marginal land for energy crops exploring definitions and embedded assumptions abstract the idea of using less productive or marginal land for energy crops is promoted as a way to overcome the previous land use controversies faced by biofuels it is argued that marginal land use would not compete with food production is widely available and would incur fewer environmental impacts this term is notoriously vague however as are the details of how marginal land use for energy crops would work in practice this paper explores definitions of the term marginal land in academic consultancy ngo government and industry documents in the uk it identifies three separate definitions of the term land unsuitable for food production ambiguous lower quality land and economically marginal land it probes these definitions further by exploring the technical normative and political assumptions embedded within them it finds that the first two definitions are normatively motivated this land should be used to overcome controversies and the latter definition is predictive this land is likely to be used it is important that the different advantages disadvantages and implications of the definitions are spelled out so definitions are not conflated to create unrealistic expectations about the role of marginal land in overcoming biofuels land use controversies

the dynamic linkages between crude oil and natural gas markets abstract the time varying price spillovers between natural gas and crude oil markets for the period 1994 to 2014 are investigated contrary to earlier research we show that in a large part of our sample the natural gas price leads the price of crude oil with price spillover effects lasting up to two weeks this result is robust to a battery of tests including out of sample forecasting exercises however after 2006 we detect little price dependencies between these two energy commodities these findings arise due to a conjunction of both demand and supply side shocks arising from both natural and economic events including hurricane katrina the tohoku earthquake and the global financial crisis as well as infrastructure and technological improvements the increased use of new technologies such as hydraulic fracking for the extraction of gas and oil in particular affected supply in the latter part of the study we conclude that the long term relation present in the early part of the sample has decoupled such that price determination of these two energy sources is now independent

transforming the energy sector the evolution of technological systems in renewable energy technology this paper analyses the development and diffusion of technologies that utilize renewable energy sources in germany sweden and the netherlands the analysis enlarges the life cycle model of industry evolution to one where the focus is on the formation and evolution of new technological systems particular focus is on explaining success and failures in shifting from a formative phase into one characterized by positive feedbacks a set of challenges is identified for policy makers attempting to influence the process of transforming the energy sector

oil and gas markets in the uk evidence from a cointegrating approach the paper examines the relationship between uk wholesale gas prices and the brent oil price over the period 1996 2003 in order to investigate whether oil and gas prices decoupled during this period as orthodox gas market liberalisation theory suggests tests for unit roots and cointegration are carried out and it is discovered that a long run equilibrium relationship between uk gas and oil prices exists moreover this relationship pre dates the opening of the uk mainland europe interconnector following a recursive methodology hansen h and johansen s 1999 some tests for parameter constancy in cointegrated var models econometrics journal 2 306 333 it was found that the cointegrating relationship is present throughout the sample period however the long run solutions seem to be more volatile evidence is provided that the short run relationship is linear and impulse response functions are used to examine the effects that a shock in oil would have on gas these findings do not support the assumption that gas prices and oil prices decouple

the relationship between regional natural gas markets and crude oil markets from a multi scale nonlinear granger causality perspective this study first decomposes the daily returns of regional gas and crude oil at different time scales using the ensemble empirical mode decomposition eemd method it then investigates the causality relationship between each pair of components at the different time scales by employing the linear and nonlinear granger causality tests for the original returns series this study finds that unidirectional linear granger causality exists from crude oil markets to north american and european gas markets however for nonlinear characteristics the crude oil and regional gas markets exhibit bidirectional nonlinear granger causality on the medium term time scale a bidirectional nonlinear spillover effect is found between the markets the long term trends for the markets suggest a significant linear relationship however no nonlinear spillover effect is found between the crude oil and regional gas markets

global connectedness of msci energy equity indices a system wide network approach abstract the paper utilizes msci energy indices of 21 major energy consumer economies as a full sample to serve as a proxy indicator of the energy sector of these economies and then studies the squared return spillover interlinkages among them for the pre and post global financial crisis of 2008 and during the crude oil crises of 2008 09 and 2014 15 the squared return spillover connectedness has been analyzed on intra and inter regional basis based on the segregation of indices into regions viz europe north and latin america and asia pacific and africa the connectedness interlinkage has been quantified deploying generalized error variance decomposition gevd and the results have been visualized via network diagrams the result shows that the return spillover connectedness is significant and is more prominent in some economies primarily in europe and north america for the full sample however post crisis the squared return spillover connectedness of emerging economies of asia pacific has witnessed a boost surprisingly russia as a major oil exporter sends moderate shocks system wide in the post crisis era implying economic sanctions downplay the influence it could make in the energy sector during the crisis year though spillover risk transmission is high during the 2008 09 crisis it is more spread out during the 2014 15 crisis with the inclusion of the asia pacific emerging market energy indices

labeling renewable energies how the language surrounding biofuels can influence its public acceptance abstract despite growing interest and investments in biological fuels little is known of how the public form opinions toward this alternative fuel technology this study examines public opinion of biofuels by focusing on several factors that can be expected to influence citizens opinions about the issue first we tested the results of a framing experiment that was embedded within a public opinion survey this experiment explored how the public responded to the term biofuels as compared to the term ethanol our results suggest that overall respondents tended to react more favorably to the former as opposed to the latter term second we examined the impacts of sociodemographics on public attitudes toward biofuels we found that while sociodemographics did little to consistently explain attitudes toward biofuels there was clear evidence of ideological influences on attitudes with self identifying democrats showing more positive attitudes overall finally we explored the interaction between political partisanship and our experimental manipulation we found evidence that our wording manipulation differed based on the political party identification of our respondents with democrats fluctuating greatly in their assessments depending upon whether they were asked to evaluate biofuels or ethanol

exploring marginal and degraded lands for biomass and bioenergy production an indian scenario abstract globally the share of renewable energy is limited to 19 of the total energy consumption out of which 9 3 is shared by traditional biomass in india the installed capacity of energy production from biomass is estimated as 12 8 of the total renewables although this scenario is at par with the global level even this share of bioenergy production is not sufficient to meet the present and future energy demands of india therefore there is an immediate need to maximize the bioenergy production in india apart from the reduced emission rate than the fossil fuels bioenergy has also immense potential to mitigate various environmental issues and therefore the biofuel cultivation has been considered as an additional opportunity for land restoration however the land availability for bioenergy production is very limited since there is a growing demand to produce more food to feed the rapidly growing population therefore the arable lands cannot be considered for bioenrgy production hence we propose that the sustainable intensification of bioenergy production from degraded land is a viable option because the wise and judicious utilization of marginal and degraded lands can play a vital role in solving the conflict between food and fuel production and offer a sustainable solution to meet out the energy requirement of the society in this backdrop the present article is aimed to explore the prospects and promises of bioenergy production from the marginal and degraded lands of india since india has around 39 24 million hectares of wastelands sustainable utilization of such land would provide multipurpose benefits such as biomass and bioenergy production soil carbon sequestration and regaining ecosystem services

the impact of the north american shale gas revolution on regional natural gas markets evidence from the regime switching model this paper investigates the impact of the north american shale gas revolution on price movement regimes in the north american and european gas markets using the markov regime switching model it then measures price spreads between oil and gas from 1998 to 2015 to identify the impact of the revolution on the relationship between oil and regional gas prices the results show that the typical movement regime of henry hub prices changes from slightly upward to sharply downward in addition the clear seasonal effect of henry hub prices has disappeared after the shale gas revolution the typical movement of national balancing point nbp prices has changed gradually from a sharply upward regime to the alternative regimes between sharply downward and slightly upward tending to follow oil prices this indicates that the shale gas revolution has had little impact on nbp price movement meanwhile henry hub prices have decoupled from wti prices while nbp and brent prices have continued to exhibit a long term equilibrium level around which they have swung in the short time frame since the shale gas revolution pertinent energy policy makers and energy market participants should pay attention to these changes and adjust their trade production and investment strategies accordingly

interfuel competition in the industrial sector of seven oecd countries abstract the purpose of this article is to present an analysis of interfuel substitution in the industrial sector of seven major oecd countries the united states canada japan germany france the united kingdom and italy over the 1960 1993 period translog models are used to provide estimates of price elasticities from annual data for each country results outline the weakness of price elasticities and changes in behaviour over the last 35 years and show evidence of asymmetric effects since the collapse of oil prices in 1986 substitution has stopped industrial energy demand and oil consumption have stagnated interfuel substitution is widely induced by events other than relative price changes energy policy political and institutional constraints changes in economic activity characteristics within individual country sectors

oil indexation market fundamentals and natural gas prices an investigation of the asian premium in natural gas trade abstract a heated debate has arisen over whether the asian premium i e higher prices in asia than elsewhere in natural gas trade is due to price discrimination or different market fundamentals determining the origin of this premium can help to guide the gas industries and policy makers in asia especially when the traditional oil indexed price mechanism fades away using a new systemic time series approach this paper explores the extent to which oil prices and market fundamentals contribute to variations in gas prices in japan the united states and germany we find clear cross country differences and time varying patterns gas prices are much less affected by supply and demand factors than oil prices in japan and germany whereas these factors are more important than oil prices in the us market which has a pricing hub through rolling windows and subsample analysis we discover that oil prices were important in japan and germany but the level of importance has declined significantly in recent years though the contribution of fundamentals does not change much the results show that asian gas prices are determined more by oil prices than by the market fundamentals thus the asian premium is more likely due to this oil indexed pricing mechanism rather than market fundamentals this suggests that developing asia s benchmark prices through trading hubs with a better reflection of regional specific fundamentals can lead to a more efficient allocation of gas resources

crude oil risk forecasting new evidence from multiscale analysis approach fluctuations in the crude oil price allied to risk have increased significantly over the last decade frequently varying at different risk levels although existing models partially predict such variations so far they have been unable to predict oil prices accurately in this highly volatile market the development of an effective predictive model has therefore become a prime objective of research in this field our approach albeit based in part on previous research develops an original methodology in that we have created a risk forecasting model with the ability to predict oil price fluctuations caused by changes in both fundamental and transient risk factors we achieve this by disintegrating the multi scale risk structure of the crude oil market using variational mode decomposition normal and transient risk factors are then extracted from the crude oil price using variational mode decomposition and modelled separately using the quantile regression neural network qrnn model both risk factors are integrated and ensembled to produce the risk estimates we then apply our proposed risk forecasting model to predicting future downside risk level in three major crude oil markets namely the west taxes intermediate wti the brent market and the opec market the results demonstrate that our model has the ability to capture downside risk estimates with significantly improved precision thus reducing estimation errors and increasing forecasting reliability

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

the green economy and constructions of the idle and unproductive uplands in the philippines in the philippines green economy projects encourage the production of agro industrial commodities ostensibly for climate change mitigation environmental rehabilitation and inclusive rural economic growth this paper illustrates however how elite constructions of the uplands as being idle and unproductive precipitate low carbon agro industrial crop production in the philippine frontier based on field research from 2010 to 2012 i e in depth interviews with policy and market elites participant observation and archival document analysis we argue that elites constructions of and discourses on the uplands as idle and unproductive have been carried over from the colonial period albeit in more complex ways to inform and legitimize agro industrial policies and programs couched in the green economy vision of the country such discourses simplify green economy policies and undermine upland dwellers constructions of place our findings raise critical questions about the realization of the vision of the green economy in the philippines and much of the global south regardless of the inclusive growth discourse in the green economy program elite constructions of the idle and unproductive uplands pose serious risks to upland environments and populations

macro determinants of volatility and volatility spillover in energy markets abstract we analyze the time varying volatility and spillover effects in crude oil heating oil and natural gas futures markets by incorporating changes in important macroeconomic variables and major political and weather related events into the conditional variance equations we allow asymmetric responses to random disturbances in each market as well as to good and bad economic news related to the overall economy results show the presence of asymmetric effects in both random disturbances and macroeconomic variables a bidirectional volatility spillover effect is found between natural gas and crude oil and between the natural gas and heating oil markets crude oil volatility is found to increase following major political financial and natural events seasonality and day of the week effects are found in the crude oil and heating oil markets

the dynamic dependence of fossil energy investor sentiment and renewable energy stock markets abstract this study investigates the dynamic directional information spillover of return and volatility between the fossil energy market investor sentiment towards renewable energy and the renewable energy stock market using the connectedness network approach empirical results show that the spillover effects of the volatility system are generally stronger than that of the return system which suggest that risk transmission among the markets is more obvious in both systems the impact of the fossil energy market especially crude oil on the renewable energy stock market is greater than the impact of investor sentiment on the renewable energy stock market this finding shows that the renewable energy stock market is closely related to the fossil energy market furthermore the rolling window approach is adopted to examine the time varying information spillover among them the dynamic findings suggest that investor sentiment towards renewable energy can explain the return and volatility of renewable energy stock to a certain degree

income volatility of energy crops the case of rapeseed abstract the adoption of energy crops may generate significant benefits from reduced foreign energy dependence improved rural economies and achieved environmental goals nevertheless important issues arise as these crops are strongly competed by other presumably more standard uses of farmland and their choice will be restrictive unless profit becomes a powerful motive for farmers the abolishment of specific policies supporting first generation biofuels gives rise to the question whether the tactic of bioenergy land use change is just to be abandoned by european farmers the present paper endeavours to evaluate the reduction in income volatility in the case of the rapeseed energy crop a cultivation extensively used in biofuels in the european union employing the concept of entropy the results provide a vague picture regarding the limitations in rapeseed income volatility among the european member states consequently the issue of income uncertainties as a determinant of bioenergy cropland demand has been left pending the innovation of the study lies in the use of entropy concept and the kapetanios and shin unit root test in the case of income volatility for energy crops in the european context the estimation of the random components with the assistance of auto regressive integrated mean average models may provide a tool for confining income uncertainties with the assistance of other policy schemes including insurances within the common agricultural policy

have oil and gas prices got separated abstract this paper applies vector error correction models that show that oil and natural gas prices decoupled around 2009 before 2009 us and uk gas prices had a long term equilibrium with crude prices to which gas prices always reverted after exogenous shocks both us and uk gas prices adjusted to the crude oil price individually and departure from the equilibrium gas price on one continent resulted in a similar departure on the other after an exogenous shock the adjustment between us and uk gas prices took approximately 20 weeks on average and the convergence was mediated mainly by crude oil with a necessary condition that arbitrage across the atlantic was possible after 2009 however the uk gas price has remained integrated with oil price but the us gas price decoupled from crude oil price and the european gas price as the atlantic arbitrage has halted the oversupply from shale gas production has not been mitigated by north american export as there has been no liquefying and export capacity

farm level constraints on the domestic supply of perennial energy crops in the uk abstract there are a number of estimates of the land area that could potentially be dedicated to perennial energy crops such as short rotation coppice src willow and miscanthus in the uk but little is known about how farmers will respond to the opportunities presented by these relatively novel crops perennial energy crops face competition from other arguably more flexible uses of farmland and if not seen as attractive propositions to individual farmers they will not be grown farmers decisions are therefore a key constraint on potential supply this paper reviews the policy background and considers whether policy is based on any consideration of likely supply response before presenting outcomes of focus groups composed of farmers who already grow or are considering growing perennial energy crops there appear to be a number of barriers to adoption in addition to concerns over the security of contracts the current high wheat price increases the opportunity cost of committing land to perennial energy crops there are also worries about the impact of willow roots on field drains and the cost of returning the land to other uses this paper outlines a number of issues of importance to policy makers and suggests future research needs

international evidence on aggregate short run and long run interfuel substitution in this paper we build on recent work by serletis et al 2010 in press and report short and long run estimates of aggregate interfuel substitution for a number of oecd and non oecd countries in doing so we use recent pooled intercountry data since 1980 and state of the art advances in microeconometrics including duality theory and flexible functional forms also motivated by the widespread practice in the empirical energy demand literature of ignoring theoretical regularity we estimate our model subject to global curvature but not monotonicity using methods developed by diewert and wales 1987 we provide inference and also a policy perspective using parameter estimates that are consistent with the theoretical regularity conditions of neoclassical microeconomic theory

the adoption of switchgrass and miscanthus by farmers impact of liquidity constraints and risk preferences lignocellulosic biomass is expected to become a key feedstock for renewable energy production however the potential supply strongly depends on farmers willingness to grow the new perennial energy crops many economic assessments have been led at the farm level all based on the standard net present value approach this paper looks into the effect of farmers liquidity constraints and risk preferences on switchgrass and miscanthus adoption by farmers we study the problem of the land allocation between a traditional cropping system and an innovative one in a static framework using four intertemporal choice models we find that in central france agronomic and economic conditions switchgrass and miscanthus result to be less profitable in terms of annualised net margin than the usual rape wheat barley rotation nevertheless they can be highly competitive as diversification crops when appropriate contracts are offered to farmers despite the additional liquidity they require

the optimal rate of inflation and taxation abstract we investigate the optimal rate of inflation in a finitely lived individual model using the optimal commodity tax framework the inefficiency in dynamic allocation of the economy should be taken into account in optimal monetary policy the optimal rate of inflation may be positive when the steady state capital labor ratio is relatively smaller than the first best level

current and future financial competitiveness of electricity and heat from energy crops a case study from ireland abstract it has been demonstrated that miscanthus and willow energy crop cultivation could be economically competitive with current agricultural land uses at a farm gate biomass price ranging from 70 to 130 t 1 dry matter styles d thorne f jones m b in review energy crops in ireland an economic comparison of willow and miscanthus production with conventional farming systems biomass and bioenergy may 2006 this paper uses the same farm gate prices to calculate the economic competitiveness of energy crop electricity and heat production using a net present value npv approach 20 year period 5 discount rate direct and gasified co firing of willow wood with coal would result in electricity generation 30 or 37 more expensive than coal generation at current coal and co 2 allowance prices and a farm gate biomass cost of 100 t 1 break even co 2 allowance prices are 33 and 37 t 1 respectively however co firing of miscanthus with peat is close to economic competitiveness and would require a co 2 allowance price of 16 t 1 to break even against a current price of 12 t 1 npv analyses indicate that wood heat is significantly cheaper than oil gas or electric heat excluding existing wood boiler installation subsidies discounted annual savings range from 143 compared with gas to 722 compared with electric heating at the domestic scale and from 3454 to 11 222 at the commercial scale inclusion of available subsidies improves the comparative economics of domestic wood heat substantially the economic advantage of wood heat is robust to variation in fuel prices discount rates and heat loads the greatest obstacles to energy crop utilisation include i a reluctance to consider long term economics ii possible competition from cheaper sources of biomass iii the need for a spatially coordinated supply and utilisation network

what drives natural gas prices a structural var approach abstract in this study we develop a structural vector autoregressive model var for the german natural gas market our setup allows us to analyze the determinants of the natural gas price in a comprehensive framework in particular we illustrate the usefulness of our approach by disentangling the effects of different fundamental influences on gas prices during three recent supply interruptions the russian ukrainian gas dispute of january 2009 the libyan civil war in 2011 and the withheld russian exports in february 2012 our results show that the natural gas price is affected by temperature storage and supply shortfalls in the short term while the long term development is closely tied to both crude oil and coal prices capturing the economic climate and the substitution relationship between the different energy commodities

linear and nonlinear granger causality investigation between carbon market and crude oil market a multi scale approach abstract this paper investigates the causality between carbon market and crude oil market using a multi scale analysis approach in which two main steps are involved multi scale analysis and causality testing in multi scale analysis bivariate empirical mode decomposition bemd is employed to decompose the two series of market returns at different time scales in causality testing a linear and nonlinear integrated granger test is formulated to investigate the relationship among each pair of matched components on a similar time scale with the european union emission allowance eua futures and brent futures as study samples some interesting findings can be obtained 1 at the original data level without multi scale decomposition this study finds evidence supporting a neutrality hypothesis i e no granger causality between the carbon and crude oil markets 2 on small time scale within one week excluding non work days the two markets might be uncorrelated and driven by their own respective supply demand disequilibriums 3 for medium time scale above one week but below one year there is a strong bi directional linear and nonlinear spillover effect between the two markets due to certain extra factors with medium term effects e g significant events and policy changes 4 for long time scale the long term trends of the two markets appear an obvious linear relationship

information spillovers and connectedness networks in the oil and gas markets abstract this paper investigates the oil gas relationship from a multi scale perspective by combining the connectedness network framework and the ensemble empirical mode decomposition eemd method the empirical results show that the direction and magnitude of the information flow between oil and gas returns behave differently across time scales in general wti and its refinery products tend to act as net information transmitters while the united states and united kingdom natural gas markets act as net receivers the total spillover connectedness for the oil and gas markets as measured by a rolling window approach has dynamic volatile characteristics the robustness of the results is shown by substituting brent for wti

bidirectional causality in oil and gas markets abstract do events in the natural gas market cause repercussions in the crude oil market this paper studies linkages between the two markets using high frequency intraday oil and gas futures prices by analyzing the effect of weekly oil and gas inventory announcements on price volatility we show a bidirectional causal relationship both inventory gluts and shortages have a cross commodity effect on price volatility not only for the next month nearby futures contract but also for the following six months contracts

the influence of perceived uncertainty on entrepreneurial action in emerging renewable energy technology biomass gasification projects in the netherlands emerging renewable energy technologies cannot break through without the involvement of entrepreneurs who dare to take action amidst uncertainty the uncertainties that the entrepreneurs involved perceive will greatly affect their innovation decisions and can prevent them from engaging in innovation projects aimed at developing and implementing emerging renewable energy technologies this article analyzes how perceived uncertainties and motivation influence an entrepreneur s decision to act using empirical data on biomass gasification projects in the netherlands our empirical results show that technological political and resource uncertainty are the most dominant sources of perceived uncertainty influencing entrepreneurial decision making by performing a dynamic analysis we furthermore demonstrate that perceived uncertainties and motivation are not stable but evolve over time we identify critical factors in the project s internal and external environment which influence these changes in perceived uncertainties and motivation and describe how various interactions between the different variables in the conceptual model internal and external factors perceived uncertainty motivation and previous actions of the entrepreneurs positively or negatively influence the decision of entrepreneurs to continue entrepreneurial action we discuss how policymakers can use these insights for stimulating the development and diffusion of emerging renewable energy technologies

further evidence on the debate of oil gas price decoupling a long memory approach abstract the long run oil gas price relationship has been challenged more often in recent years as these two prices have shown evidence of decoupling from each other this paper proposes the use of a long memory approach and a rolling windows method to model the time varying oil gas price relationship in three markets namely the united states europe and japan the results extend existing research conclusions on the oil gas price relationship and answer the question of whether it is a temporary phenomenon or a permanent market change our findings indicate that the us oil gas relationship remains nonstationary at almost all windows and illustrate strong evidence of decoupling conversely the european and asian oil gas prices exhibit temporary decoupling over time although the overall relationship still favours the oil indexation hypothesis the us experience suggests that oil and gas do not share the same fundamentals and a pricing hub can better reflect the true value of natural gas policy makers in europe and asia should reinforce their efforts towards a market based pricing mechanism for gas

how does the u s natural gas market react to demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market abstract in this paper we use monthly data over the period from january 1976 to december 2012 and a structural var model to disentangle demand and supply shocks in the global crude oil market and investigate their effects on the real price of natural gas in the united states we identify the model by assuming that innovations to the real price of crude oil are predetermined with respect to the natural gas market and show that close to 45 of the variation in the real price of natural gas can be attributed to structural supply and demand shocks in the global crude oil market

separated influence of crude oil prices on regional natural gas import prices this paper analyses the impact of global economic activity and international crude oil prices on natural gas import prices in three major natural gas markets using the panel cointegration model it also investigates the shock impacts of the volatility and the increase and decrease of oil prices on regional natural gas import prices the results show that both global economic activity and international crude oil prices have significant long term positive effects on regional natural gas import prices the volatility of international crude oil prices has a negative impact on regional natural gas import prices the shock impact is weak in north america lags in europe and is most significant in asia which is mainly determined by different regional policies for price formation in addition the response of natural gas import prices to increases and decreases in international crude oil prices shows an asymmetrical mechanism of which the decrease impact is relatively stronger

spillovers between oil and stock returns in the us energy sector does idiosyncratic information matter abstract this paper investigates the inter connectedness between wti oil price returns and the returns of listed firms in the us energy sector specifically we focus on the issue of whether firm level idiosyncratic information matters a generalised dynamic factor model is used to separate common components from idiosyncratic components in these energy stocks systemic connectedness is then estimated following diebold and yilmaz 2014 our empirical results demonstrate the important role of industrial level common information in understanding the oil stock relationship a number of interesting points include the us energy sector is the net contributor to wti price changes but the effect is mainly driven by industrial level common information the oil and gas industry dominates other industries in the energy sector the dynamic analysis shows that although idiosyncratic information is mostly independent of oil shocks individual energy stock returns do respond to wti price movements

economic effects of land taxes in an inflationary economy abstract we investigate the incidence of land taxes using a monetary overlapping generations model the real price of land may be raised with a land tax even when the elasticity of saving with respect to the interest rate is positive we may have the crowding out case which is induced by the substitution from capital and land to money the capital loss suffered by older generations holding land during the transition to a land tax may be partially offset by a gain in money balances as inflation abates

do no harm risk perceptions in national bioenergy policies and actual mitigation performance this paper investigates how risks are anticipated in national bioenergy policies and in which way related expectations that harms can be prevented or mitigated have actually been met the paper draws on the national biofuel policies of ten countries and the eu selected to represent a diverse sample of regions producers and consumers and pioneers and latecomers it proceeds in two steps firstly it identifies three risk categories most frequently mentioned across the investigated national policies secondly it conducts a systematic review of available empirical research about biofuels effects in these risk categories findings are discussed regarding the empirical conditions under which related expectations to do no harm have materialized or failed and concerning the challenges of risks perception and management in actual policies we observe issues of crop selection and inadequate sectoral governance of biofuels but also challenges of large scale modes of intensive production effective risk mitigation was often the result of risk adverse choices by contract farmers engaged in biofuels production national policy documents have insufficiently conceptualized do no harm concepts and strategies in place to address these performance issues while remaining silent on the particular risk governance and accountability framework that keeps track of actual developments commitments and responsibilities

asymmetric pass through of oil prices to gasoline prices with interval time series modelling abstract modelling and analyzing the pass through of crude oil prices to retail gasoline prices has received an increasing attention in existing literature however most of the ongoing efforts focus on point valued data which may suffer from the informational loss this paper first employs the threshold autoregressive interval valued tari models developed recently by sun et al 2018a to investigate this transmission and proposes a novel consistent interval based test to detect threshold effects and derives its asymptotic properties these interval based tari model and test superior to traditional point based methods can produce more efficient parameter estimation and more powerful inference due to the informational gain of interval data that is interval data simultaneously contain more information e g trend and volatility than point valued data during the same period empirical results suggest that retail gasoline prices are adjusted upwards faster than downwards and this short run asymmetry is statistically significant during the whole sample our findings reveal that both the level and volatility of oil prices have a positive impact on the price of gasoline which contributes to the asymmetries in the transmission of oil price shocks these results are robust before and after financial crisis furthermore it is interesting to find that after financial crisis both the error correction adjustment speeds and the asymmetries decrease

on the welfare cost of permanent inflation most work on inflation and welfare relies on some variant of the optimal tax framework by the straightforward application of the static optimal tax literature helpman and sadka 1979 attempt to present sufficient conditions under which the optimal rate of inflation is positive in a second best world though they do not discuss the level of optimal inflation as stressed by siegel 1978 in the static problem there is an infinite set of tax rates that minimize welfare costs and hence a value of optimal inflation cannot be determined all we can say is that friedman s optimum quantity of money rule is generally not optimal in a second best world in an intertemporal framework however an optimal inflation rate can be determined summers 1981 presents an explicit expression for the optimal rate of inflation under ad hoc formulations of savings behavior in general the optimal rate of inflation will be determined implicitly by a combination of references and technology the difficulty in saying anything explicit about the optimal rate of inflation is now generally recognized an alternative approach is to explore the welfare cost of inflation more systematically if the welfare cost of inflationary finance is relatively small compared with other distortionary taxes the optimal rate of inflation may well be high the welfare effects are examined by starting with the expenditure function and comparing the

uk innovation systems for new and renewable energy technologies drivers barriers and systems failures abstract a better understanding of the systemic processes by which innovation occurs is useful both conceptually and to inform policy making in support of innovation in more sustainable technologies this paper analyses current innovation systems in the uk for a range of new and renewable energy technologies and generates policy recommendations for improving the effectiveness of these innovation systems although incentives are in place in the uk to encourage innovation in these technologies system failures or gaps are identified in moving technologies along the innovation chain preventing their successful commercialisation sustained investment will be needed for these technologies to achieve their potential it is argued that a stable and consistent policy framework is required to help create the conditions for this in particular such a framework should be aimed at improving risk reward ratios for demonstration and pre commercial stage technologies this would enhance positive expectations stimulate learning effects leading to cost reductions and increase the likelihood of successful commercialisation