a unique data set containing extensive information concerning on the job training employer search wages and wage and productivity growth

on fuelwood consumption population dynamics and deforestation in africa abstract as the literature on fuelwood in africa has increased in quality in recent times it has become evident that generalizations about africa s fuelwood crisis need to be treated with great caution as a consequence some commonly held or orthodox beliefs may now need to be reexamined this paper subjects three such beliefs 1 the existence of a linear relationship between population growth fuelwood consumption and rates of fuelwood induced deforestation 2 that fuelwood induced deforestation approximates ripples spreading outward from urban consuming centers and 3 that land conversion to agriculture always reduces fuelwood supplies to close scrutiny the second and third assumptions are analyzed in the light of recently collected field data in the kano area of northern nigeria while the examination of the first is based on a reinterpretation of information from a wider range of invironments the paper concludes that although available data are inadequate for definitive conclusions to be drawn on the first count it seems likely that variations arising out of demographic differentials in urban populations in particular changes in per capita fuelwood consumption resulting from changes in consuming unit size distort direct links between population growth rates and rates of increase in fuel consumption further information on the demographic characteristics of african towns is needed for meaningful analyses of temporal changes in the affected variables to be undertaken the second and third assumptions are found to be inapplicable in the kano case howe1ver this should be interpreted much less as justification for their outright rejection than as a reminder of the great potential of time and space specific considerations for rendering universal rules locally inapplicable

asymmetric all pay auctions with incomplete information the two player case abstract we prove existence and uniqueness of bayesian equilibrium for a class of generally asymmetric all pay auctions with incomplete information due to its importance in applications some prominence is given to the first price all pay auction for which a detailed characterization of equilibrium and an approximation to equilibrium of its well studied complete information version are supplied furthermore we relate our uniqueness result to the well known multiplicity of equilibria in the war of attrition second price all pay auction which emerges as a limit point of the class of two player auction games considered journalof economic literature classification numbers d44 c62 c72

electricity planning and implementation in sub saharan africa a systematic review abstract universal electricity access is an important development objective and the focus of a number of key global un initiatives while robust electricity planning is widely believed to be a prerequisite for effective electrification to date no comprehensive overview of electricity planning research has been undertaken on sub saharan africa the world region with the lowest access rates this paper reviews quantitative and qualitative electricity planning and related implementation research considering each of the 49 sub saharan african countries the four regional power pools and the sub continent as a whole applying a broad understanding of electricity planning and a practical limit of 20 reviewed articles per country and region 306 relevant peer reviewed journal articles are included in this review a general classification scheme is introduced that classifies the planning literature along the addressed value chain depth number of different analysed criteria and number of evaluated decision alternatives the literature is found to be strongly clustered in a few countries with less than 5 identified relevant articles in 36 of the 49 countries the total amount of articles per year is clearly increasing over time addressing technology choice operation distribution and implementation analyses although including different high level criteria in analysing electricity systems is common the literature is only starting to use formalised multi criteria decision making mcdm tools the review indicates that 63 of relevant articles favour renewable energy technologies for their given problems frequently mentioned success factors for electrification in sub saharan africa include adequate policy design sufficient finance and favourable political conditions while considerable regional and methodological literature gaps are apparent the literature in this review identifies a rich and fruitful ground for future research to fill these gaps

future energy development in tanzania the energy costs of urbanization abstract this paper utilizes the detailed energy balance data developed as part of the tanzania urban energy project to examine future energy use in tanzania the energy costs of urbanization are shown to be quite substantial national energy balances demonstrate that the urban areas make up a large share of the consumption of all fuels except woodfuel as urbanization continues into the future it will be accompanied by dramatic increases in the consumption of petroleum fuels electricity and charcoal for example using base case or business as usual assumptions over a planning period stretching from 1990 to 2010 every 1 increase in the level of urbanization can be expected to lead to a 12 increase in electricity consumption a 14 increase in the consumption of all petroleum fuels and a 14 increase in the consumption of charcoal finally the paper examines different energy policy options which are consistent with the stated national energy policy after the examination of a set of ambitious policy efforts a set of feasible policies are tested and shown to have a significant impact on the goals of improving efficiency obtaining the desirable energy consumption profile and conserving indigenous woodfuel resources

how to achieve full electrification lessons from latin america electricity coverage in latin america has increased substantially in recent decades rising from 50 of the population in 1970 to more than 95 in 2015 growth however slowed in the 1990s as many countries experienced difficulties in extending their networks further in particular to serve those living in isolated and rural areas in spite of this the process of electrification was not interrupted and at the beginning of the 2010s decade most countries in the region were able to provide access to electricity to almost all of their populations in this paper we examine the main strategies used in latin america to increase coverage and argue that only a combination of policy efforts has made it possible to achieve the current situation we also examine the remaining obstacles at policy and institutional levels to achieving full coverage

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

urban household energy use in tanzania prices substitutes and poverty abstract this paper presents the findings of the tanzanian urban household energy survey undertaken as part of the tanzania urban energy project household energy use varies by income group according to local fuel availability considerable differences between the marginal costs of supplying fuels and market prices paid by consumers have led to major misallocations of resources when the results of this survey are compared to the results of the 1987 household energy survey a significant shift by households toward kerosene and electricity away from fuelwood charcoal and lpg is shown to have taken place these shifts toward modern fuels are consistent with the claims of the households in the 1990 survey and can largely be explained by fuel prices finally an assessment of the lifeline tariff and the kerosene cross subsidy demonstrate that the latter is a more effective method of ensuring the basic energy needs of the urban and rural poor

from linear fuel switching to multiple cooking strategies a critique and alternative to the energy ladder model abstract promoting sustainable development requires evaluating the technical and policy options that will facilitate the adoption and use of energy efficient and less polluting cooking stoves and practices the transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices has been explained by the energy ladder model that suggests that with increasing affluence a progression is expected from traditional biomass fuels to more advanced and less polluting fuels in this paper we evaluate the energy ladder model utilizing data from a four year 1992 96 case study of a village in mexico and from a large scale survey from four states of mexico we show that an alternate multiple fuel model of stove and fuel management based on the observed pattern of household accumulation of energy options rather than the simple progression depicted in the traditional energy ladder scenario more accurately depicts cooking fuel use patterns in rural households the multiple fuel model integrates four factors demonstrated to be essential in household decision making under conditions of resource scarcity or uncertainty a economics of fuel and stove type and access conditions to fuels b technical characteristics of cookstoves and cooking practices c cultural preferences and d health impacts this model also allows better estimates of the expected fuelwood demand and indoor air pollution in rural households

bargaining over perfect complements owned separately with experimental test this paper considers the situation in which two perfect complements belong to different owners we calculate the bayesian nash equilibrium in the mechanism of k 1 price bargaining with private value and did experiment to test the theory

on measuring energy poverty in indian households summary the relationship between energy and poverty is obvious and goes both ways recognizing this this paper provides a short overview of different approaches to measuring energy poverty it then presents a novel two dimensional measure of energy poverty and energy distribution that combines the elements of access to different energy types and quantity of energy consumed an assessment of the extent of energy poverty and changes in energy distribution pattern are analyzed by applying this measure to indian household survey data for 1983 2000 the analysis shows a significant reduction in the level of energy poverty and a rapidly developing subcontinent the new measure is a good complement to conventional monetary measures and is general enough to be applied to other developing countries

learning and earning do multiple training events pay a decade of evidence from a cohort of young british men this paper estimates the impact of work related training on wage growth over the period 1981 91 using longitudinal data from the national child development study a cohort of young men aged 23 in 1981 a hurdle negbin model is used to control for training endogeneity we find that training incidence has a significant positive effect on wage growth we also find that young men with a higher level of education are not only more likely to be trained but are also more likely to experience substantially higher wage growth as a result

private sector training and graduate earnings this paper uses a survey of british graduates to estimate the impact of employer provided training on the earnings of men and women graduates the results indicate that although the training impact is reduced after controlling for endogeneity some forms of training have a considerable impact however there are substantial gender differences in the earnings impact of various typ es of training moreover men graduates are more likely to receive training than otherwise identical women

minimum wages on the job training and wage growth using data from the employment opportunities pilot project we examine the relationships between minimum wages wage growth and on the job training we find that minimum wage jobs exhibit less wage growth than other jobs particularly for men we find no evidence however of a unique minimum wage effect on training opportunities we conclude that indirect methods of proxying training with wage growth can be misleading as they fail to distinguish whether the reduced wage growth of workers on minimum wage jobs results from their receiving less training than other workers or whether it is strictly a result of the wage determination process

uniqueness of equilibrium in sealed high bid auctions abstract for the case of two buyers we show that equilibrium in the sealed high bid auction is unique when i buyers reservations prices are drawn independently from distributions with finite support and positive mass at the lower endpoint ii buyers have private values and iii buyers preferences are log supermodular for more than two buyers we obtain the same result under the additional assumptions that iv buyers with the same reservation price have the same preferences v buyers are risk neutral or risk averse with non increasing absolute risk aversion and vi the supports of the different buyers distributions of reservation prices have the same upper endpoint

evaluating the effect of tax deductions on training dutch employers can claim an extra tax deduction when they train employees older than age 40 this discontinuity in a firm s training cost is exploited to identify the tax deduction s effects on training participation and of training participation on wages the results show that the training rate of workers just above age 40 is 15 20 higher than that of workers just below age 40 this difference mainly results from the postponement of training and is not a stimulating effect of the measure the two stage least squares estimate of the wage effect of training is not statistically different from zero

bargaining under incomplete information this paper presents and analyzes a bargaining model of bilateral monopoly under uncertainty under the bargaining rule proposed the buyer and the seller each submit sealed offers that determine whether the good in question is sold and the transfer price the nash equilibrium solution of this bargaining game implies an offer strategy of each party that is monotonic in its own reservation price and depends on its assessment of the opponent s reservation price issues of relative bargaining advantage and efficiency are examined for a number of special cases finally we discuss the appropriateness of the nash solution concept

reassessing the energy ladder household energy use in maun botswana abstract in the context of sub saharan africa s rapid urbanization improved insight into urban energy use is increasingly important based on the predictions of energy transition theory a regional shift from biomass to modern fuels has long been expected to occur in tandem with urban growth however trends observed in the region s towns and cities have often not followed such patterns and fuelwood continues to be important in most areas this paper examines the practical relevance of transition theory using a recent case study conducted by the authors in maun botswana and results previously reported in the literature it finds that despite the long term link between socio economic development and increased modern fuel consumption at the national scale the notion of transition does not accurately reflect ongoing energy use patterns at lower levels of aggregation this is chiefly because its model of household fuel switching largely dismisses the importance of active and strategic decision making by urban consumers and their responsiveness to structural factors such as relative fuel prices as the botswana case illustrates this weakness can significantly distort expectations and policies around urban fuelwood use

the fuelwood consumption in a rural area of greece abstract renewable energy sources are called to play an important role as regards the increasing energy demand worldwide in particular the need to address the problems created by the oil crises has distinguished the importance of renewable energy in economic development biomass is recognized as one of the most important renewable energy sources that can contribute decisively to the energy needs of modern society and the environment protection in both industrialized and developing countries a very important source of biomass is wood and especially fuelwood in greece because of the economic crisis there is an increased consumption of fuelwood especially in rural areas in this paper using a questionnaire and descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis we explore the determinants of fuelwood consumption in a rural area in order to propose appropriate policies for the efficient supply of the market

rural residential energy transition and energy consumption intensity in china abstract this paper examines the impact of residential energy transition on residential energy consumption per capita recpc and identifies the underlying drivers in rural china based on province level panel data for years 1991 2014 in rural china it is shown that energy transition from traditional biomass energy tbe to traditional commercial energy tce significantly decreases recpc while energy transition from tbe or tce to advanced commercial energy ace significantly increases recpc as is revealed by the energy stacking model per capita income has a significantly negative impact on recpc and the impact of lagged recpc is opposite due to the regulation of energy price there exists price distortion in china s rural energy market and the price mechanism functions poorly besides factors including juvenile dependency ratio and education level significantly reduce recpc therefore it is vital to integrate rural energy into national energy strategic system facilitate energy transition process and introduce the market system reform of rural energy and continue to improve the education level of rural residents in rural china

arresting the killer in the kitchen the promises and pitfalls of commercializing improved cookstoves summary in a shift exemplary of neoliberal approaches to development major funders of household energy interventions have begun to emphasize market based stove dissemination over partially subsidized models stove promoters are increasingly expected to operate as self sustaining businesses this shift is viewed as a way to scale up in order to reach millions of poor households lacking access to clean cooking technologies using the case of gira an ngo that has successfully distributed cookstoves in mexico s central highlands for nearly two decades we demonstrate how this trend presents challenges for organizations operating effectively with outside funding in highly contextual local conditions 2009 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

uniqueness and existence of equilibrium in auctions with a reserve price abstract we prove existence and uniqueness of equilibrium for a general class of two player bidding games we apply our results to the first price auction the combination of first and second price auctions the war of attrition the all pay auction as well as combinations of the latter two auction forms we also treat the first price auction without risk neutrality our results deal with the asymmetric affiliated common values environment in the case where signals are independent our results apply to all equilibria when signals are not independent our uniqueness results hold in the class of nondecreasing strategy equilibria journal of economic literature classification number d44

woodland deforestation by charcoal supply to dar es salaam abstract a dynamic model of deforestation around dar es salaam is constructed linking marginal production cost and demand for charcoal the exploited area forms a wedge which expands inland as net price of charcoal increases wood is primarily harvested at the edge of the wedge simulations show that under reasonable assumptions charcoal price increases from 1800 to 1958 tsh bag in 10 years supply area from 3416 to 6886 km2 and harvest from 2 05 to 2 66 mill m3 year increment of woody biomass within the wedge will supply little charcoal for many years because woodland density does not affect production costs therefore reduced demand for charcoal and shift to other forms of energy are the factors controlling deforestation

using clock auctions to dissolve partnership an experimental study abstract we experimentally study clock auctions to dissolve partnerships jointly owned by two players subjects are found to deviate systematically from the nash equilibrium we explain the bidding behaviour in terms of risk aversion and or non standard utility theory

startup costs and the decision to switch from firewood to gas fuel firewood remains a key source of energy for households in developing countries contributing to forest degradation and deforestation the adoption of alternative fuels may be hindered by high startup costs and this problem may be compounded by restrictions in credit availability we use survey data to examine how credit access affects firewood consumption in guatemala our results suggest that access to credit plays a statistically significant role in determining firewood consumption through its effect on the ability to purchase a gas stove however simulations suggest that these effects are small and that subsidizing stoves would be amore promising policy for reducing firewood consumption

socio economic determinants of charcoal expenditures in tanzania evidence from panel data abstract compared to firewood charcoal is a relatively clean and convenient fuel nevertheless the mass production of charcoal can contribute substantially to deforestation rendering it imperative to regulate charcoal use this article uses nationally representative panel data on tanzania conducted in 2008 and 2010 to examine how charcoal expenditures change over time within any given household the focus of the analysis will be on identifying certain socio economic factors that affect charcoal use at the household level the framing of the analysis on variation in time within each household addresses the omitted variable bias that often undermines inference from comparisons across different households we find that while charcoal expenditures increase with household income the rise in charcoal use with income is relatively gradual household size is unrelated to charcoal expenditures but urban rural differences in fuel choice are large even though we include household fixed effects in all specifications in this regard policymakers and urban planners need to pay particular attention to the role of urbanization in predicting trends in charcoal expenditures in developing countries like tanzania

diversifying the brazilian electricity mix income level the endowment effect and governance capacity abstract low and middle income countries are usually trapped by their natural resource abundance and thus have little opportunity to diversify their electricity matrix on the other hand in high income countries new electricity sources have been growing faster regardless of their resource endowments as income grows countries should have more opportunities to develop new technologies thus the evolution of technologies to generate electricity should lead to a new mix of fuel consumption along the steps of an imaginary electricity ladder from the more traditional to the more advanced and cleaner technologies notwithstanding the income effect the endowment effect could hinder the diversity of electricity sources in this context we examine whether or not brazil has been able to diversify its electricity mix with respect to income growth by breaking what we called the endowment trap based on an economic model developed in this research we found evidence that brazil has succeeded in breaking its hydroelectric dependency but has not eliminated the polluting sources

household energy preferences for cooking in urban ouagadougou burkina faso abstract an extensive survey on household expenditures in ouagadougou the capital of burkina faso was used to analyze the factors determining urban household energy choices using a multinomial logit model wood energy remains the preferred fuel of most urban households in the country though rational the choice is not sustainable as it portends a threat to the savanna woodlands and the economy many important policies have been adopted by public authorities to minimize household wood energy consumption and to substitute it by alternative fuel despite the magnitude of all these policies the depletion rate of the forest resource is increasing a kind of inertia is thus observed for household preferences for cooking fuel this model analyzes the sociological and economic variables of household energy preferences for cooking in ouagadougou the analyses show that the inertia of household cooking energy preferences are due to poverty factors such as low income poor household access to electricity for primary and secondary energy low house standard household size high frequency of cooking certain meals using woodfuel as cooking energy the descriptive analyses show that the domestic demand for wood energy is strongly related to household income the firewood utilization rate decreases with increasing household income in other words this fuel appears as a transition good for these households which aim for other sources of energy for cooking that are more adapted for urban consumption this implies that a price subsidy policy for liquid petroleum gas lpg and its cook stoves could significantly decrease the utilization rate of wood energy

who is energy poor evidence from the least developed regions in china abstract energy poverty has become one of the major challenges faced by the world s energy system however there is no consensus on the measure of energy poverty several approaches have been proposed among which the energy poverty line has been defined as the minimum quantity of energy required for basic life particularly for cooking and heating this paper estimates the relationship between energy expenditure and household income and identifies the energy poverty line based on the threshold above which the energy share becomes insensitive to household income using household survey data from rural qinghai china considering the ongoing energy transition and the negative impacts of biomass energy consumption for the environment and health the study sets a scenario in which all bioenergy consumption is replaced with electricity the findings show that 57 of rural households in rural qinghai are energy poor the phase of energy poverty in terms of basic energy access has passed so increasing the share of efficient modern energy in household energy consumption requires more attention considering the existence of a population that is not income poor but is energy poor a conventional policy design that primarily targets income poor households may be inappropriate in this case

woodfuels livelihoods and policy interventions changing perspectives in the 1970s it appeared that fuelwood use was growing rapidly and this could have major adverse impacts on the resource and poor users by the mid 1980s revised assessments indicated that there was less of a problem than had been foreseen and much less of a need for forestry interventions to maintain supplies as a result many of the latter were sharply scaled back additional information and analysis that has become available since the 1980s support the view that there is no need for large scale interventions devoted just to provision of fuelwood however declining access to supplies or markets can raise significant problems in some areas and for particular categories of user growing urban demand for charcoal can also cause local problems in particular in africa the potentials for appropriate forms of intervention are discussed

sources of change in the demand for energy by indonesian households 1980 2002 abstract this paper describes the energy transition in indonesia and examines the determinants of energy demand by fuel the key innovation of this paper is the documentation of how these relationships have evolved over time we present a new method to combine econometric analysis and index decomposition analysis to examine household energy transition this approach also allows us to consider a broad range of demographic and structural factors while providing a clear and concise representation of our findings we find that the composite indices mask important underlying patterns in particular our results indicate that energy transition in indonesia cannot be confidently attributed to any one index rather it has been driven predominantly by the triple interaction of demographics income growth and change in demand supply parameters our findings point to the importance of utilizing time series data in studying both the characteristics and determinants of energy transition in developing countries

corporate social responsibility in the banking industry motives and financial performance abstract the current study investigates the association between corporate social responsibility csr and financial performance fp and discusses the driving motives of banks to engage in csr three motives namely strategic choices altruism and greenwashing suggest that the relationship between csr and fp is positive non negative and non existent respectively we obtained our sample which covered 2003 2009 from the ethical investment research service eiris databank and bankscope database the data consists of 162 banks in 22 countries we then classified the banks into four types based on their degree of engagement in csr this study proposes the use of an extended version of the heckman two step regression in which the first step adopts a multinomial logit model and the second step estimates the performance equation with the inverse mills ratio generated by the first step the empirical results show that csr positively associates with fp in terms of return on assets return on equity net interest income and non interest income in contrast csr negatively associates with non performing loans hence strategic choice is the primary motive of banks to engage in csr

the benefits of higher education a comparison of universities and polytechnics the binary divide between the universities and polytechnics is ending should university teaching become more like polytechnic teaching or do the older universities provide a better model for the expanded university sector polytechnic teaching is often regarded as being cheaper but one should not look at the costs without also looking at the benefits one obvious measure of these is given by a comparison of the incomes earned by the gradu ates of the two types of institutions

why do wages increase with tenure on the job training and life cycle wage growth observed within firms empirical results in this paper indicate that firm specific wage growth occurs almost exclusively during periods of on the job training this finding suggests that within firm wage growth is mainly determined by contemporaneous productivity growth the results provide no evidence that contractual considerations are an important source of firm specific wage growth copyright 1989 by american economic association

new light and heat on forests as energy reserves many poor countries face dwindling forest resources and yet continue to rely on wood based energy the common wisdom pertaining to household consumption of woodfuels assumes that they are inferior goods much of the literature on woodfuels and alternatives presupposes a fuel income ladder where increases in per capita income will lead to woodfuel substitutes while this assumption may hold true in the long term at the level of the structural transformation within a developing economy evidence presented here for the case of madagascar suggests that in the short and medium term in very poor countries woodfuels are normal goods this implies that reliance on income gains for alleviating pressure on forests from energy consumption is neither sound environmental policy nor sensible energy policy

seniority earnings and unions this paper uses a new data source to investigate whether wages rise more with seniority in unionized or non unionized workplaces the data distinguish workers who are covered by incremental wage scales with automatic progression by seniority for union workers with seniority scales the union wage differential increases with seniority this is not the case for union workers without seniority scales taking account of this heterogeneity we are able to reconcile previous paradoxical empirical findings the results provide support for discriminating monopoly models of the trade union and have important efficiency and distributional implications