the rise and fall of the washington consensus as a paradigm for developing countries abstract the introduction of the washington consensus involved not simply a swing from state led to market oriented policies but also a shift in the ways in which development problems were framed and in the types of explanation through which policies were justified key changes were the partial globalization of development policy analysis and a shift from historicism to ahistorical performance assessment the main challenge to this approach is a latent southern consensus which is apparent in the convergence between east asian developmentalism and latin american neostructuralism the demise of the washington consensus is inevitable because its methodology and ideology are in contradiction

price adjustment in long term contracts the case of coal in two recent papers i examined the effects of relationship specific investment on the duration of contracts negotiated between electric utilities and coal suppliers that work demonstrated that when relationshipspecific investment is important for a cost minimizing supply relationship contracts are frequently utilized that specify ex ante the terms and conditions of trade over many future years in this article i examine the characteristics of the price adjustment provisions specified in these long term coal contracts i utilize a sample of about 250 coal contracts to analyze the structure of formal price adjustment provisions in coal contracts in order to determine the factors that affect initial negotiated contract prices and to examine actual transaction price behavior over time there has been much recent theoretical work as well as some related empirical work that has focused on the benefits of long term contracts when relationship specific investments are important 2 there has also been some theoretical work that focuses on the contractual arrangements that may be chosen to mitigate opportunism problems and guard against

structural factors in the economic reforms of china eastern europe and the former soviet union reform in china and russia jeffrey sachs and wing thye woo china s experience does not show that gradual reform is superior to the shock therapy undertaken in eastern europe and the former soviet union eefsu differing performance primarily reflects different economic structures prior to reform china was a peasant agricultural society eefsu was urban and overindustrialized in both jobs in state enterprises were so heavily subsidized that workers refused to move to new industries elsewhere even when productivity in the latter was much higher in eefsu the large state sector impeded structural adjustment curtailing subsidies would have produced many losers who used their power to resist this outcome failure to curtail subsidies then cut off the potential supply of labour and other factors to new emerging firms china s state enterprises have not performed as well as the rest of the chinese economy and do not explain its success rapid growth was possible because the large agricultural sector contained vast surplus labour and did not enjoy subsidies and soft budget constraints once constraints on migration across regions and jobs were removed this labour was available to fuel expansion in new industries unlike the distributional conflict in eefsu in china reallocation of labour allowed all groups to gain in both partial liberalization also unleashed macroeconomic pressures manageable in china because of rapid growth and adequate monetary policy but explosive in much of eefsu because of deeper structural problems and gross monetary mismanagement

the impact of sunday shopping on employment and hours of work in the retail industry evidence from canada abstract between 1980 and 1998 every canadian province passed legislation that in some way relaxed restrictions on sunday shopping this study exploits the variation in deregulation dates between provinces to identify how retail employers adjust employment and hours of work when deciding to open on sundays a major complication of this analysis is to first determine for which provinces the deregulation dates are useful indicators of increases in sunday store openings this paper uses a unique trading day regression approach to identify these provinces and then uses aggregate data from the selected provinces to estimate a simple dynamic labour demand model that allows employment and hours to be imperfect substitutes in production the results suggest that retailers needs for sunday labour were disproportionately satisfied through increases in employment levels comparison of the estimates at three levels of the retail industry suggests that the employment and hours gains were larger among general merchandise stores than among more specialized retail establishments and relatively modest at the aggregate retail industry level in addition despite evidence of an immediate shortfall in the employment level below the long run optimal level the results suggest that firms were unable to compensate by temporarily increasing the hours of their existing employees

economic analysis of upgrading aging residential buildings in china based on dynamic energy consumption and energy price in a market economy abstract this article employed a standard lcc to conduct economic analysis of upgrading the aging residential buildings in china according to the current situation an interest rate of 6 an inflation rate of 3 an increase rate of annual energy savings of 2 and an increase rate of electricity price of 2 were assumed in the method the results indicated that only relying on gradually increasing electricity price and governments subsidies was not enough after detailed analysis of the energy saving measures and the distribution of all benefits from building energy retrofit it was found that actually only 1 3 of original cost was spent only for energy savings the second 1 3 for both energy savings and good facade appearance and occupants should share the last 1 3 because even if without energy retrofit they would have to pay the part too the corresponding results proved that the first 1 3 of investment cost could be drawn back within the residue life cycle and so the investment could be accepted in a sheer market economy in the end a model about distribution of investment cost of and benefits was proposed to adapt the market economy to overcome the financial problems in china

information and search an alternative approach to the theory of minimum wages the peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in a concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess

the national and international impacts of coal to gas switching in the chinese power sector abstract we evaluate the national and international impacts on energy consumption and production trade and economic activity of chinese coal to gas switching in the electric power sector we find that assumptions about growth rates in electricity generation from renewables are the key determinant in evaluating the economic consequences for coal to gas switching in china the ability to supplement natural gas generation with renewables leads to smaller reductions in chinese and global economic activity than the alternatives

economic analysis of energy saving renovation measures for urban existing residential buildings in china based on thermal simulation and site investigation abstract energy saving renovations of existing residential buildings have proven to be very helpful in alleviating the pressure of energy shortages and co 2 emission but an economic analysis of the measures by using a life cycle cost lcc method is very important and necessary to determine whether to implement them or not based on thermal simulation and site investigation the paper uses one urban existing residential building in hangzhou city of china as the subject building and analyzes the economic benefits from the energy saving renovation measures through the lcc method the findings clearly show that the investigation of the factual electricity consumption of the subject building is very important to predict accurately the energy saving effects and financial benefits of the measures for the building because of the great discrepancy between in fact and in thermal simulation of the heating and cool loads and the too cheap electricity price may hamper the development of energy saving implementations in residential sector in china

escaping poverty and becoming poor in 36 villages of central and western uganda abstract twenty four per cent of households in 36 village communities of central and western uganda have escaped from poverty over the past 25 years but another 15 per cent have simultaneously fallen into poverty a roughly equal number of households escaped from poverty in the first period ten to 25 years ago as in the second period the last ten years examined here however almost twice as many households fell into poverty during the second period as in the first period progress in poverty reduction has slowed down as a result multiple causes are associated with descent into poverty and these causes vary significantly between villages in the two different regions for nearly two thirds of all households in both regions however ill health and health related costs were a principal reason for descent into poverty escaping poverty is also associated with diverse causes which vary across the two regions compared to increases in urban employment however land related reasons have been more import

the reform of electricity power sector in the pr of china deregulation was launched as a concept in the united states more than a decade ago the european union commission has also formally announced that electric deregulation must be completed by the end of 2005 deregulation or reform has already been a popular topic on the electricity power sector this paper will discuss the restructuring and regulatory reforms in the pr china s power sector it begins with a discussion of the characteristics of electricity reform or deregulation in other countries including the us the united kingdom and so on it will be followed by the industry structure and regulatory framework that characterized china s power industry during the latter part of the 20th century and the history of china s reform to restructure the power industry to competitive suppliers of generating services in recent years it discusses the role of the state power corporation in the reform and gives a detailed description of the latest electricity reform in the year 2002 the paper concludes with some thoughts regarding future challenges and trends on the reform for china s power sector

why did the energy intensity fall in china s industrial sector in the 1990s the relative importance of structural change and intensity change there have been a variety of studies investigating the relative importance of structural change and real intensity change to the change in china s energy consumption in the 1980s however no detailed analysis to date has been done to examine whether or not the increased energy efficiency trend in the 1980s still prevailed in the 1990s this article has filled this gap by investigating the change in energy consumption in china s industrial sector in the 1990s based on the data sets of value added and end use energy consumption for the 29 industrial subsectors and using the newly proposed decomposition method of giving no residual our results clearly show that the overwhelming contributor to the decline in industrial energy use in the 1990s was the decline in real energy intensity indicating that the trend of real energy intensity declines in the 1980s at the 2 digit level was still maintained in the 1990s this conclusion still holds even if we lower the growth rate dramatically in line with the belief that the growth rate of china s gdp may be overestimated

the impact of china s electricity price deregulation on coal and power industries two stage game modeling abstract the regulated price mechanism in china s power industry has attracted much criticism because of its incapability to optimize the allocation of resources to build an open orderly competitive and complete power market system the chinese government launched an unprecedented marketization reform in 2015 to deregulate the electricity price this paper examines the impact of electricity price deregulation at the industry level we first construct two stage dynamic game models to portrait the interaction between the coal and coal fired power industries using the models we compare analytically the equilibriums with and without electricity price regulation concerning electricity price electricity generation coal price and coal production the theoretical analyses find three regulated electricity price intervals that differentiate the reform impacts afterward we collect empirical data to estimate the model parameters the influences on the two industries in terms of market outcome and industrial profitability are simulated our results suggest that the current regulated electricity price falls within the medium interval which means deregulation will result in higher electricity price but lower coal price less coal production and less electricity generation the robustness analyses show that our results hold with respect to the electricity generation efficiency and price sensitivity of electricity demand

an analysis on the short term sectoral competitiveness impact of carbon tax in china abstract market based instruments particularly carbon tax have recently drawn the attention of chinese government by their cost effective contribution to the achievement of china s climate targets most of the recent policy proposals have focused on its long term impact however particularly for policy makers both long term and short term effects of carbon tax would be necessary when determining tax rates we provided a detailed analysis of short term impacts of carbon tax on sectoral competitiveness in this paper we divided china s economy into 36 sectors based on its 2007 input output table in order to examine the ratio of carbon tax added costs to sector gdp we were thus able to determine the impact level of a carbon tax on each sector we then divided the sectoral trade impact into domestic competitiveness with regards to foreign imported products and international competitiveness external to the chinese domestic market we found that a high tax level 100 yuan t co2 may necessitate compensatory measures to certain highly affected industries and that a low tax rate 10 yuan t co2 would generate few competitiveness problems for all industries and may therefore be considered as an appropriate starting point

the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s fossil fired power plants an empirical analysis abstract this paper investigates the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s generation plants based on the third industrial census data and the first economic census data partial factor productivity pfp analysis indicates that the productivity improvements in labor and capital inputs associated with the reforms are approximately 26 and 45 respectively the effect of the reforms on fuel expense is weakly significant but there is evidence of significant productivity improvement in fuel usage further total factor productivity tfp analysis shows that the efficiency gain from the reforms is still significant when the substitution effect of labor and capital inputs are considered though the magnitude is much lower than that of the pfp analysis the effect of the reforms on technical efficiency becomes weakly significant when fuel expense is further included in tfp analysis but a significant positive effect is expected if fuel input is measured in physical quantity

contract duration and relationship specific investments empirical evidence from coal markets this paper examines the importance of specific relationship investments in determining the duration of coal contracts negotiated between coal suppliers and electric utilities data for 277 coal contracts are used to perform the analysis the results provide strong support for the view that buyers and sellers make longer commitments to the terms of future trade at the contract execution stage and rely less on repeated bargaining when relationship specific investments are more important

analysis of the market penetration of clean coal technologies and its impacts in china s electricity sector abstract this paper discusses policy instruments for promoting the market penetration of clean coal technologies ccts into china s electricity sector and the evaluation of corresponding effects based on the reality that coal will remain the predominant fuel to generate electricity and conventional pulverized coal boiler power plants have serious impacts on environment degradation development of clean coal technologies could be one alternative to meet china s fast growing demand of electricity as well as protect the already fragile environment a multi period market equilibrium model is applied and an electricity model of china is established to forecast changes in the electricity system up to 2030s three policy instruments so 2 emission charge co 2 emission charge and implementing subsidies are considered in this research the results show that all instruments cause a significant shift in china s electricity structure promote ccts competitiveness and lead china to gain great benefit in both resource saving and environment improvement since resource security and environment degradation are becoming primary concerns in china policies that could help to gain generations market share of advanced coal based technologies such as ccts is suitable for the current situation of china s electricity sector

substitution possibilities and determinants of energy intensity for china abstract this paper measures technological change factor demand and inter factor and inter fuel substitutability measures for china we use individual fuel price data and a two stage approach to estimate total factor cost functions and fuel share equations both inter factor and inter fuel substitution elasticities are calculated and the change in energy intensity is decomposed into its driving forces the results suggest that energy is substitutable for capital regionally and for labor nationally capital substitutes for energy more easily than labor does energy intensity changes vary by region but the major drivers seem to be budget effect and the adoption of energy intensive technologies which might be embodied in high level energy using exports and sectors capital investment and even old technique and equipment imports whether the trend in rising energy intensity continues will be significant for china and the rest of the world

electricity pricing in a partial reformed plan system the case of china despite three decades of reform the electric power industry in china is still organised by a partial reformed plan system where the investment to build capacity has been liberalised but the prices and the production remain controlled by the state this paper examines the pricing behaviour of the power supply in china where the state attempts to balance the interest between the public and the electric power industry the empirical evidence shows that the cost factors are critical to the electricity pricing in china and that the bargaining mechanism which sets the plan price allows the power producers to face a soft budget constraint on their own costs

deregulation and growth in china s energy sector a review of recent development dramatic changes have taken place in china s energy sector over the past decade these changes have important implications for energy consumption trade production and regulatory policies in china and beyond the objective of this paper is to review some of the key issues associated with deregulation and growth in china s energy sector specifically the paper presents a survey of recent reforms in this sector it also analyses the impact of deregulation on energy policy ownership foreign investment and trade and sheds some lights on the sources of growth in china s energy sector

the integration of major fuel source markets in china evidence from panel cointegration tests abstract the paper tests for energy price co movement in china over the new regime as part of a strategy to test for the existence of a national energy market panel cointegration test statistics suggest that not all energy commodities are spatially homogenous in prices and the processes of energy price cointegration are different over time and over groups of fuels the statistics demonstrate china s gradual spatially partial and idiosyncratic energy reform process coal and electricity price series have co moved since 2003 while the national panel cointegration test statistics suggest that gasoline and diesel price series have co moved since 1997 regional panel tests also show that there are apparently differences in the emergence of energy price co movement this suggests that regional energy markets have emerged in china one of the important lessons of the research is that an energy market has to some extent already emerged in china and as a consequence energy prices are much less distorted than previously if correct this fact is of major global significance both in terms of future environmental effects and future trade and investment negotiations as china is seen internationally as a market driven economy

reform without losers an interpretation of china s dual track approach to transition this paper develops a simple model to analyze the dual track approach to market liberalization as a mechanism for implementing efficient pareto improving economic reform that is reform achieving efficiency without creating losers the approach based on the continued enforcement of the existing plan while simultaneously liberalizing the market can be understood as a method for making implicit lump sum transfers to compensate potential losers of the reform the model highlights the critical roles of enforcement of the plan for achieving pareto improvement and full liberalization of the market track for achieving efficiency we examine how the dual track approach has worked in product and labor market liberalization in china

the transition to a market economy pitfalls of partial reform we present a theory of a partial economic reform of a planned economy similar to the one that took place in russia since 1988 and in china earlier in such a reform some markets are liberalized in the sense that producers can sell output to whomever they want including private firms at free prices but at the same time must sell to state firms at state prices we show that such a reform can result in a substantial diversion of subsidized inputs away from state firms and toward private firms even when state firms value these inputs more the result may be a reduction of total output the simple analysis sheds light on many consequences of the soviet reform such as breakdown of coordination of production increased state policing of delivery quotas prohibitions of trading cooperatives and opposition to privatization the model also explains why partial reform failed in russia but worked in china

beyond the poverty agenda insights from the new politics of development in uganda summary the politics of development has shifted significantly in recent years with largely negative implications for the poverty agenda this is particularly apparent in countries like uganda where poverty reduction papers have been displaced by national development plans aimed at structural transformation driven by the discovery of oil the growing influence of rising powers vis a vis traditional donors and domestic political shifts although this heralds the possibility of deeper national ownership over development policy international financial institutions have adopted strategies to maintain their influence moreover uganda currently lacks the underlying political capacities and relationships required to roll out this ambitious new agenda

reform of china s electric power industry challenges facing the government abstract china s electrical power industry requires substantial reform if the country s economic growth is to be sustained the 1997 electricity law the creation of a state power company and the abolition of the ministry of electric power are important first steps on the path of reform but it seems that a clear plan is lacking objectives of the reform should include increasing the capacity to deliver power constraining the costs of the power industry increasing end user efficiency and minimising environmental damage efforts should be directed at restructuring the industry in such a way that fair competition may be introduced at least in power generation and at establishing a viable regulatory agency both tasks have the potential to be thwarted by a range of vested interests at different levels of government and industry

energy policies for managing china s carbon emission abstract the well documented close relationship between economic growth and energy use indicates that the emergence of a country as an economic power cannot occur without increased in energy use but just as the scale of china s rise as an economic power has no clear parallel in history its conflict between economic growth and energy use has also shattered all precedents this planet s future energy scenario hinges on the ability of this decoupling the question this policy forum addressed is how to find the optimum way to accomplish this decoupling through government directive government centered command and control approaches or cac or market forces market based instruments or mbi it concludes that market rather than government can decide the optimum way to decouple china s economic growth from energy use facilitating this decoupling driven by market force requires getting the prices right for energy

the fourth commandment is it pareto efficient a bill to legalise sunday trading has recently been defeated in the british parliament an argument commonly advanced by traders opposing liberalisation starts by observing that if a few shops were to choose to open on sunday they would attract so much business from retailers trading only on weekdays that soon all shops would be forced to open on sunday some customers might find this convenient but to the extent they were merely induced to change their shopping day no new demand would be created without an increase in weekly turnover the additional costs of sunday opening would bankrupt some shops and the survivors would have to raise prices thus there is no guarantee that on balance consumers will gain a counter argument denies that all shops would be forced to open on sundays insofar as consumers really prefer lower prices to the convenience of sunday opening then a shop which closed on sunday and used a fraction of the cost saving to reduce prices for the rest of the week could maintain its sales and increase its profit giving retailers the option of sunday opening therefore enables them to respond more sensitively to consumers preferences as between the convenience of sunday shopping and lower prices this seems to be the position taken by tullock i975 pp 673 4 my guess is that most economists would feel sympathetic to this argument as i certainly am however matters are not entirely straightforward the retail trade can hardly be regarded as perfectly competitive and starting from a second best equilibrium there is no guarantee that permitting more competition in one dimension of the characteristic space yields a potential pareto gain these considerations suggest that the argument be pursued at a more formal level the following section examines sunday opening in the context of a standard model of imperfect competition the principal results are that the removal of the restrictions may result in a social loss with a loss being less likely the more competitive is the market an informal preview of the argument may be helpful given that travel costs must be incurred to make a purchase customers who live close to a shop cannot easily be enticed away by competitors the real fight is for buyers located approximately equi distant from two neighbouring stores ideally each shop would like to offer price cuts to these distant customers only but this is not feasible however for customers who go out to work the opportunity cost of shopping time may well be lowest on sunday so for at least some customers sunday opening results in a fall in transport costs thereby offering more to

an imbalanced development of coal and electricity industries in china china s coal and electricity industries have a strong reliance on each other however because of excessive invasion of government it is difficult for these two industries to form a stable reasonable and transaction cost saving relationships but long run disputes and quarrels this paper discusses the pricing policies and transaction relationship between these two industries from the historical perspective it begins with the discussion of coal coal market has become competitive since 1980 due to the system of dual track approach but coal sold to electricity was still tightly controlled by government guided pricing then the paper examines electricity investment and tariff reform unlike coal entry to electricity generation sector was gradually relaxed but generation and retailing tariffs are still strictly regulated as energy demand and prices soared after 2002 coal and electricity enterprises are all unsatisfied with the rule of price setting of coal sold to electricity industry this paper concludes that the deliberate low coal price policy does protect electricity industry from fuel cost fluctuation but harm coal industry allocative and productive efficiency are difficult to achieve in the long run

gradual reforms and the emergence of energy market in china evidence from tests for convergence of energy prices this study investigates the emergence of energy markets by testing for convergence of energy prices with a new dataset on energy spot prices in 35 major cities in china both descriptive statistics and unit root are employed to test the convergence of energy prices for each of four fuel price series the whole study period is divided into two sub periods in order to reconcile the gradual energy reforms the results show the steady improvement in energy market performance in china especially during the second sub period which suggests that the market appears to be playing an increasing role in determining energy prices while panel unit root tests show energy markets are integrated in china as a whole city by city univariate unit root tests suggest that there are still many regional energy markets probably because energy reserves especially coal vary widely across regions since china s energy economy is gradually moving towards market oriented mechanisms the existing literature may become obsolete soon

after work shopping employment effects of a deregulation of shop opening hours in the german retail sector abstract this study investigates the impact of a deregulation of shop opening laws on employment in the german retail sector exploiting the gradual change in the opening times of shops across states and using data from the german socio economic panel difference in differences estimates indicate an average increase in the employment probability driven by a rise in the likelihood of working marginal part time hours workers in small firms are likely to experience a reduction of their propensity to work for individuals facing high family related supply side constraints the change in shop opening hours has opposing effects on employment positive on lower and negative on upper parts of the hours distribution overall the deregulation is estimated to have raised the likelihood of working fewer hours than desired by the workers

barriers to political analysis in aid bureaucracies from principle to practice in dfid and the world bank summary politics has become a central concern in development discourse and yet the use of political analysis as a means for greater aid effectiveness remains limited and contested within development agencies this article uses qualitative data from two governance leaders the united kingdom department for international development and the world bank to analyze the administrative hurdles facing the institutionalization of political analysis in aid bureaucracies we find that programing management and training practices across headquarters and country offices remain largely untouched by a political analysis agenda which suffers from its identification with a small cross national network of governance professionals

the emergence and evolution of regional convergence clusters in china s energy markets employing the new regression tests for convergence club convergence and clustering proposed by phillips and sul 2007 this paper models and analyses the behaviour of china s energy sectors energy market convergence clusters are identified using new price data and their regional spatial distributions are mapped for four major fuel types coal gasoline diesel and electricity the findings are as follows i as yet there are no fully integrated national energy markets in china as more than one convergence cluster is identified for all four fuels ii some regional energy markets can be regarded as quite mature as evidenced by the existence of some highly concentrated convergence clusters connected geographically iii some regional markets remain in a state of transition as witnessed by convergence clusters that are scattered geographically and that are growing in membership iv it seems that there is more regional based integration for coal and electricity than for gasoline and diesel as more convergent clusters were identified for coal and electricity than for gasoline and diesel and v overall china still appears to be in the process of energy market integration as demonstrated by the number and evolution of convergence clusters over time

china s large scale power shortages of 2004 and 2011 after the electricity market reforms of 2002 explanations and differences abstract since the electricity market reforms of 2002 two large scale power shortages one occurring in 2004 and one in 2011 exerted a tremendous impact on the economic development of china and also gave rise to a fierce discussion regarding electricity system reforms in this paper the background and the influence scale of the two power shortages are described second reasons for these two large scale power shortages are analyzed from the perspectives of power generation power consumption and coordination of power sources and grid network construction investments characteristics of these two large scale power shortages are then summarized by comparatively analyzing the performance and the formation of the reasons behind these two large scale power shortages finally some effective measures that take into account the current status of electricity market reforms in china are suggested this paper concludes that to eliminate power shortages in china both the supply and the demand should be considered and these considerations should be accompanied by supervisory policies and incentive mechanisms

market driven coal prices and state administered electricity prices in china this paper analyzes how the chinese government adjusts electricity prices for both industrial and residential users in response to changes in coal prices using an asymmetric error correction model our results show that there is a long term relation between the coal price and electricity prices but the relationship is weak especially for residential pricing in the short run we find electricity prices are adjusting faster upwards than downwards price adjustment towards long run equilibrium is faster for residential users upwards than downwards on the other hand we find no evidence of asymmetric equilibrium adjustment in the electricity price for industrial use the weak long term relationship reflects the rigidity in electricity pricing and government s reluctance to subject end users to fluctuations of raw materials cost shifts

what goes up recent trends in china s energy consumption since 1996 china s energy output has dropped by 17 while primary energy use has fallen by 4 driven almost entirely by shrinking output from coal mines and declining direct use since china is the world s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases it is important to understand the sources of this apparent transformation and whether it portends a permanent change in patterns of energy use this remarkable reversal of the long term expansion of energy use has occurred even as the economy has continued to grow albeit more slowly than in the early 1990s generation of electric power has risen implying a steep fall in end uses particularly in industry available information points to a variety of forces contributing to this phenomenon including rapid improvements in coal quality structural changes in industry shutdowns of factories in both the state owned and non state segments of the economy improvements in end use efficiency and greater use of gas and electricity in households a combination of slowing economic growth industrial restructuring broader economic system reforms and environmental and energy efficiency policies has apparently led to at least a temporary decline in and perhaps a long term reduction in the growth of energy use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

what does the show case show evidence of and lessons from adjustment in uganda abstract uganda is often seen as an african show case for the beneficial effects of structural adjustment high growth rates have been combined with a high degree of ownership of the reforms at the same time critics have pointed to continued aid dependence and limited growth of the important agricultural export sector the contribution of this paper to this debate is three fold first ownership has not always been exemplary and is still fragile in some respects second although aid has indeed been important for bringing about high growth aid dependence has diminished over time third there have been real supply responses from the agricultural export sector

on the economics of regulated early closing hours some evidence from canada in many countries such as australia canada and britain the hours of daily retail operation are controlled through the political process this paper tests one hypothesis for why regulation is adopted the hypothesis is that early closing hours are a low cost institutional response to net social costs that can arise when time is used competitively to redistribute customers spatially competition produces this result when stores s marginal customers value longer shopping hours more highly than the average customer evidence is presented on the characteristics of 45 ontario cities that had the choice of whether or not to adopt early closing hours and logit analysis is used to test the model s predictions the estimates of the probability of choosing early closing hours are then used to test the model s prediction on store density in general the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that municipal control over shopping hours in ontario is appropriate

application of residual modification approach in seasonal arima for electricity demand forecasting a case study of china abstract electricity demand forecasting could prove to be a useful policy tool for decision makers thus accurate forecasting of electricity demand is valuable in allowing both power generators and consumers to make their plans although a seasonal arima model is widely used in electricity demand analysis and is a high precision approach for seasonal data forecasting errors are unavoidable in the forecasting process consequently a significant research goal is to further improve forecasting precision to help people in the electricity sectors make more sensible decisions this study proposes residual modification models to improve the precision of seasonal arima for electricity demand forecasting in this study pso optimal fourier method seasonal arima model and combined models of pso optimal fourier method with seasonal arima are applied in the northwest electricity grid of china to correct the forecasting results of seasonal arima the modification models forecasting of the electricity demand appears to be more workable than that of the single seasonal arima the results indicate that the prediction accuracy of the three residual modification models is higher than the single seasonal arima model and that the combined model is the most satisfactory of the three models

political settlements and productive sector policies understanding sector differences in uganda summary this article uses a political settlement framework to better understand why ruling elites support some productive sectors and not others i focus on how ruling elites build and maintain their ruling coalition i argue that promoting particular productive activities is favored when the relationship between ruling elites and the relevant industry actors is important for building and or maintaining the ruling coalition this was the case in the ugandan dairy sector but not in the fisheries sector and with regard to advisory services reform where the original initiatives ran against the interests of powerful factions these findings help to improve our knowledge about the political sources of sector differences

a critical review of china s rapidly developing renewable energy and energy efficiency policies renewable energy and energy efficiency reee policies have far reaching implications for energy security climate change economic competitiveness pollution and human livelihood for these reasons reee has become a national priority for the chinese government particularly since 2005 this paper aims to critically review china s reee policies in six sectors electricity industry transportation buildings and local government in addition to examining the progress china has made in the development and implementation of reee policies this review also identifies limitations and room for improvement finally five policy recommendations are presented

the economic efficiency of sunday trading restrictions restriction of shop opening hours is current but controversial pr actice in britain and much of europe the economic case presented for such restrictions is that given the constraint that individual shop s may not vary their price by time of day competitive pressures woul d induce excessive opening at times when high costs would be incurred such as on sundays the authors show that such inefficient equilib ria are a theoretical possibility empirical evidence on retail costs and demand in the united kingdom shows that this case does not arise in practice and that deregulation of opening hours would lead to low er costs and prices copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

hours of operation restrictions and competition aming retail firms this study examines the redistributive effects of government regulations concerning the hours in which retail stores may remain open for business throughout canada municipal by laws restrict nighttime shopping hours to a few specified days of the week in analyzing the outcome of these restrictions a model of consumer behaviour is used which emphasizes the consumers s decision concerning the allocation of purchases between small and large retail outlets the empirical results are consistant with the theoretical model indicating that such market intervention redistributes sales from large to small stores

electricity demand and basic needs empirical evidence from china s households an increasing block tariff ibt has been implemented nationwide in the residential sector in china since 2012 however knowledge about ibt design is still limited particularly how to determine the electricity volume for the first block of an ibt scheme assuming the first block should be set based on some measure of electricity poverty we attempt to model household electricity demand such that the range of basic needs can be established we show that in chinese households there exists a threshold for electricity consumption with respect to income which could be considered a measure of electricity poverty and the threshold differs between rural and urban areas for rural urban families electricity consumption at the level of 7th 5th income decile households can be considered the threshold for basic needs or a measure of electricity poverty since household electricity demand in rural urban areas does not respond to income changes until after 7th 5th income decile accordingly the first ibt block for some provinces e g beijing appears to have been set at a level that is too high over time however given continued rapid growth the ibt will begin to better reflect actual basic needs

analysis of thermal coal pricing and the coal price distortion in china from the perspective of market forces abstract the price of thermal coal has always been the focus of the debate between coal mining industry and electric power industry the thermal coal price is always lower than other same quality coal and this phenomenon of thermal coal price distortion has been existing in china for a long time the distortion coal price can not reflect the external cost and the resource scarcity of coal which could result in environment deteriorating and inefficient resource allocation this paper studied the phenomenon of thermal coal price distortion through economic theoretical modeling and empirical cointegration analysis from the perspective of market forces the results show that thermal coal price is determined by electricity price the prediction elasticity of a electricity enterprise price elasticity of demand of electricity the input prediction elasticity of a electricity enterprise and the price elasticity of supply of thermal coal the main reason of coal price distortion is the unbalance market force of coal industry and thermal coal generation industry the distortion rate of coal price is positively related to the market force of electric power industry and negatively related to the industrial concentration of coal industry

right target wrong mechanism agricultural modernization and poverty reduction in uganda summary household consumption surveys suggest that the downward trend in rural poverty indicators recorded in uganda during the 1990s has been reversed since 2000 this paper examines the ugandan government s strategy to reduce rural poverty the plan for modernization of agriculture pma it argues that while there appear few better choices of target for the pma than to improve incomes of the rural poor through increased agricultural productivity emphasis on decentralization as a mechanism for poverty reduction is misplaced in the current political context of uganda the paper considers what alternative mechanisms might better deliver reductions in rural poverty

the performance of long term contracts further evidence from coal markets this article extends my previous work on price adjustment in long term coal contracts to cover a period in which the nominal market prices for coal were below the prices specified in the preexisting long term contracts two related sets of questions are explored first did actual transactions prices for coal delivered pursuant to old contracts follow contractual pricing formulas leading to higher rather than lower prices or did they adapt quickly to changing market conditions second what were the relative roles offormal contractual provisions voluntary renegotiation and breach of contractual promises in determining actual transactions prices quantities and the durability of contractual relations it appears that actual transactions prices for coal delivered pursuant to old contracts were rigid downward following written contractual provisions rather than changes in current market values changing economic conditions led to an increase in renegotiation breach and litigation but the vast majority of existing long term contracts endured through the market downturn without major changes in prices or quantities from those previously agreed to by contract the threat of legal sanctions appears to have played an important role in sustaining contractual promises

economic policy distribution and poverty the nature of disagreements abstract the last 20 years have seen growing areas of agreement on poverty reduction strategies but disagreements on economic policy distribution and poverty seem to have intensified this paper tries to identify the underlying nature of these disagreements related to differences in perspective and framework between finance ministry and civil society tendencies it is argued that the deep divisions one sees can be located in differences in the level of aggregation adopted the time horizon considered and assumptions made on market structure and power mutual understanding could be advanced by further exploration of these differences and the adoption by both sides of the approach of dialogue rather than negotiation

the politics of staying poor exploring the political space for poverty reduction in uganda summary despite claims that uganda s recent success in poverty reduction has been significantly related to getting the politics right there are concerns that the poorest may not have benefited from this form of poverty reduction or the types of politics that have helped shape it employing the analytical framework of political space reveals that although some of the poorest groups are represented within the political system political discourse reveals a strong bias toward the economically active leaving the poorest excluded from poverty programs significantly there is an increasing divergence between the regime s political project of modernization and the international poverty agenda with important implications for the poorest

china s electricity market oriented reform from an absolute to a relative monopoly abstract the market oriented reform in electricity industry has become a global trend since 1980s although china s electricity industry has been reformed since 1978 the substantial reform has not been conducted until 1985 before 1985 china s power industry had been absolutely monopolized by the central state owned companies the absolute monopoly has been broken since 1985 when the chinese government opened doors for non central state owned investment entities and foreign investors in power supplies in order to solve the chronic power shortage in 2002 the comprehensive electricity reform plan entitled scheme of the reform for power industry was enacted however implementation of this plan was delayed due to electricity supply shortages even worse a new kind of monopoly has been developed under the background the state advances the private sector retreats in late years in some sense the former absolute monopoly has transformed the current relative monopoly we contend that the relative monopoly has reversed the market oriented reform in china s electric industry if the relative monopoly remains unchanged it will be harmful to public welfare

how to reform a planned economy lessons from china the countries of eastern europe and the former soviet union have been flooded with advice from the west on how to liberalize their planned econo mies this advice is unfortunately offered in an empirical vacuum no one knows how these econo mies will react to the proposed liberalization meas ures there exists however a neglected source of information china offers a long time series of data over a decade s worth on the effects of reforms on a planned economy china s reforms were gradual but their cumulative effect has been large and they have been remarkably successful china s experiments provide some practical les sons on what kinds of reforms can work elsewhere the dominant school of thought among economists favours the big bang policy of reforming quickly and according to a comprehensive plan partial reforms in this view are useless they will be negated by the remnants of the planning system the proponents of big bang reform have been influential with poland czechoslovakia and rus sia announcing plans for a rapid transition to capi talism