renewable energy investment and job creation a cross sectoral assessment for the czech republic with reference to eu benchmarks the development of renewable energy sources has been primarily justified on the ground of environmental policies and energy security but new jobs opportunities and establishment of new economy sectors may be equally important co benefits from investments in this sector the main goal of this paper is to assess the employment benefits of investments in renewable energy in the czech republic we examine the level and rate of the development of the renewable energy sector in the czech republic in terms of green job creation for the period 2008 2013 in comparison to data from other eu countries including germany as a leading early investor in renewables whilst the deployment of renewable energy in the czech republic has succeeded to create a significant number of jobs more than 20 000 employees in 2010 our analysis illustrates a strong dependency of job creation on the continuation of financial incentives we also find that biomass and waste energy processing offer the highest employment per mwh which benefits employment in economically fragile rural areas we discuss the question of competitiveness of a country that was not amongst the early adopters of renewables arguing that the technical skills of the labour force in the czech republic provide a potential for more sustained investments in the sector

energy economic and environmental discourses and their policy impact the case of ontario s green energy and green economy act abstract this paper examines the debates around the ontario s green energy and green economy act gegea as an energy and economic development strategy through comparative public policy and discourse analysis approaches the evidence regarding the economic impacts of the gegea is found to be almost entirely based on the results of economic modeling exercises critics and supporters of the legislation have arrived at very different conclusions through such exercises these outcomes are similar to those seen in other jurisdictions pursuing renewable energy initiatives such as feed in tariffs fits renewables obligations and portfolio standards a discourse analysis approach is employed to examine the reasons for the different conclusions being reached over the impacts of renewable energy initiatives differences in modeling approaches and assumptions are found to reflect differences in ideational perspectives on the part of the modelers with respect to the appropriate roles of markets and the state and the relationship between economic development and environmental sustainability in public policy the paper concludes with suggestions regarding the gathering and availability of information regarding economic development in the renewable energy sector and a discussion of potential ways to strengthen future efforts to understand the economic and environmental impact of renewable energy initiatives

employment impacts of eu biofuels policy combining bottom up technology information and sectoral market simulations in an input output framework this paper analyses the employment consequences of policies aimed to support biofuels in the european union the promotion of biofuel use has been advocated as a means to promote the sustainable use of natural resources and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions originating from transport activities on the one hand and to reduce dependence on imported oil and thereby increase security of the european energy supply on the other hand the employment impacts of increasing biofuels shares are calculated by taking into account a set of elements comprising the demand for capital goods required to produce biofuels the additional demand for agricultural feedstock higher fuel prices or reduced household budget in the case of price subsidisation price effects ensuing from a hypothetical world oil price reduction linked to substitution in the eu market and price impacts on agro food commodities the calculations refer to scenarios for the year 2020 targets as set out by the recent renewable energy roadmap employment effects are assessed in an input output framework taking into account bottom up technology information to specify biofuels activities and linked to partial equilibrium models for the agricultural and energy sectors the simulations suggest that biofuels targets on the order of 10 15 could be achieved without adverse net employment effects

assessing the regional economic impacts of renewable energy sources a literature review abstract the transition of the global energy system is one of the main trends that offers opportunities as well as challenges for the economy most literature evaluates the impact of that transition at a national level that view is broadened towards a regional scale due to the lower energy density of many renewable energy sources renewable energy generation will be more decentralised leading to potentially significant changes in the regional economy when transitioning to a renewable energy system in this paper the current literature and methods of assessing regional economic impacts of a transition to renewable energy generation is reviewed the findings suggest an overall need to clearly define the topics such as technologies that are assessed and the evaluated time period a guideline for a regional impact assessment is provided focusing on the suitability of applied impact assessment methods employment ratios supply chain analyses input output models and computable general equilibrium models

productivity convergence in the european regions 1980 2003 a sectoral and spatial approach this article analyses the evolution of the eu productivity between 1980 and 2003 both across regions and sectors by making use of various techniques cross section nonparametric and spatial approaches it concludes that 1 the regional and sectoral dispersion of productivity is quite high 2 the gains experienced in aggregate productivity are due entirely to the sectors productivity growth effect 3 there is a weak beta convergence process at the aggregate and sectoral levels 4 the accounting decomposition of the aggregate productivity convergence process reveals the sectoral productivity growth effect to be the only responsible factor for regional catching up 5 finally there are clear signs of spatial dependence which when properly addressed increase the speed of convergence at the aggregate level

responses of agricultural bioenergy sectors in brandenburg germany to climate economic and legal changes an application of holling s adaptive cycle abstract agricultural bioenergy production is subject to dynamics such as yield fluctuations volatile prices resource competition new regulation and policy innovation and climate change this raises questions to what extent bioenergy production is able to adapt to changes and overcome critical events these dynamics have important implications for effective policy development using a case study method which draws on various data sources we investigate in detail how agricultural bioenergy sectors in the german state of brandenburg adapted to diverse past events the case analysis rests on the adaptive cycle concept and the system properties potential connectedness and resilience as defined by holling and gunderson 2002a our case study concludes that brandenburg s biogas sector has a low potential and connectedness within the system and a low resilience against crop failures the biofuels sector displays similar properties in the short term in the medium term the potential could increase in both sectors the properties imply risks and opportunities for biogas production and the possibility to develop towards a stage with a higher potential and a higher connectedness but adaptive capacity is limited and there are certain barriers for the agricultural bioenergy sectors to overcome potentially critical states policy needs to be tailored accordingly

employment factors for wind and solar energy technologies a literature review abstract in this paper we present an up to date literature review on employment opportunities associated with the deployment of renewable energy technology we identified approximately 70 studies and data sources published over the past decade that report analysed or observed employment impacts of renewable energy growth these publications cover many different countries and several technology options and present widely varying results derived from distinct methodological approaches our first overall conclusion is that there is clear lack of authenticity of findings in this literature since recursive referencing abounds and relatively few studies yield truly original research when we omit non authentic analyses as well as those that aggregate results in a way that does not allow us to calculate employment factors defined as the number of jobs or amount of work generated per unit of electricity production capacity the total list of references is brought to 31 independent items of these only 14 references provide separate estimates of the employment factors for the stages of manufacturing and installation respectively as opposed to employment factors for these two activities combined a total of 23 items provide values for operation and maintenance o m employment factors we observe significant uncertainties in quoted figures for job creation both across and within publications

promoting biofuels use in spain a cost benefit analysis abstract public support for renewable energy is usually justified in terms of its contribution to reducing energy dependency an improvement in environmental quality and a stimulation of economic activity and employment in the case of biofuels greenhouse gas emissions reduction has received significant attention nevertheless nowadays there is a lively debate surrounding the convenience of biofuels this is a consequence of the potentially negative impacts revealed from their production on a large scale the aim of the present work is to analyse the potential contribution of biofuels to the main impact categories identified all those impacts categories have been measured in economic terms with the aim of conducting a very simple cost benefit analysis to assess the suitability of biofuel promotion policies in spain since the scope of the analysis is the national level the study seeks to cover three main impact categories i the environmental impact including not only the greenhouse gases but also other kind of regional and local pollutants ii the economic impact or potential stimulus for the national economic activity derived from a new productive sector and iii the potential consequences on the economy derived from using biofuels to reduce the spanish energy dependency results confirm that consuming biofuels has a positive impact on environmental quality mainly due to the reduction of greenhouse gases so2 and particulate matter emissions in contrast analyzing the whole effect on the economy the use of biofuels is displacing income from other economic sectors resulting in a net negative impact in terms of energy dependency biofuels do not significantly contribute to reduce the risk of supply disruptions nor the impact on the economy derived from increases in fuel prices concluding the study shows that the introduction of mandatory targets of biofuel consumption along the timeframe of 2008 2020 in spain could result in a welfare loss for the spanish society

a multisector model of efficiency wages the pattern of effort and wages is derived in a multisector efficiency wage model firms choose effort endogenously easily monitored or low turnover jobs have high effort and may have low wages in equilibrium empirical wage differentials from a measure of supervision are smaller than observed industry differentials that have been attributed to efficiency wage models and are closer to those predicted by the model workers can search for and avail of on the job offers if sectors grow at different rates or the unemployment rate changes the pattern of wage differentials is unaffected

are green hopes too rosy employment and welfare impacts of renewable energy promotion in view of pressing unemployment problems policy makers across all parties jump on the prospects of renewable energy promotion as a job creation engine which can boost economic well being our analytical model shows that initial labor market rigidities in theory provide some scope for such a double dividend however the practical outcome of renewable energy promotion might be sobering our computable general equilibrium analysis of subsidized electricity production from renewable energy sources res e in germany suggests that the prospects for employment and welfare gains are quite limited and hinge crucially on the level of the subsidy rate and the financing mechanism if res e subsidies are financed by labor taxes welfare and employment effects are strictly negative for a broad range of subsidy rates the use of an electricity tax to fund res e subsidies generates minor benefits for small subsidy rates but these benefits quickly turn into significant losses as the subsidy rate exceeds some threshold value

assessing employment in renewable energy technologies a case study for wind power in brazil abstract environmental concerns and the search for climate change mitigation have led to the deployment of renewable energy technologies ret in several countries the adoption of incentive policies especially those based on heavy subsides has motivated the discussion of social and economic benefits brought about by these technologies mainly on the impact on employment rates in this context several studies have been conducted to quantify job creation by ret concluding that the latter are more labor intensive than traditional fossil fueled technologies however results for different assessments vary largely due to distinct methodological approaches and are frequently highly aggregated thus results are not comparable or applicable to other contexts previous studies have failed to quantify the effects of imports and exports of ret equipment in total employment usually associating employment and installed capacity in the year studied this study has aimed to address these issues creating an index for employment quantification based on production instead of installed capacity we have estimated both direct jobs in manufacture construction and operation and management and indirect jobs both in the upstream supply chains of materials and inputs to manufacture of wind turbines and construction of wind farms we have also performed an assessment of jobs created in wind energy projects which are expected to begin operation in brazil until 2017 the resulting job potential in brazil corresponds to13 5 persons year equivalent for each mw installed between manufacture and first year of operation of a wind power plant and 24 5 persons year equivalent over the wind farm lifetime results show that major contribution from wind power for job creation are in the construction stage and despite of the low amount of jobs created in operation and maintenance relative to new installed capacity those stable jobs stand out as they persist over the entire wind farm s life time

macroeconomic impact of the german energy transition and its distribution by sectors and regions abstract macroeconomic impacts such as changes in economic structures and employment are very important when evaluating the energy transition in societal terms we employ a macroeconomic model that accounts for regional economic and sectoral features the model results show how the overall positive net impacts of the energy transition in germany energy efficiency and renewable energies on economic growth and employment up to 2030 are distributed across sectors and regions the biggest relative increases in value added occur in construction real estate and electricity generation the biggest decrease is in mining of lignite significant effects mainly result from changes in the heat and transport sectors while the transition in the electricity sector entails smaller impacts the latter are however relevant to the regional distribution the model results suggest that especially northern and eastern german federal states will benefit economically from the energy transition because they offer attractive locations for investments at the same time these states are less affected by decreasing conventional energy generation moreover the impact of rising electricity prices is less negative here than in the other federal states because of their lower electricity intensity in production in summary the energy transition represents an opportunity for these regions to strengthen their economies

inequality polarisation and regional mobility in the european union this paper examines the distribution dynamics of regional per capita income in the european union between 1977 and 1999 to achieve this aim a non parametric approach is combined with the information provided by various measures used in the literature on personal income distribution the results obtained suggest that regional inequality and polarisation have decreased in the european context over the period considered likewise the observed level of intradistributional mobility is relatively low furthermore the findings reveal the important role played by the national component and the spatial dimension in the distribution dynamics

a comprehensive ex post assessment of res deployment in italy jobs value added and import leakages abstract taking a retrospective look at italy s experience over the period 2006 2014 this paper investigates to what extent the deployment of renewable energy sources res contributed to value added and employment in the economy from the methodological point of view our study combines an input output approach with a comprehensive bottom up analytical model in which detailed product information from external trade statistics is used to account for imports although during the period under consideration italy experienced an expansion in res capacity that went beyond the rosiest expectations it appears that the resulting demand for plant components was met to a very significant extent by imports we find that the contribution to sectoral value added and employment was not as large as envisioned by ex ante analyses in net terms the resources absorbed by res plants in the construction installation and manufacturing phase seem to have made a smaller contribution to the domestic economy than they would have in several counterfactual scenarios the opposite is true for the resources used in the subsequent operation and management phase finally our results suggest that variation in domestic content of manufactured products may limit the portability of res employment and value added factor estimates across countries

the role of rare earth prices in renewable energy consumption the actual driver for a renewable energy world abstract this study examines for the first time in the energy issues literature the long run relationship between rare earth prices and the consumption of energy from renewables the study applies standard time series econometric methodologies and monthly data in relevance to regional and income classification groups of countries spanning the period 2004 2016 the empirical findings indicate the presence of a long run relationship between these variables but for certain rare earths and regions the findings survive a multivariate robustness test while they are expected to be of substantial importance for the world community given that a few countries have control of those materials the importance is lying on the need to establish a global green energy environment

regional welfare disparities the case of the european union the regional welfare distribution in the european union between 1993 and 1998 is examined using several complementary methodologies the results obtained show a reduction in regional welfare disparities over the period analysed it is worth noting in this respect however that regional productivity differences prove to be the main determinant behind observed welfare inequality in the european context moreover there has also been a decline in regional bipolarization over the six year contemplated while the degree of observed intradistributional mobility is relatively low the empirical evidence presented nevertheless reveals the importance of variables such as the national component the spatial location the regional productive structure or the percentage of gdp devoted to investment or to r d expenditure in accounting for the dynamics of the distribution under analysis

assessing the impact of renewable energy deployment on local sustainability towards a theoretical framework renewable energy sources res have a large potential to contribute to the sustainable development sd of specific territories by providing them with a wide variety of socioeconomic and environmental benefits however the existing literature has put much emphasis on the environmental benefits including the reduction of global and local pollutants while socioeconomic impacts have not received a comparable attention these include diversification of energy supply enhanced regional and rural development opportunities creation of a domestic industry and employment opportunities with the exception of the diversification and security of energy supply these benefits have usually been mentioned but their analysis has been too general i e mostly at the national level and a focus on the regional and even more so the local level has been lacking at most studies provide scattered evidence of some of those regional and local benefits but without an integrated conceptual framework to analyse them this paper tries to make a contribution in this regard by developing an integrated theoretical framework which allows a comprehensive analysis of the impact of renewable energy on local sustainability and which can be empirically applied to identify these benefits in different territories

the impact of clean energy investments on the greek economy an input output analysis 2010 2020 the aim of this paper is twofold first to calculate the green energy investments by industrial sector that greece would need in order to satisfy a number of energy and environmental targets adopted in the context of the european commission s energy and climate change package and second to calculate the macro economic impacts of these green investments on production and employment in the greek economy to this end the input output analysis has been exploited for estimating the direct indirect and induced macroeconomic effects associated with the implementation of selected energy conservation measures the promotion of renewable energy technologies etc our findings show that the required investments would reach the amount of 47 9 billion over the period 2010 2020 these investments will result in an average annual increase of the national product by 9 4 billion creating simultaneously 108 000 full time equivalent jobs for the entire period under consideration the employment generated per 1 million investment is relatively higher in energy saving projects in buildings and transport in comparison with the development of res in power generation sector

estimating the implied cost of carbon in future scenarios using a cge model the case of colorado abstract using colorado as a case study we develop a state level computable general equilibrium cge model that reflects the roles of coal natural gas wind solar and hydroelectricity in supplying electricity we focus on the economic impact of implementing colorado s existing renewable portfolio standard updated in 2013 this requires that 25 of state generation come from qualifying renewable sources by 2020 we evaluate the policy under a variety of assumptions regarding wind integration costs and assumptions on the persistence of federal subsidies for wind specifically we estimate the implied price of carbon as the carbon price at which a state level policy would pass a state level cost benefit analysis taking account of estimated greenhouse gas emission reductions and ancillary benefits from corresponding reductions in criteria pollutants our findings suggest that without the production tax credit federal aid the state policy of mandating renewable power generation rps is costly to state actors with an implied cost of carbon of about 17 per ton of co2 with a 3 discount rate federal aid makes the decision between natural gas and wind nearly cost neutral for colorado

employment impacts of solar energy in turkey abstract solar energy is considered a key source for the future not only for turkey also for all of the world therefore the development and usage of solar energy technologies are increasingly becoming vital for sustainable economic development the main objective of this study is investigating the employment effects of solar energy industry in turkey some independent reports and studies which analyze the economic and employment impacts of solar energy industry in the world have been reviewed a wide range of methods have been used in those studies in order to calculate and to predict the employment effects using the capacity targets of the photovoltaic pv and concentrated solar power csp plants in the solar roadmap of turkey the prediction of the direct and indirect employment impacts to turkey s economy is possible as a result solar energy in turkey would be the primary source of energy demand and would have a big employment effects on the economics that can only be achieved with the support of governmental feed in tariff policies of solar energy and by increasing research development funds

forecasting job creation from renewable energy deployment through a value chain approach abstract this paper introduces a new approach to the study of the socioeconomic impact of renewable technologies through the analysis of the reinforcing effects of the expansion of this industry and the specific characteristics of the employment along the value chain the method proposed is based on the collection critical analysis and presentation of the results obtained using primary information sources the model design includes contributions extracted from a prior analysis of the existing assessment methods to lessen the uncertainty of the job ratios often used in these types of analysis one factor to be taken into account is the high degree of development in the sector and above all the maturity of the technology considered from the point of view of the industry fabric the economy of scale and technological development actually influences the human resources needs sometimes increasing the demand for professionals within the scope of r d and sometimes reducing jobs in the manufacturing industry which is gradually applying processes with a greater degree of automation the influence of these experience curves is different for every single stage of the value chain trade balance of technologies is also crucial for local employment generation an analytical model was developed based on the above assumptions and applied to the spanish pv industry this industry has been playing a leading role in the expansion of renewable energy and offers a high potential towards the short term development of the smart grids in this country this model represents very well the history of the spanish pv industry reflected through the evolution of the jobs and is shown to be the foundation of a methodology for prospective studies in the social and economic impacts of renewables

employment creation potential of renewable power generation technologies a life cycle approach abstract the present study analyses the employment characteristics of nine different renewable power generation technologies two types of solar photovoltaic wind small scale hydro geothermal wood biomass and three types of biogas the analysis uses a renewable energy focused input output model that the authors developed to analyse life cycle environmental and socio economic impacts of renewable power generation technologies and policies the analysis reveals that there are distinctive differences among the nine technologies impacts on employment the total employment creation potential over the life cycle is estimated to be in the range of 1 04 5 04 person years per gwh furthermore the nine technologies have unique features regarding how many and what kinds of jobs are created across the whole life cycle the introduction of these technologies into an economy directly and indirectly induces jobs in different industrial sectors reflecting their technological characteristics on the other hand the nine different technologies have a common employment effect in that they create relatively high employment opportunities in the service sectors such as wholesale trade non life insurance and judicial financial and accounting services the present study reveals quantitative employment characteristics of the different types of renewable power generation technology to provide valuable information for renewable energy policy making

the evolution of income inequality in the european union during the period 1993 1996 the objective of this work is to analyse the income inequality in the 15 eu countries during the convergence process to the monetary union using the information contained in the european community household panel corresponding to the four first waves using the inverse second order stochastic dominance concept an ordering of these countries has been carried out furthermore this ranking allows one to determine if the differences among eu country members have increased or decreased during this particular period whether the inequality of income has diminished within and between countries over time was studied gini s generalized family indices proposed by donaldson and weymark journal of economic theory 22 67 86 1980 and 29 353 8 1983 and yitzhaki international economic review 24 617 28 1983 have been used this allows one to test the sensitivity of the results obtained to different degrees of inequality aversion and to different equivalence scales taking into account household sizes

unemployment and product market competition in a cournot model with efficiency wages this paper analyzes the impact of product market competition on unemployment wage and welfare in a model where unemployment is caused by the efficiency wage consideration and oligopolistic firms compete in quantity it is shown that while more intense competition in the product market increases output and reduces price it does not necessarily lead to a lower unemployment rate or a higher wage for workers depending on the technologies the relationship between the intensity of competition and the level of employment respectively wage welfare is not always monotonic and in some instances has an inverted u shape resume chomage et concurrence dans le marche du produit dans un modele a la cournot en presence de salaires d efficience ce texte analyse l impact de la concurrence dans le marche du produit sur le chomage le salaire et bien etre dans un modele ou le chomage est cause par des considerations de salaires d efficience et ou les firmes oligopolistiques se concurrencent par les quantites on montre que meme si une concurrence plus intense dans le marche du produit accroit la production et reduit le prix ceci n entraine pas necessairement un taux de chomage plus bas ou un niveau de salaire plus eleve pour les travailleurs selon les technologies la relation entre l intensite de la concurrence et le niveau de l emploi respectivement salaire bien etre n est pas toujours monotone et parfois a la forme d un u inverse

the challenges of determining the employment effects of renewable energy abstract the benefits of promoting renewable energy are regularly claimed to be energy security climate change mitigation and job creation while the first two benefits are generally accepted the impact of renewable energy on employment is still disputed this paper presents a discussion of the various factors that influence the analysis of renewable energy and its impact on employment the advantages and disadvantages of input output methods and analysis methods are discussed as well as the issues surrounding the measurement of job creation a critical evaluation of the literature reveals factors that should be considered when completing a study about renewable energy and employment labour intensity of renewables cost increases and availability of investments counting job losses job quality and skills model assumptions and sources of information analytical studies using extensive surveys were found to be more appropriate for regional studies while input output methods were better suited to national and international studies

energy based economic development abstract the fields of economic development and energy policy and planning have converged in recent years to form an emerging discipline which we term energy based economic development ebed despite the significant amount of stimulus funds as well as state and local funding that are being allocated to ebed initiatives in the united states the emerging discipline has received scant attention in the energy policy and development literature the link between energy and economic development in the literature is still theoretical mostly focused on the need for and the potential benefits of ebed and rarely applied furthermore funding for ebed has outpaced understanding of the discipline development of rigorous technical approaches and meaningful ways to measure impact such information would not only help practitioners and policymakers more thoroughly understand the confines of the discipline and shape goals and approaches accordingly but also help researchers identify track and evaluate a variety of activities in the field with national and international attention focused on the convergence of these fields researchers and practitioners have a rare opportunity to develop and implement the tools necessary to evaluate and communicate the potentially broader impacts that ebed may hold for society if ways to leverage and sustain the injection of funds in this discipline are not identified the opportunity may end before we can achieve either energy policy or economic development goals in an attempt to respond to this need this analysis explores the connection between energy and economic development beginning with a review of the trends in each field and the goals that each seeks to achieve on the basis of this information we define the discipline of ebed review the existing literature on it and offer insights and perspectives on its emergence

is dualism still a source of convergence in europe this paper aims at assessing whether dualism represents a significant source of the aggregate labour productivity convergence observed across the european regions in the 1980s we use a model of the dual economy based on the work of dixit oxford economic papers 22 229 34 1970 and mas colell and razin oxford economic papers 25 72 79 1973 to obtain hypotheses to be tested in cross region growth regressions we use aggregate and sectoral data for 109 territorial units from 1980 to 1990 our cross section results are consistent with the major predictions of the dual model ignoring dualism as a source of convergence could therefore lead to inaccurate interpretations of the relative roles played by each of the forces behind the process and to inexact assessments of what actions should be taken if any by the european regional policy to help the process become more pervasive

nonconventional renewable energy governance in brazil lessons to learn from the german experience abstract this paper presents a comparative analysis of energy governance regarding nonconventional renewable energy sources ncres in brazil and germany brazil is a world leader in the use of conventional renewable energy sources such as hydro power while germany has been achieving outstanding results in fostering ncres the focus is on two critical issues the legal and regulatory framework and the institutions created to support the ncres market development the comparison shows that despite the very different energy situations and policy drivers valuables lessons can be extracted from the german experience the main lesson for brazil is to think ncres as a strategic opportunity to rely less on fossil fuel and large hydroelectric power plants to decentralize the electric power sector to use the huge solar biomass and wind power potential available in the country and to create a environment friendly ncres industry to this end three critical points were identified 1 the legal and regulatory framework should be improved 2 long term energy planning taking into account social economic and climate issues and 3 the current institutions supporting ncres in brazil should be upgraded and or new ones such as more specific energy agencies should be created

free entry and social inefficiency our goal is to provide a simple yet general exposition of the conditions under which the number of entrants in a free entry equilibrium is excessive insufficient or optimal our analysis compares the number of firms that enter a market when there is free entry with the number that would be desired by a social planner who is unable to control the behavior of firms once they are in the market that is we consider the second best problem of choosing the welfare maximizing number of firms while we take as given their noncompetitive behavior after entry we demonstrate that the crucial conditions for establishing the presence of an entry bias can be stated quite simply in terms of the outcome of the postentry game played by entrants in contrast to previous work we do not need to model this postentry game explicitly

economic effects of renewable energy expansion a model based analysis for germany abstract the increasing utilization of renewable energy sources res is a major energy policy strategy in many countries worldwide germany is a forerunner in the deployment of res and has ambitious goals for the future the support and use of renewables affects the economy it creates business opportunities in sectors producing renewable energy facilities but comes with costs related to supporting its deployment this paper analyses and quantifies the net balance of economic effects associated with renewable energy deployment in germany until 2030 to this end we use a novel model the sectoral energy economic econometric model this is an econometric multi country model which for germany contains a detailed representation of industries including 14 renewable energy technology sectors our results show that renewable energy expansion can be achieved without compromising growth or employment the analysis reveals a positive net effect on economic growth in germany net employment effects are small but also positive their size depends strongly on labour market conditions and policies results at the industry level indicate the size and direction of the need for restructuring across the sectors of the germany economy

inequality and convergence in europe s regions reconsidering european regional policies europe s regions income disparities and regional policies in this paper we take a critical look at current european regional policies first we document the motivation for such policies that is the large income disparities across the regions of the eu15 large disparities are certainly present second we illustrate the various instruments adopted and discuss their underpinnings in established economic theories next we look at available data searching for three kinds of evidence 1 if disparities are either growing or decreasing we conclude they are neither 2 which are the major factors explaining such disparities and in particular if they are the factors predicted by the economic models adopted by the commission to justify current policies we conclude this is most certainly not the case 3 if there are clear signs that eu policies as opposed to other social and economic factors are actually reducing such disparities we cannot find any clear sign of such desired impact our conclusion is that regional and structural policies serve mostly a redistributional purpose motivated by the nature of the political equilibria upon which the european union is built they have little relationship with fostering economic growth this casts a serious doubt on their social value and furthermore strongly questions extending such policies to future members of the european union a successful eu enlargement in our view calls for an immediate and drastic revision of regional economic policies michele boldrin and fabio canova

ex post analysis of economic impacts from wind power development in u s counties wind power development has surged in recent years in the united states policymakers and economic development practitioners to date have typically relied upon project level case studies or modeled input output estimates to assess the economic development impacts from wind power often focusing on potential local state wide or national employment or earnings impacts building on this literature we conduct an ex post econometric analysis of the county level economic development impacts of wind power installations from 2000 through 2008 in a large wind rich region in the country taking into account factors influencing wind turbine location we find an aggregate increase in county level personal income and employment of approximately 11 000 and 0 5 jobs per megawatt of wind power capacity installed over the sample period of 2000 to 2008 these estimates appear broadly consistent with modeled input output results and translate to a median increase in total county personal income and employment of 0 2 and 0 4 for counties with installed wind power over the same period

does entry regulation hinder job creation evidence from the french retail industry are product market and entry regulation key sources of low employment growth in many european countries we investigate this question in the context of the french retail trade industry since 1974 approval by regional zoning boards has been required for the creation or extension of any large retain store in france we exploit a unique database that provides time and region specific variation in boards approval decisions we show that stronger deterrence of entry by the boards increased retailer concentration and slowed down employment growth in france

macroeconomic effects of regulation and deregulation in goods and labor markets product and labor market deregulation reduce and redistribute rents leading economic players to adjust to this new distribution it typically comes with distribution and dynamic effects to study these effects we build a macroeconomic model on two central assumptions monopolistic competition in the goods market which determines the size of rents and bargaining in the labor market which determines the distribution of rents product market regulation determines entry costs and the degree of competition labor market regulation determines the bargaining power of workers we show the effects of deregulation we then use our results to discuss the political economy of deregulation and recent macroeconomic evolutions in europe

regional net impacts and social distribution effects of promoting renewable energies in germany this paper concerns the net effects of promoting renewable energies on value added and disposable income in germany as well as their distribution among regions and income brackets since its entry into force the german renewable energy sources act eeg has stimulated tremendous investments in renewable energy capacities by guaranteeing investors a fixed price per kwh as well as a preferred feed into the grid over electricity from conventional sources the policy measures are financed by a surcharge on electricity prices in recent years a controversy has arisen about potentially negative regional and social distribution effects in this paper multiregional price and quantity input output models with endogenous heterogeneous households are used to trace the indirect impacts of the eeg on value added and disposable income through the complex network of regional value chains our findings suggest that the generation of electricity from renewable sources itself leads to small positive impacts on industries but leads to a significant drain on household income and has regressive distributive effects however investment in new capacities may possibly transform these negative impacts into a positive direction for the majority of households

regional inequality in the european union does industry mix matter ezcurra r gil c pascual p and rapun m 2005 regional inequality in the european union does industry mix matter regional studies 39 679 697 the aim of this paper is to test for the respective roles of regional and sectoral factors in productivity convergence in the european union between 1977 and 1999 the methodology used for this is a new one that combines an alternative version of shift share analysis with various results quoted in the literature on personal income distribution the empirical evidence suggests that regional disparity in productivity in the european union is closely related to intrinsic differences between regions whatever the case the results that emerge also reveal the fundamental role of the country effect in accounting for regional disparities in income per worker in europe in addition our empirical results support the relevance of one sector growth models to explicate per capita income disparities in the european regions

how does germany s green energy policy affect electricity market volatility an application of conditional autoregressive range models abstract based on a dynamic model for the high low range of electricity prices this article analyses the effects of germany s green energy policy on the volatility of the electricity market using european energy exchange data from 2000 to 2015 we find rather high volatility in the years 2000 2009 but also that the weekly price range has significantly declined in the period following the year 2009 this period is characterised by active regulation under the energy industry law enwg the eu emissions trading directive etd and the renewable energy law eeg in contrast to the preceding period price jumps are smaller and less frequent especially for day time hours implying that current policy measures are effective in promoting renewable energies while simultaneously upholding electricity market stability this is because the regulations strive towards a more and more flexible and market oriented structure which allows better integration of renewable energies and supports an efficient alignment of renewable electricity supply with demand

the expansion of renewable energies and employment effects in germany the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy is a high priority of the european union as well of its member states the german government wants to increase the share of renewable energies from about 5 to 12 by 2010 to attain this goal the german government has introduced compulsory compensation schemes for electricity produced from renewable energy fed into the public grid this paper examines the economic impact of this policy employing an econometric model particular emphasis was given to employment effects in general we distinguish two effects 1 an expansive effect resulting from additional investments and 2 a contractive effect resulting from an increase in the production cost of power the first effect will dominate during the first years and lead to an increase in employment of approximately 33 000 new jobs however the contractive effect will offset these gains and lead to a slightly negative employment balance by 2010

competition and the capital labor conflict abstract this paper analyzes the distributional effects of changes in the intensity of product market competition the focus is on the interaction between imperfect competition in product markets and bargaining in the labor market the main result is that while a uniform intensification of product market competition increases employment it may cause real wages to fall in the short run as well as in the long run this is especially likely if labor market regulations are favorable to workers therefore product market and labor market regulations tend to reinforce each other politically and compensatory fiscal transfers may be needed in order to enact employment enhancing deregulation policies

a dynamic model of shirking and unemployment private saving public debt and optimal taxation abstract this paper introduces private saving and public debt into the shirking unemployment model of shapiro and stiglitz 1984 while relaxing their exclusive focus on steady states after generalizing their no shirking constraint to accommodate asset accumulation and demonstrating that the resulting economy s equilibrium is saddle path stable we use our dynamic model to obtain significant departures from the shapiro stiglitz prescriptions for optimal policy most notably wage income should be taxed not subsidized in the long run if the labor market is sufficiently distorted furthermore interest income should be exhaustively taxed only during an initial interval of time as in chamley s 1986 full employment model

unemployment and the business cycle abstract this paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model where labor effort is imperfectly observable and there is unemployment in equilibrium in contrast to shirking models in the efficiency wage literature detected shirkers are not dismissed instead they face a monetary punishment because they forgo an increase in their compensation estimated versions of the model can generate the high variation in employment and low variation of real wages observed over the business cycle and are consistent with existing qualitative evidence about the responses of the economy to fiscal policy shocks

green jobs economic impacts of renewable energy in germany abstract the labor market implications of large investment into renewable energy re are analyzed in this text although a growing re industry can be observed in germany the overall effect of large increases of re based electricity and heat generating technologies on the german economy require a careful model based analysis the applied model panta rhei has been used among others to evaluate the german energy concept in 2010 it takes positive and negative impacts of re into account the paper shows the overall effects under different assumptions for fossil fuel prices domestic installations and international trade the results are sensitive to assumptions on the development of re world markets and german exports to these markets almost all of these scenarios exhibit positive net employment effects under medium assumptions net employment of re expansion will reach around 150 thousand in 2030 only with assumptions for german re exports below today s level net impacts are slightly negative gross employment will increase from 340 thousand in 2009 to between 500 and 600 thousand in 2030

how shifting investment towards low carbon sectors impacts employment three determinants under scrutiny abstract the threat of climate change requires redirecting investment towards low carbon sectors and this shift generates heated debates about its impact on employment many studies exist most of which use cge or input output io models however the economic mechanisms at play remain unclear this paper disentangles the channels of job creation and studies to what extent the results of simpler io models diverge from cge results using stylized models we show that a shift in investment creates jobs in io if it promotes sectors with a higher share of labour in value added lower wages or a lower import rate in cge the first two channels also yield job creation but there is no positive impact of targeting low imports sectors unless these do not export then we undertake a numerical analysis of two policies the installation of solar panels and weatherization in france both policies have a positive effect on employment in both models due to the high share of labour and low wages in these sectors io results provide a good approximation of cge results for solar 14 to 34 and are slightly higher for weatherization 22 to 87 our findings challenge the idea that renewables boost employment by reducing imports but they also suggest that a double dividend can be achieved by encouraging low carbon labour intensive sectors

modelling strategy and net employment effects of renewable energy and energy efficiency a meta regression by conducting a meta analysis of the empirical literature on the net employment effects of renewable energy we explore the extent to which the reported net employment effects are driven by the applied methodology we find that the reported conclusions on net employment effects are to a large extent driven by the methodology that is applied where computable general equilibrium cge and i o methods that include induced effects and studies that consider only the near future in their study period up to 2020 are generally less optimistic about net employment creation in the wake of the energy transition in addition we found that policy reports have a greater tendency to report a positive net employment effect than academic studies

potential for renewable energy jobs in the middle east abstract based on employment factors derived from a recent review of publications investigating opportunities for work associated with the diffusion of renewable energy technology we here present an analysis of the potential for renewable energy jobs in the middle east we use energy system optimisation results from the regionally disaggregated tiam ecn model as input to our study this integrated assessment model is utilised to inspect the energy technology requirements for meeting a stringent global climate policy that achieves a stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere with a maximum additional radiative forcing of 2 9 w m 2 this climate control target implies a massive deployment of renewable energy in the middle east with wind and solar power accounting for approximately 60 of total electricity supply in 2050 900 twh of an overall level of 1525 twh would be generated from 210 gw of installed renewable energy capacity by the middle of the century for this pervasive renewables diffusion scenario for the middle east we estimate a total required local work force of ultimately about 155 000 direct and 115 000 indirect jobs based on assumptions regarding which components of the respective wind and solar energy technologies can be manufactured in the region itself all jobs generated through installation and o m activities are assumed to be domestic

regional mobility in the european union regional mobility in the spatial distribution of per capita income in the european union is examined over the period 1977 to 1999 the methodology used to investigate this issue combines a series of measures taken from the literature devoted to the dynamic study of personal income distribution with a non parametric analysis the results show limited mobility in the distribution considered and a decline in mobility over time the empirical evidence presented indicates moreover that mobility patterns vary as a function of regional development levels additionally the analysis carried out investigates the role played in explaining intra distribution mobility by variables such as per capita income population density per capita expenditure in investment market potential and the share in total employment of agriculture advanced services and non market services

an assessment of the greek incentives scheme for photovoltaics abstract after two years of elaboration a new legislation was enacted in 2006 in greece providing an appealing feed in tariff fit scheme for photovoltaics pvs the response of the market was immediate with more than 7947 licenses having been submitted in less than 2 years time the effectiveness however of an incentives scheme cannot be judged solely by the response of prospective investors aim of this paper is to present and discuss a quantitative assessment of this newly introduced fit law in greece with respect to its attractiveness to investors its effectiveness towards launching a new market its cost efficiency and its ability to lift non economic barriers that led to significant delays in the diffusion of res over the last 10 years

renewable energy and employment in germany abstract the positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependency of energy imports are indisputable however one persistent problem for the german economy has been its high level of unemployment in the recent past therefore any policy strategy will be measured also by its net impact on the labor market the paper describes the results of a study that models this impact and is novel within three respects firstly an input output vector for the renewable energy sector was developed based on the results of more than 1000 interviews with an extensive questionnaire secondly gross and net effect of two different policy scenarios for germany until 2030 were calculated and thirdly the approach varies from earlier studies by its explicit modeling of export and foreign trade effects

labor demand effects of rising electricity prices evidence for germany abstract germany continues to play a pioneering role in replacing conventional power plants with renewable energy sources while this might be beneficial with respect to environmental quality it also implies increasing electricity prices the extent to which this is associated with negative impacts on employment depends on the interrelationship between labor and electricity as input factors in the production process in this paper we estimate cross price elasticities between electricity and heterogeneous labor for the german manufacturing sector we use administrative linked employer employee micro data combined with information on sector level electricity prices and usage over the period 2003 2007 we find positive but small conditional cross price elasticities of labor demand with respect to electricity prices which means that electricity as an input factor can be replaced by labor to a limited extent when the production level is held constant in the case of adjustable output we find negative unconditional cross price elasticities implying that higher electricity prices lead to output reductions and to lower labor demand with low and high skilled workers being affected more than medium skilled resulting adverse distributional effects and potential overall job losses may pose challenges for policy makers in securing public support for the german energy turnaround

between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions rodriguez pose a and fratesi u 2004 between development and social policies the impact of european structural funds in objective 1 regions reg studies 38 97 113 european regional support has grown in parallel with european integration the funds targeted at achieving greater economic and social cohesion and reducing disparities within the european union eu have more than doubled in relative terms since the end of the 1980s making development policies the second most important policy area in the eu the majority of the development funds have been earmarked for objective 1 regions i e regions where gdp per capita is below the 75 threshold of the eu average however the european development policies have come under increasing criticism based on two facts the lack of upward mobility of assisted regions and the absence of regional convergence this paper assesses using cross sectional and panel data analyses the failure so far of european development policies to fulfil their objective of de

spatial disparities in the european agriculture a regional analysis this article examines the territorial imbalances in european agriculture during the period 1980 to 2001 by means of the information provided by various methodological instruments which allow us to overcome the drawbacks of conventional convergence analysis the results obtained reveal that the regional distribution of productivity in the agricultural sector is characterized by the presence of positive spatial dependence this fact implies that the european regions in close spatial proximity register similar levels of the variable under study which highlights the relevance of geographical location in this context the empirical evidence presented also shows that regional disparities have remained almost constant during the time interval considered however the increase in density around the european average explains the observed reduction in the degree of bipolarization while intra distribution mobility is relatively limited finally the analysis carried out allows us to assess the role of variables s

estimating labour and output gap evidence from the athens olympic region in greece the present article estimates potential labour and labour gap as well as potential output and output gap using a cobb douglas production function and a hodrick prescott filter we investigate the athens region in greece by sector of economic activity with the aid of the non accelerating wage inflation rate of unemployment concept the results support the idea that the athens region seems to be working mostly over the regional economy s capabilities a fact which leads to inflationary pressure

the exploitation of electricity production projects from renewable energy sources for the social and economic development of remote communities the case of greece an example to avoid abstract since 2009 an anarchic policy has been followed by the investors regarding the submission of a large number of applications in greece for the construction of electricity production projects from renewable energy sources r e s applications and licenses without any strategic design usually of extremely large size in relatively small insular territories often violating several environmental or cultural constraints defined in the relevant legislation applications and licenses that have been submitted without informing the local communities neglecting the existing industrial agricultural or domestic activities the land properties and consequently provoking the common sense and reverting the generally positive common attribute about r e s recorded in greece before 2008 these applications and licenses exhibit low maturity characterized by violation of environmental constraints disapproval of local communities inadequacy to procure the required land properties and lack of r e s potential measurements ultimately they exhibit very low probabilities to be implemented furthermore all these premature applications cover large geographical territories preventing thus other mature and more realistic r e s projects from applying for licensing consequently the existing applications and licenses instead of promoting the r e s development in greece continue to keep it steady this article aims at the investigation of the causes that resulted in the above described negative reality potential deficiencies of the existing legislative framework are analyzed some characteristic examples of the submitted applications or issued licenses are presented and their technical and economic feasibility is evaluated finally the article proposes measures for the rational development of r e s electricity production projects in greece these measures aim to combine the maximization of the r e s development with the protection of the local communities furthermore they aim to support the participation of local investors and public organizations in the r e s projects this perspective will maximize the social and economic benefits to the local communities

aggregate economic fluctuations and regional convergence the finnish case 1988 95 this paper analyses the connection between aggregate economic fluctuations and regional productivity convergence in finland during the period 1988 95 markov chain transition matrices and mobility indices were used to examine the regional distribution of productivity the results indicated that high intra distribution mobility occurred during booms when regional convergence potential was also at its highest conversely recession years were characterized by much lower mobility and a more divergent regional pattern these findings bear important implications in terms of regional policy planning as it seems that poor regions do not manage to keep up with the rich ones during slumps whereas regional disparities diminish naturally during boom years

renewable energy deployment in europe up to 2030 and the aim of a triple dividend abstract renewable energy sources res play a key role in the european commission s 2030 climate and energy framework which aims for a low carbon economy that increases the security of the eu s energy supplies and creates new opportunities for growth and jobs among other benefits we assess whether renewable energy deployment in europe can provide this triple dividend at which ambition levels of 2030 res targets and what the role of the support policy scheme for electricity is we apply two types of models a detailed techno economic sector model of the deployment of res and two macroeconomic models our findings suggest that up to 2030 our triple dividend hypothesis holds even under a declining role of europe as technology provider for the rest of the world additional emission reductions of up to 1040 mt co 2 as compared to a baseline scenario in 2030 are possible demand for fossil fuels can likewise be reduced due to the deployment of renewable energy sources by up to 150 mtoe more ambiguous is the order of magnitude of the effects on gdp and employment which differs noticeably depending on the economic theory applied in the different models nevertheless both models predict slightly higher gdp and employment in 2030 when implementing ambitious res targets

on the measurement of σ convergence abstract we demonstrate that two popular measures of inequality related to the discussion of convergence lead to different conclusions when used on data from penn world table the reason is that the measures assign different weights to individual countries growth performance

us regional income convergence a spatial econometric perspective rey s j and montouri b d 1999 us regional income convergence a spatial econometric perspective reg studies 33 143 156 this study reconsiders the question of us regional economic income convergence from a spatial econometric perspective recently developed methods of exploratory spatial data analysis provide new insights on the geographical dynamics of us regional income growth patterns over the 1929 94 period strong patterns of both global and local spatial autocorrelation are found throughout the study period and the magnitude of global spatial autocorrelation is also found to exhibit strong temporal co movement with regional income dispersion a spatial econometric analysis of the familiar baumol specification reveals strong evidence of misspecification due to ignored spatial error dependence because of this dependence shocks originating in one state can spillover into surrounding states potentially complicating the transitional dynamics of the convergence process rey s j et montouri

quantification and monetization of employment benefits associated with renewable energy technologies in greece abstract this paper formulates and implements an integrated approach for estimating the employment benefits associated with the exploitation of renewable energy sources res in the power sector it builds up on well known techniques and makes all the necessary modifications in order to take into account the specific conditions of the res market more specific the proposed approach exploits the input output methodology for estimating the direct indirect and induced employment effects associated with the energy technologies in question and the opportunity cost of labour approach for expressing these effects in monetary terms this framework has been implemented to estimate the employment benefits resulting from the development of different res technologies in greece taking into account both the construction and operation phases of the relative projects the results of the analysis clearly show that the exploitation of res in the greek power sector presents significant employment benefits which are at the same order of magnitude or in several cases even higher compared to the corresponding benefits attributed to the operation of fossil fueled power plants e g lignite and natural gas therefore the fulfillment of the national target for increasing the penetration of res into the greek power sector from approximately 12 today to 40 in 2020 will contribute apart from the significant environmental improvements to the overall economic development and the increase of the employment

examining the spatial patterns of green industries and the role of government policies in south korea application of a panel regression model 2006 2012 abstract driven by global competition for economic growth green industries and green jobs have become an important economic engine for sustainable and environmentally friendly development most of the existing literature on green industries has focused on defining the green industry and its economic impacts however little empirical research has been conducted on the spatial patterns of green industries such as their locational preferences we examined the spatial patterns of green industries in south korea over time and across municipal level administrative units si gun gu using the survey of business activities 2006 2012 which includes longitudinal establishment level employment data collected by the korea national statistical office we employed a panel data regression model to analyze green industries and their locational decisions the spatial analysis showed that green industries tend to locate in areas where conventional manufacturing industries were previously concentrated we also identified a new emerging geographic cluster of green industries the panel regression models indicated that some green industries such as the advanced green city industry sector tend to locate either within or near big cities in contrast the renewable energy industry sector tends to locate far from major cities in addition we confirmed that the 2009 framework act on low carbon and green growth law enacted by the korean government had a significant impact on the growth of the green industry however the act s impact ceased after 2010 indicating the importance of both subsequent policy initiatives and the creation of a private market for green industries and green jobs