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

non monotonic effects of market concentration on prices for residential solar photovoltaics in the united states abstract emerging renewable energy markets may become more concentrated over time as the most efficient firms accumulate market share the effects of this market concentration on prices are tested using a rich dataset of residential solar photovoltaic pv systems in the united states a novel hypothesis is explored that the effects of market concentration may be non monotonic prices may decline in market concentration due to efficiency gains associated with returns to scale but increase in concentration in already concentrated markets due to increasing market power the results of an econometric model provide evidence to support the non monotonic hypothesis however the data suggest that the relationship between prices and firm scale is nuanced and that both large and small scale pv installers may wield efficiency advantages

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

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

dynamics of market structure advertising and profitability a var approach the purpose of this study is to provide an econometric characterization of the dynamic interrelationship among structure conduct and performance variables with a vector autoregressive var model particular attention will be given to the causality and response patterns of the variable involved in the light of our desire to ascertain descriptive characterizations of historical behaviour we let the data speak for itself the result suggests a weak realtionship existing between market structure and profitability

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

a re examination of the relationship between industry structure and economic performance the objective of this study is to develop a simultaneous equations model of profitability concentration advertising expenditures and research and development outlays the data used in the estimation are subjected to regression diagnostics in an effort to determine the importance to the estimation results of a subset of the data that can have a disproportionate influence the estimation results especially for the advertising expenditures relationship and the research and development outlays equation do change when a truncated data sample based on the omission of the outliers is used this serves partly to explain why there is some disagreement in the literature on market structure and economic performance with regard to the impact of several economic factors

socioeconomic effects of aviation biofuel production in brazil a scenarios based input output analysis derived from renewable feedstocks aviation biofuel is generally perceived as inherently sustainable however its production involves a wide range of sectors and interacts with different actors in society it is therefore important to understand and evaluate not only the environmental impacts of that process but also its socioeconomic effects at present empirical studies assessing socioeconomic aspects of aviation biofuel are rare in scientific literature the aim of this study therefore is to assess key effects of aviation biofuel production on employment gdp and trade balance a scenarios based input output io analysis was used to evaluate these socioeconomic effects taking brazilian aviation biofuel production to 2050 as an example to address the uncertainty of io analysis we have proposed a stochastic simulation approach for the technical coefficients in the io model four distinct scenarios were developed in each three potential combinations of technologies and feedstocks for producing aviation biofuel were evaluated sugarcane via alcohol to jet atj macauba via hydro processed esters and fatty acids hefa and eucalyptus via fischer tropsch ft among other things we found that the production of aviation biofuel would create around 12 000 65 000 jobs while contributing us 200 1100 million to brazil s gdp under different scenarios with different supply chains the socioeconomic effects calculated deterministically were generally higher than the stochastic outcomes which can be explained by factors such as technological learning and economic growth aviation biofuel production showed large positive net socioeconomic effects on employment and gdp although some of the fossil sectors would be negatively affected overall the macauba hefa chain with the highest effects on employment and gdp and the lowest effects on imports seemed to be the most favorable of the scenarios studied despite the relatively high level of uncertainty associated with it

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

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

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

will the locals benefit the effect of wind power investments on rural wages abstract an important and poorly understood question when communities consider wind power investments is whether the local population will benefit financially i examine the effect of wind power investment on wages in rural counties in the us i combine quarterly panel data on wages with data on all wind power plant investments larger than 1 megawatt mw using a bayesian multilevel model estimated by mcmc i estimate a significant positive effect with a magnitude consistent with a 2 permanent increase in wages following an investment in a large wind farm of 400 mw however this effect has large geographic and socioeconomic variation counties with low employment tend to see little impact on wages from wind power potentially because slack in the labor market prevents wages from rising from a policy perspective these results are most relevant for local regulators and planners who seek to balance the benefits and costs of wind farms to the community this research indicates that wind farms can provide on average a modest boost to local wages with some areas seeing an out sized effect

the european renewable energy target for 2030 an impact assessment of the electricity sector abstract the european union set binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases ghg and the share of renewable energy re in final energy consumption by 2020 the european council agreed to continue with this strategy through to 2030 by setting a re target of 27 in addition to a ghg reduction target of 40 we provide a detailed sectoral impact assessment by analyzing the implications for the electricity sector in terms of economic costs and the regional distribution of investments and shares of electricity generated from renewable energy sources res e according to the impact analysis by the european commission the 27 re target corresponds to a res e share of 49 our model based sensitivity analysis on underlying technological and institutional assumptions shows that the cost effective res e share varies between 43 and 56 secondly we quantify the economic costs of these variants and those which would be incurred with higher shares the long term additional costs for higher res e shares would be less than 1 of total system costs the third aspect relates to the regional distribution of eu wide efforts for upscaling renewables we point out that delivering high res e shares in a cost effective manner involves considerably different efforts by the member states

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

the deployment of electricity generation from renewable energies in germany and spain a comparative analysis based on a simple model abstract the fulfilment of the aims set by the european union in the deployment of renewable energy sources for electricity generation res e has counted and must continue to count on public funding from the member states which promote private investment in this type of facilities this funding guarantees a cost oriented remuneration which being higher than the market price means an additional cost to the electricity system with the aim of minimizing the economic impact as the weight of res e in the electricity mix increases the generation costs of renewable units must approach those of the market which are expected to increase according to the fossil fuel price forecasts the present study analyzes both the res e development and deployment in spain and germany two pioneering countries worldwide and with very similar electricity systems based on their national action plans and a simple model this analysis approaches the res e surcharge comparing and contrasting the results obtained in both countries

r d market structure and profits a value based approach this paper considers a complex relation among r d market structure and a market value based measure of profits perhaps of greatest interest a positive effect of r d on profits emerges as does a negative r d concentration interaction effect both appear robust and support an intangible capital and rivalrous view of r d despite substantial interest in the question little direct evidence on research and development r d market structure and profits relations has appeared in the literature an important exception to this rule is grabowski and mueller hereafter g m 1978 who reported a strong effect of r d on adjusted profit rate data in addition to an equally strong negative r dmarket concentration interaction effect g m interpret their findings as support for an intangible capital and rivalrous view of r d alternatively they are also consistent with the hypothesis that firms in highly concentrated markets pursue r d less efficiently or take on riskier projects in any event g m s findings seem inconsistent with a view of r d as a barrier to entry see kamien and schwartz 1975 this study extends previous research in at least four respects first we adopt a market valued based measure of profits in order to avoid any bias inherent in accounting profit data due to an expense as incurred rather than capitalization and amortization treatment of r d advertising and similar expenditures second we evaluate simultaneous influences among profits r d advertising and concentration suggested but not tested previously third estimation results are derived using leamer s search technique which illustrates the sensitivity of estimates to alternate model specifications and fourth we consider an n 390 firm fortune 500 sample which is substantially larger than in previous studies including firms responsible for nearly 90 of private sector r d during 1977 estimation results should therefore be broadly indicative of the economic consequences of r d

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

industrial determinants of anti dumping in brazil protection competition and performance an analysis with binary dependent variable and panel data abstract this article investigates how sectorial characteristics determine the probability of industries receiving an anti dumping ad duty delving into the economic literature on the political economy of protection market competition and trade reform in brazil by focusing on when the ad was granted the article concentrates on the objective economic motivations for an industry to claim protection and which are instrumental to the decision of the trade defense authority the empirical strategy involves a panel of 93 industrial sectors from 1996 to 2007 to create four groups of explanatory variables collective action competition economic performance factors of production trade coefficients reflecting their structural characteristics market competition economic performance and political mobilization the econometric specifications apply binary dependent variable models logit with cluster robust and population averaged error correction the results show that structure of trade imports volume and tariffs economic performance productivity and investments and factor content labor and natural resources influence the probability of the ad political economy characteristics captured by interactive terms are also influential in determining the measure

advertising concentration and profitability in manufacturing advertising concentration and profitability in manufacturing i introduction economists have devoted much effort to empirically testing the hypothesized relationships between industrial concentration profits and advertising twenty years ago lester telser concluded that there is little empirical support for an inverse association between advertising and competition 1964 later other economists studying the relationship between advertising and concentration discovered a positive correlation between the four firm concentration ratio a measure of industry concentration and advertising intensity 1 strickland and weiss 1976 went further to show that there is a causal relationship between these elements increases in concentration cause advertising to intensify and conversely a rise in advertising intensity causes an increase in the level of concentration in recent years the empirical literature on advertising concentration and profitability has atrophied because of dissatisfaction with its theoretical basis as a new approach i adopt the theory of advertising developed by stigler and becker 1977 and extend it to incorporate the relationships among advertising concentration and profitability i then test its most important implications using data from the 1977 census of manufactures and the detailed input output structure of the u s economy 2 section ii examines the relationship between concentration and advertising intensity conventional theory known as the inverted u hypothesis asserts that advertising is expected to increase with concentration at first but to decrease at very high levels of concentration because collusion to avoid advertising costs becomes easier extending the stigler and becker theory i hypothesize that when concentration increases even if the large firms do not collude and continue to act independently they will eventually decrease their advertising intensity at high levels of concentration provided that the demand curve for the industry s products is relatively inelastic if the industry s demand curve is relatively elastic advertising intensity increases monotonically with concentration at all levels of concentration this hypothesis is supported by the 1977 data taken from the census and the input output structure of the u s economy section iii focuses on the relationship between advertising and profitability according to conventional theories advertising intensity promotes product differentiation leading to higher barriers to entry and higher profit margins in the past researchers e g strickland and weiss 1976 realized that contrary to the implications of barriers to entry theory the coefficient of advertising in a profit margin equation was longer for a sample of industries producing producer goods than for industries producing consumer goods they viewed this result as an anomaly inconsistent with both their theoretical reasoning and with other important empirical results already published i obtain a similar result which i am able to link to a theoretical structure thus contributing to the refutation of the barriers to entry hypothesis i begin by extending the stigler and becker theory to treat advertising and research and development r d as two complementary intangible capital goods the sample is divided into two groups producers of homogeneous goods who spend relatively more on r d and producers of heterogeneous goods who spend relatively more on advertising since we are unable to measure r d costs at the appropriate industry level it is not included among the regression variables if r d and advertising intensity are correlated we should expect the coefficient of advertising in the profitability equation in the homogeneous goods subsample to exceed the coefficient of advertising in the profitability equation in the heterogeneous goods subsample in this case the omission of the r d variable provides an implication for testing the new hypothesis

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 employment and economic growth effects of south africa s transition to low carbon energy supply mix abstract this paper examines the long run regional economic effects within south africa of changing the electricity generation mix towards less coal to do so a regional computable general equilibrium cge model of south africa is employed for the analysis the overall result stemmed from all scenarios suggest that the effect of a transition to an energy supply mix with smaller share of coal generation is sensitive to other economic and policy conditions in particular the reaction of the global coal market and hence south africa s coal exports under conditions in which surplus coal resulting from lower domestic demand cannot be readily exported the economies of coal producing regions in south africa such as the mpumalanga province are the most severely affected the subsequent migration of semi skilled labour from that province to others within the country require appropriate and timeous planning by energy policymakers and urban planners

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

endogenous technological change and emissions the case of the german steel industry abstract the paper starts from the observation that innovation and technical progress are only portrayed superficially in the predominant environmental economic top down models and that the assumption of perfect factor substitution does not correctly mirror actual production conditions in many energy intensive production sectors bottom up models on the other hand neglect macroeconomic interdependencies between the modelled sector and the general economy this paper presents a new modelling approach in an integrated bottom up top down approach based on the example of crude steel production in germany it is demonstrated how technological progress can be portrayed as process related and policy induced and how the technology choice between limitational processes can be explicitly modelled and implemented in the econometric input output model panta rhei the new modelling approach presented permits a process specific analysis of the impacts of changed frame conditions the effects of which on the choice of technology on the one hand and the technological progress on the other can be described endogenous to the model these features are demonstrated in a co2 tax simulation results show that policy induced technological change is besides a switch in production processes the major source of co2 reduction for the steel sector

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 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

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

the provision of public goods under alternative electoral incentives politicians who care about the spoils of office may underprovide a public good because its benefits cannot be targeted to voters as easily as pork barrel spending we compare a winner take all system where all the spoils go to the winner to a proportional system where the spoils of office are split among candidates proportionally to their share of the vote in a winner take all system the public good is provided less often than in a proportional system when the public good is particularly desirable we then consider the electoral college system and show that it is particularly subject to this inefficiency

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

the long term effect of renewable electricity on employment in the united kingdom abstract assessment of the employment impact of renewable electricity technologies is generally implemented through either complex and data intensive methods such as computable general equilibrium models or simplistic approaches normally focused on specific energy generation technologies such as employment factors in contrast this article proposes a transparent and easily reproducible econometric methodology based on the vector error correction model that uses aggregated and widely available data the model is applied to the power generation sector in the united kingdom using annual data from 1990 onwards and provides evidence that the long term employment impact of renewable technologies is much higher than the impact arising from deploying nuclear or natural gas technologies the impulse response function analysis indicates that a permanent 1 gigawatt hours increase in annual electricity supply generated by renewable technologies creates 3 5 jobs in the long term period finally this study derives the implications of the findings in the context of decarbonisation scenarios for the power sector in the united kingdom and assesses the extent to which decarbonisation pathways based on renewable electricity contribute to stimulating employment in the generation sector

the economic impacts of high wind penetration scenarios in the united states abstract the u s electric sector is experiencing rapid increases in renewable generation with an expectation of continued growth we examine the impacts of increased wind electricity on the u s economy using a hybrid model that links a detailed electric sector model the national renewable energy laboratory s regional energy deployment system reeds with a computable general equilibrium model of the u s economy the massachusetts institute of technology s u s regional energy policy usrep model increasing wind capacity displaces fossil fuels for electricity generation which depresses fossil fuel prices and reduces economy wide co2 emissions competitive wind deployment in the reference scenario achieves these outcomes with lower electricity prices than a scenario with wind capacity fixed at 2016 levels lower fossil fuel and electricity prices benefit low income households but the dominant economic impacts are driven by increased electric sector investment and capital returns which primarily benefit those with higher incomes overall cost competitive wind provides benefits to the u s economy that are initially low but rise beyond 2030 to achieve cumulative welfare and gdp improvements of 110 and 111 billion through 2050 prescribing additional wind deployment meeting 35 of demand by 2050 increases post 2030 electricity prices but not more so than keeping wind capacity fixed at 2016 levels the negative effect of higher prices on welfare however is outweighed by higher returns from the additional wind investment while these changes favor higher income classes we find economy wide benefits through 2040 these benefits diminish by 2050 but the cumulative additional gains through 2050 beyond the reference case are 192 billion in welfare and 150 billion in gdp

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

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

stable governments and the allocation of policy portfolios different members of coalition governments typically have responsibility for different aspects or dimensions of policy such responsibilities are allocated as portfolios to government members given a distribution of such portfolios final government policy is derived as the accumulation of individual members decisions in regard to their respective responsibilities we develop a portfolio allocation model of government formation and policy decision in multiparty legislatures in particular we focus on stable portfolio allocations where a stable allocation is one that yields a policy that no legislative coalition is willing or able to overturn several notions of stability are considered and related to the usual concept of the core among the results are that although stable allocations are not guaranteed such allocations can exist with minority governments and that final policy outcomes associated with stable governments need not be centrist

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

electoral systems and public spending we study the effects of electoral institutions on the size and composition of public expenditure in oecd and latin american countries we emphasize the distinction between purchases of goods and services which are easier to target geographically and transfers which are easier to target across social groups we present a theoretical model in which voters anticipating government policymaking under different electoral systems have an incentive to elect representatives more prone to transfer public good spending in proportional majoritarian systems the model also predicts higher total primary spending in proportional majoritarian systems when the share of transfer spending is high low after dee ning rigorous measures of proportionality to be used in the empirical investigation we e nd considerable support for our predictions

structure conduct and performance a simultaneous equations investigation for the brazilian manufacturing industry the article investigated structure conduct performance scp relationships in the context of the brazilian manufacturing industry in 1996 for that purpose it considered a system with four equations pertaining concentration advertising r d and profitability that was estimated with simultaneous equation models in addition to the usual explanatory variables proxying barriers to entry and demand conditions the article considered organizational practices and incentive schemes variables the evidence indicated an important role for variables related to barriers to entry in affecting market structure an important and nonlinear effect of concentration on advertising a relevant impact of firm size on the propensity to exert r d effort and finally a significant positive impact of concentration on profitability and were similar to the previous evidence for developed countries additionally no important roles were detected for organizational practices and incentive schemes on the scp relationships

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

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

endogeneity in the concentration price relationship causes consequences and curses the ordinary least squares estimator of the effect of concentration on price is biased for two reasons first performance feeds back into structure causing a simultaneous equations bias second as a function of outputs or revenues measured concentration is correlated with determinants of price that are at best measured with error so measured concentration is correlated with the error term with panel data fixed effects procedures can be combined with instrumental variables to eliminate bias from both sources in concentration price regressions for the airline industry the bias can be substantial and negative copyright 1993 by blackwell publishing ltd

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

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

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

keep it local and fish friendly social acceptance of hydropower projects in switzerland hydropower is the largest source of renewable electricity in the world but despite being a mature and clean energy technology it has also been the subject of ecological and social conflict literature suggests that the social acceptance of renewable energy can be increased by respecting procedural justice fair participatory planning processes and distributional justice fairly allocating costs and benefits however empirical evidence about how justice considerations are related to the expansion of hydropower is scarce pre existing studies being mostly qualitative in nature we contribute to filling the gap in the current literature by describing in this paper how choice experiments with 1004 swiss residents were undertaken to explore the influence of procedural and distributional justice on acceptance relative to other attributes of hydropower projects we find that while considerations about justice do play a role in decisions to accept respondents in switzerland care most about ecological impacts and secondly about local ownership

party system nationalization and the scope of public policy the importance of cross district constituency similarity party system nationalization is supposed to result in the provision of nationally focused policy including spending priorities with widespread benefits conversely democracies characterized by parties with geographically narrower patterns of support are suspected of parochial policies including targetable spending the authors show that party system nationalization alone is not sufficient to generate national benefits in addition governing parties constituents must be similar across districts nationalization can occur because parties are making the same appeal to similar constituents across different electoral districts but it can also occur because parties are skillfully tailoring different appeals to diverse constituencies across districts in the latter case the authors expect to see the targeted spending priorities typically associated with party systems that are not nationalized the authors test for the conditional effect of party system nationalization in 36 elections across 20 countries u

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

renewable generation across italian regions spillover effects and effectiveness of european regional fund abstract this paper investigates on the determinant factors that drive the italian regions toward a sustainable development path and evaluates the effectiveness of european regional development incentives in promoting investments in renewable energy sources res starting from the consideration that there are spillover effects between similar regions first we identify the factors that capture these similarities then we use them to evaluate their relevance in determining the success of the investments in res an econometric analysis based on the use of spatial panel specification model is implemented to support the hypotheses two important results emerge from the study the first is the identification of regional determinants of res production that are driven by the similarities between regions and that can be interpreted as guidelines in the policy choices in support of investments the second is the lack of effectiveness of the incentives in support of res results indicate that the capacity of some regional governments to direct the funds allocated by the central government or european commission towards efficient production of renewable energy is likely limited and these incentives have been undone

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

profit margins and business cycles in the brazilian industry a panel data study the paper investigates the relationship between profit margins and business cycle in the brazilian industry during the 1992 1998 period taking as reference a dynamic panel data model founded around a conjectural variation framework the empirical results indicate procyclical behaviour of profit margins for the aggregate business cycle but is less clear in the case of sector specific business cycle variables among the most robust results one can highlight the roles of lagged profitability and import intensity and the negligible role of union density schmalensee in 1985 american economic review 75 pp 341 51 outlined three theoretical interpretations associated with the empirical model classical revisionist and managerial econometric tests on the related restrictions do not allow one to exclusively legitimate any of the three interpretations

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

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

material efficiency and economic environmental sustainability results of simulations for germany with the model panta rhei abstract based on empirical evidence the paper discusses the impact of a consulting and information program for the improvement of material productivity with regard to economic and environmental targets for germany the instrument used in the analysis is the integrated economic environmental model panta rhei which is parameterized econometrically the paper presents the model and shows in a baseline forecast that without policy changes sustainability will be violated in both the economic and the environmental dimensions this applies to the latter particularly with regard to land use and material consumption the alternative simulation that introduces a consulting and information program for the improvement of material productivity yields a win win result growth rates of gdp and employment are rising the public debt is reduced and material consumption is much lower than in the baseline and remains at the actual level which means that a decoupling of growth and material consumption is possible

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

voting weights and formateur advantages in the formation of coalition governments over the last two decades a large and important literature has emerged that uses game theoretic models of bargaining to study legislative coalitions to test key predictions of these models we examine the composition of coalition governments from 1946 and 2001 these predictions are almost always expressed in terms of parties minimal integer voting weights we calculate such weights for all parliamentary parties in addition we develop a statistical model that nests the predictions of many of these models of the distribution of posts we find that for parties that join but did not form the government there is a linear relationship between their share of the voting weight in parliament and their share of cabinet posts the party that forms the government the formateur receives a substantial bonus relative to its voting weight the latter finding is more consistent with proposal based bargaining models of coalition formation and suggests that parties gain disproportionate power not because of their size but because of their proposal power

structure conduct and performance a simultaneous equations approach a simultaneous equations framework is used to study the relationship between structure conduct and performance in us manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s the paper expands on earlier structure conduct performance studies by using a lag structure to signify that structure conduct and performance do not affect one another contemporaneously findings support some aspects of the traditional structure conduct performance model but challenge others first the data suggest that industry structure does not depend on current industry performance second little evidence is found that industry conduct proxied by advertising is affected by industry structure third results show that industry performance does not depend on industry conduct though it is sensitive to industry structure the main findings are that 1 concentration does not depend on firm profitability though profitability depends on concentration 2 advertising follows a process that is independent of the factors considered here and 3 ad

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

the personal vote and the efficacy of education spending in this article we explore the ways in which incentives to cultivate a personal vote affect the efficiency of education spending in developing democracies we argue that where the electoral system provides incentives for political particularism resources are allocated less efficiently and the effect of increased spending on literacy is diminished we test our hypotheses using data on education spending and performance in over 40 developing democracies since 1980 we find that though personal vote systems spend just as much on education as party vote systems particularism in personal vote systems dampens the marginal effect of increased education spending on illiteracy and at its highest levels incentives to cultivate a personal vote completely undermine the positive effects of increased education spending on literacy

demographic diversity and district level party systems scholars of electoral politics have long argued that the size of a party system is jointly determined by social diversity and district magnitude however no clear consensus exists regarding the best operationalization of the diversity of a society furthermore the relationship between diversity and electoral rules on one hand and the effective number of parties on the other hand has never been tested at the level of the electoral district in a cross national comparative context this article aims to fill both holes and introduces the concept of cross district diversity i argue that the extent of cross district diversity in a country exerts a substantial qualifying impact on the relationship between district level diversity and the effective number of parties support for this finding emerges from a multilevel regression analysis that includes thousands of electoral districts in a diverse set of 29 democracies

simultaneous equations models of the structure performance paradigm abstract this paper is concerned with determining the dimension of the simultaneous equations model surrounding the basic profits concentration relationship a very general model is considered and then simplified using a simple test for exogeneity and it is concluded that the model is nonlinear in concentration and that simultaneous interaction occurs between profits and foreign competition variables

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