renewable energy drivers a panel cointegration approach the expected gains from res deployment to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions co2 and the cut off of external dependence of electricity sources could be important however it is crucial to

weighing the costs and benefits of state renewables portfolio standards in the united states a comparative analysis of state level policy impact projections abstract state renewables portfolio standards rps have emerged as one of the most important policy drivers of renewable energy capacity expansion in the u s as rps policies have been proposed or adopted in an increasing number of states a growing number of studies have attempted to quantify the potential impacts of these policies focusing primarily on cost impacts but sometimes also estimating macroeconomic risk reduction and environmental effects this article synthesizes and analyzes the results and methodologies of 31 distinct state or utility level rps cost impact analyses completed since 1998 together these studies model proposed or adopted rps policies in 20 different states we highlight the key findings of these studies on the projected costs of state rps policies examine the sensitivity of projected costs to model assumptions evaluate the reasonableness of key input assumptions and suggest possible areas of improvement for future rps analyses we conclude that while there is considerable uncertainty in the study results the majority of the studies project modest cost impacts seventy percent of the state rps cost studies project retail electricity rate increases of no greater than 1 nonetheless there is considerable room for improving the analytic methods and therefore accuracy of these estimates

modelling the joint determination of household labour supplies and commodity demands in addition to choosing the allocation of total expenditure between commodities households may also be able to make decisions over the allocation of their time between market work and leisure in both theoretical and empirical work it has often been the case that these decisions have been analysed separately in this paper we stress the theoretical attractions of considering the joint determination of the allocation of time between work and leisure and the allocation of total expenditure between commodities in a utility maximising framework using a sample of individual households we attempt to evaluate the empirical importance of the joint determination model over the separate determination of labour supplies and commodity demands our approach follows that of abbott and ashenfelter i976 phlips i978 barnett i979 deaton and muellbauer i980 and atkinson and stern i980 here we pay particular attention to the following four important aspects of household decision making over commodity demand and labour supply the first concerns the commonly assumed restriction on the household s preferences of weak separability between goods and leisure this assumption allows the estimation of commodity demand systems and engel curves that exclude wage rate variables in cross section household budget data with large variation in wage rates across the sample the invalidity of this assumption would involve a serious mis specification any correlation between the excluded wage variable and the included price income and demographic variables would lead to biased parameter estimates and hence biased estimated elasticities similarly this assumption allows the estimation of labour supply curves that exclude relative price variables and its invalidity could produce biased labour supply elasticities a second aspect of household decision making which we wish to highlight arises from the suspicion commonly alluded to in labour economics texts that primary male workers may not be free to choose their hours of work thus we estimate a matched pair of rationed and unrationed systems following the work of neary and roberts i 980 and deaton and muellbauer i 979 the separability restriction is not unrelated to this point since without it we will see that the rationed hours of work enter demand systems in a complex fashion in effect

the demand for non durable goods and endogenous labour supply cointegration procedures are used to estimate and test a model in which the demand for non durable consumption goods depends on relative prices the real wage rate and real full income the estimated parameters are plausible but the homogeneity lack of money illusion condition is rejected

public policy supports and export performance of bioenergy technologies a dynamic panel approach abstract this study investigates the effects of public policy supports on the export performance of bioenergy technologies it uses panel data from 18 countries from the 1992 to 2008 period panel unit root and cointegration tests are applied taking into account the results of structural break tests for each time series and testing for the presence in the panel of cross sectional dependence time series data on public supports and exports are integrated and cointegrated the results of dynamic ordinary least squares indicate that in the long term public r d expenditures have a positive effect on the exports the contribution of bioenergy to the total energy supply has a negative effect on the exports and gdp has a positive effect on the exports the contribution of bioenergy to total energy supply responds to deviations in the previous period from the long term equilibrium additionally blundell bond system generalized methods of moments estimations are made to determine dynamic causality in a panel vector error correction mechanism setting evidence of a positive strong and short term relationship from exports to r d expenditures and of a positive short term causality from exports to the contribution of bioenergy to total energy supply is found a positive strong bidirectional relationship between gdp and exports is also uncovered there is a positive strong bidirectional and short term relationship between gdp and the contribution of bioenergy to total energy supply finally some policy implications based on the results of this study are offered

labour supply estimation and public policy abstract economists devote considerable energies towards refining their econometric techniques to overcome difficulties connected with conducting empirical research despite advances in technique it is not clear whether further refinement in this direction is worthwhile for policy purposes it may be that no further amount of statistical adjustment of inadequate data will increase understanding and that better data is simply necessary to add to our knowledge but rarely is sufficient credit paid to new forms of data in short econometric technique is emphasized to the neglect of data innovation as if new data were merely lying about waiting for an ingenious suggestion for use this paper surveys advances of the last twenty five years in estimating labour supply for policy purposes with a view towards appreciating the relative contribution of both improvements in econometric technique as well as developments of new data after briefly detailing the key parameters which economists have sought to estimate we describe the early first generation research circa 1970 which is plagued by problems of unobservable variables measurement errors truncation and selectivity bias and non linear budget constraints second generation research constitute attempts to resolve one or more of these difficulties and the respective contribution of econometric technique and new data is acknowledged and assessed including the contribution of data generated by large scale social experiments in which participants are randomly assigned to different guaranteed income plans and their labour supply behaviour measured

indices of household welfare and the value of leisure time i introduction a true leisure inclusive welfare index indicates the compensatory change in wage rates goods consumption or nonlabor income required to enable the household to attain some reference period utility given an exogenous change in wage rates and prices although these indices are theoretical constructs for the measurement of individual or household welfare changes empirical analyses of these indices have relied upon aggregate time series data these data provide information on national average changes in wage rates goods consumption and hours worked but do not capture changes in hours worked at the household level due to increased labor market participation while the entry of many new part time workers into the labor market may decrease the national average of hours worked per week there may be a decrease in leisure for many households in addition the aggregate time series approach ignores differences across households in demographic attributes and the occupations and industries in which household members are employed to address these issues two large cross sections of household data the 1972 and 1980 bls consumer expenditure surveys u s bureau of labor statistics 1978 were used to calculate three types of leisure inclusive welfare indices the real wage index goods consumption and nonlabor income indices for each of six household demographic groups households comprising a husband and wife with zero or more dependent non working children were considered as the basic decisionmaking units in this household approach two real wage indices could be constructed that of the husband and that of the wife since the labor services of the two individuals may be valued differently the remainder of the paper is organized as follows in section ii the leisure inclusive welfare indices are developed theoretically the fixed weight bounds on the true indices and the limitations of these indices in the context of a more general but as yet undeveloped intertemporal behavior framework is discussed in section iii the data and empirical results are discussed and analyzed a summary and conclusions follow in section iv along with suggestions for future research

possibilities for including the opportunity cost of time in recreation demand systems recreation demand modelers have attempted to identify and incorporate the opportunity cost of an individual s time in travel and on site in the model larson 1993b focused on the value of leisure time in a model where individuals face a fixed work week in this paper we examine the connection between labor supply and recreation demands and focus on conditional demand systems we illustrate that corner solution models are not needed to explain several interesting time related recreation issues

measuring the costs of children an alternative approach abstract the cost of a child or the general equivalence scale as it is more commonly known is a concept of considerable importance in matters relating to public policy and welfare it has played a crucial part in numerous theoretical and empirical studies relating to poverty income distribution dietary needs income maintenance programs supplementary and child benefits and other forms of social security payments in a welfare state and in assessing the horizontal equity of income taxation in spite of a long tradition of estimating the scale from observed household budget data there remain severe problems in estimation and interpretation of the scales this paper proposes a new methodology for calculating the scale using a framework which is consistent with utility theory and which overcomes the identification problem without having to enforce the arbitrary prior assumptions of recent studies the proposed method allows easy calculation of not only the basic scale parameter but also how it varies with price and reference utility we illustrate the usefulness of the procedure by estimating on u k budget data at two different levels of aggregation and employing two sets of quite different functional forms the results are plausible compare favourably with one another and hence confirm the robustness and usefulness of the proposed procedure

on the optimal taxation of two person households abstract this paper generalises the optimal commodity tax formulae for households containing one person to cover the empirically relevant case of two person households we provide an appropriate framework for the empirical estimation of the optimal tax structure and argue that this may be largely determined by female labour supply behaviour

energy security and renewable energy deployment in the eu liaisons dangereuses or virtuous circle abstract a large body of literature estimates the effect of energy security drivers on renewable energy deployment using import dependence as a proxy for energy security which is an approach that ignores the potential effect of other energy security strategies such as the diversification of energy sources using panel data for the energy sector across 21 eu member states we investigate the effect of different energy security concepts on the development of renewable energies we compare the results of applying different energy security indicators including the ones used in eu energy policymaking unlike previous studies this study reports a long term relationship between energy security and renewable deployment our findings suggest that the relationship between energy security policies and renewable energy sources res deployment is far from straightforward and depends on the chosen energy security strategy which is usually linked to different energy security conceptualizations our primary findings confirm i that res deployment is a consequence of a combination of energy security strategies including environmental concerns rather than being solely caused by a shift towards more sustainable energy policies and ii that among the different energy security strategies the diversification of energy sources through renewable energy deployment is a more coherent strategy than using res to reduce dependency

allocation inflexibilities female labor supply and housing assets accumulation are women working to pay the mortgage this article uses data from the 1986 canadian family expenditures survey to estimate a life cycle consistent model of household labor supply and commodity demand that incorporates a mortgage qualification constraint based on earnings both the parametric and nonparametric implications of the model suggest that the labor supply of a nontrivial percentage of married women is constrained by mortgage commitments the results of generalized selectivity models of female labor force participation and labor supply show that the positive effect of a high debt service ratio exceeds the negative effect of young children

carbon tax simulations using a household demand model abstract the main objective of this paper is to analyse consumer response and welfare effects due to changes in energy or environmental policy to achieve this objective we formulate and estimate an econometric model for non durable consumer demand in sweden that utilises micro and macro data in the simulations we consider two revenue neutral scenarios that both imply a doubling of the co2 tax one that returns the revenues in the form of a lower vat and one that subsidise public transport one conclusion from the simulations is that the co2 tax has regional distribution effects in the sense that household living in sparsely populated areas carry a larger share of the tax burden

substitution between goods and leisure in a developing country the paper explores the substitutability between goods female leisure and male leisure we find that goods and leisure are not separable we then adapt the almost ideal demand system aids to include leisure in the system in the same manner as commodities the model is not sensitive to variations in the assumption of total time available for each individual s work and leisure results from sri lanka indicate the marginal propensity to consume leisure is quite high especially in rural areas this finding has important implications for transfer programs designed to raise food consumption a somewhat surprising complementarity between male and female leisure was also observed a number of goods were found to be complements to both male and female leisure

rejecting renewables the socio technical impediments to renewable electricity in the united states if renewable power systems deliver such impressive benefits why do they still provide only 3 percent of national electricity generation in the united states as an answer this article demonstrates that the impediments to renewable power are socio technical a term that encompasses the technological social political regulatory and cultural aspects of electricity supply and use extensive interviews of public utility commissioners utility managers system operators manufacturers researchers business owners and ordinary consumers reveal that it is these socio technical barriers that often explain why wind solar biomass geothermal and hydroelectric power sources are not embraced utility operators reject renewable resources because they are trained to think only in terms of big conventional power plants consumers practically ignore renewable power systems because they are not given accurate price signals about electricity consumption intentional market distortions such as subsidies and unintentional market distortions such as split incentives prevent consumers from becoming fully invested in their electricity choices as a result newer and cleaner technologies that may offer social and environmental benefits but are not consistent with the dominant paradigm of the electricity industry continue to face comparative rejection

green electricity market development lessons from europe and the us this study compares the development and implementation of green electricity policies in germany the netherlands sweden and the united states a set of countries applying a range of policy instruments to encourage electricity from renewable energy sources a general tendency is identified that policies shift emphasis from r d stimulation towards dissemination and market application of renewable energy technologies we argue that in light of the long term nature of policy goals on energy security mitigation of climate change and environmental protection the applied range of policy instruments may be lacking in providing incentives for the long term development of new technologies clarifying policy objectives would allow careful selection of policy instruments including support for r d improved capacity building for policy implementation is also important

the political drivers of renewable energies policies this paper empirically analyzes how political factors affect the deployment of renewable energy re sources and compares their explanatory power to that of other economic energy and environmental drivers that have received greater attention in the literature so far the sample encompasses the eu countries bound to attain the target of 20 share of gross final energy consumption by 2020 the panel data analysis shows that lobbying by the manufacturing industry negatively affects re deployment whereas standard measures of government quality show a positive effect furthermore left wing parties promote the deployment of re more than right wing parties

accounting for fuel price risk when comparing renewable to gas fired generation the role of forward natural gas prices abstract unlike natural gas fired generation renewable generation e g from wind solar and geothermal power is largely immune to fuel price risk if ratepayers are rational and value long term price stability then contrary to common practice any comparison of the levelized cost of renewable to gas fired generation should be based on a hedged gas price input rather than an uncertain gas price forecast this paper compares natural gas prices that can be locked in through futures swaps and physical supply contracts to contemporaneous long term forecasts of spot gas prices we find that from 2000 to 2003 forward gas prices for terms of 2 10 years have been considerably higher than most contemporaneous long term gas price forecasts this difference is striking and implies that comparisons between renewable and gas fired generation based on these forecasts over this period have arguably yielded results that are biased in favor of gas fired generation

sensitivity of optimal commodity taxes to relaxing leisure goods separability and to the wage rate abstract this paper uses a new labour augmented demand functional form to calculate optimal commodity taxes for india the optimal taxes which are far from uniform are extremely sensitive to deviation from leisure goods separability and to variation in the wage rate parameter

drivers promoting renewable energy a dynamic panel approach we study the commitment to renewable energy sources focusing on a set of 24 european countries and applying panel dynamic estimators europe is a leading player in the fight against climate change and the estimators we use reveal themselves to be appropriate in handling the persistency effect on renewables the level of renewable energy use in the previous period has a positive and highly significant effect on the current level of use traditional energy sources restrain the impetus towards renewables social awareness of sustainability climate change mitigation and co2 reduction targets are not enough to motivate the switch from traditional to renewables energy sources income and prices of fossil based fuels were not significant for the development of renewables in the period from 1990 to 2006 suggesting that it was not the market that encouraged renewables

renewable energy consumption and income in emerging economies abstract increased economic growth and demand for energy in emerging economies is creating an opportunity for these countries to increase their usage of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates two empirical models of renewable energy consumption and income for a panel of emerging economies panel cointegration estimates show that increases in real per capita income have a positive and statistically significant impact on per capita renewable energy consumption in the long term a 1 increase in real income per capita increases the consumption of renewable energy per capita in emerging economies by approximately 3 5 long term renewable energy per capita consumption price elasticity estimates are approximately equal to 0 70

threshold effect of the economic growth rate on the renewable energy development from a change in energy price evidence from oecd countries this paper uses a panel threshold regression ptr model to investigate the influence that energy prices have on renewable energy development under different economic growth rate regimes the empirical data are obtained from each of the oecd member countries over the period from 1997 to 2006 we show that there is one threshold in the regression relationship which is 4 13 of a one period lag in the annual gross domestic product gdp growth rate the consumer price index cpi in so far as it relates to variations in energy is significantly positively correlated with the contribution of renewables to energy supply in the regime with higher economic growth but there is no relationship in the regime with lower economic growth therefore countries characterized by high economic growth are able to respond to high energy prices with increases in renewable energy use while countries characterized by low economic growth countries tend to be unresponsive to energy price changes when they come to their level of renewable energy

the impact of tax reforms designed to encourage healthier grain consumption in this paper we simulate the effects of tax reforms aimed at encouraging healthier grain consumption we use a rich data set on household grain consumption in 2003 from the market research institute gfk sweden combined with information on the nutritional content of the consumption we estimate behavioral parameters which are used to simulate the impact on the average household of tax reforms entailing either a subsidy on commodities particularly rich in fiber or a subsidy of the fiber density in grain products our results suggest that to direct the fiber intake towards nutritional recommendations reforms with a substantial impact on consumer prices are required regardless of the type of subsidy implemented the increase in the intake of fiber is accompanied by unwanted increases in nutrients that are often overconsumed fat salt and sugar funding the subsidies by taxing these nutrients or less healthy commodities helps to counteract such developments

the joint demand for health care leisure and commodities implications for health care finance and access in vietnam abstract this paper explores linkages between the demand for health care providers and the consumption of food non food goods and leisure in vietnam using a mixed continuous discrete dependent variable model cross price elasticities calculated from the model suggest there are strong substitution effects between health care leisure and certain commodities the model allows us to explore the implications of replacing user fees with alternative forms of health care finance such as commodity taxes in particular the results suggest financing public health care services with a non food sales tax rather than user fees would be more progressive and would improve access to care

the ces utility function non linear budget constraints and labour supply results on female participation and hours the most recent efforts in the study of labour supply decisions have concentrated on the estimation of explicit utility indices as a means to overcome the specification and endogeneity problems created by non linear budget constraints the presence of non convexities and the interest in making welfare comparisons between individuals are additional reasons that make the use of explicit utility functions in either direct or indirect form an essential requirement for labour supply studies it is therefore important to consider carefully the available possibilities from a utility index we want flexibility and ease of estimation the stonegeary function has proved its relative worth in consumption studies but its performance has been disappointing when leisure is incorporated into the set of commodities abbot and ashenfelter i976 found that for part of their sample estimated available time was less than hours worked and these results have pervasively reappeared in subsequent studies using this function hausman i980 has recently proposed a utility function which yields a linear hours function this is an important contribution which facilitates the task of estimation enormously this paper argues that the ces utility function despite not generating a linear hours function is also very convenient for estimation purposes in fact it is shown below that to estimate the parameters of the utility function there is no need whatsoever for any explicit hours function labour supply responses by married women have been previously estimated with british data but none of the available results has taken full account of the joint decision on participation and hours and of the non linear shape of the budget constraint that the tax system generates layard et al i980 consider the joint decision in their estimation procedure but ignore the tax system greenhalgh i980 takes into account the non linearity of the budget constraint but estimates labour supply responses by a method which treats participation and hours of work as separate and independent decisions in the present paper on the other hand using an explicit utility index we propose an estimation method which takes into account both the tax system and the joint hours participation decision

the effect of settlement stage on negotiated wage settlements in canada this paper analyzes the effect of the particular stage of wage settlement on the negotiated wage increase using micro data on canadian labor contracts between 1966 and 1975 the sample data base was divided into direct first stage bargaining mediation conciliation and work stoppage arbitration and structural wage equations were estimated for each set of data the results indicate that as negotiations move from direct bargaining to work stoppage labor market conditions measured by a vacancy rate become less important as an explanatory variable and price catch up becomes more important

labour supply commodity demand and marginal tax reform this paper examines the implications of extending the ahmad stern model of indirect tax reform to include labour supply the inclusion of labour supply alters the basic measure of marginal revenue cost mrc of indirect taxation and introduces the possibility of calculating a mrc for direct taxation the paper derives the expressions for these revised mrcs and provides estimates from irish data it then examines the sensitivity of the results to assumptions regarding functional form and in particular goods leisure sc parability in setting optimal tax rates policy makers face considerable difficulties explicit assumptions must be made regarding the underlying preferences of the consumer i e the functional form for the utility and demand functions and also about how expenditures are distributed sensitivity to underlying preferences is discussed by deaton i 98 i and is empirically examined by ray i986 and ebrahimi and heady i988 policy makers also face the problem that even when they do provide explicit forms for demand functions they face difficulties regarding the reliability of estimates and are also evaluating demand responses at a point possibly quite far away from the optimum the difficulties outlined above led to the development of the marginal tax reform literature with the seminal paper in this area by ahmad and stern i984 this approach has the considerable advantage of not requiring the choice of explicit utility functions nor of distributions of expenditure but instead merely requiring information on the actual position of the economy at a single point in time using actual consumption and distributions of expenditure it must be noted that tax reform does require information on demand responses so that results in this area can still be sensitive to the specification of consumer preferences and demand systems however tax reform results appear to be less sensitive than do tax design results to this

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

is the choice of renewable portfolio standards random this study investigated factors influencing the adoption or intention to adopt renewable portfolio standards rps by individual states in the united states u s theory of adoption of innovation was applied as a conceptual framework a logistic model was used to achieve the task gross state product gsp growth rate of population grp political party dominancy education level natural resources expenditure and share of coal in electricity generation were used as explanatory variables results indicated that the model predicts the dependent variable state s choice of adopting or not adopting rps 82 times correctly out of 100 results also suggested that education followed by political party dominancy gsp and grp are shown to have large impacts on the probability of rps adoption

whose preferences are revealed in hours of work it has become orthodox in economics research to interpret the association between hourly earnings and working hours as the expression of the preferences of workers this convention originated in h gregg lewis explanation for the decline in hours of work since the nineteenth century his explanation rested on an explicit resolution of the identification problem inherent in any quantity hours price wage relation for over 40 years researchers have neglected this identification problem with the result that the findings in the purported labor supply literature are of questionable value jel j22 j23 c13

renewable energy diffusion in asia can it happen without government support the dramatically increasing population of asia necessitates equally as dramatic increase in energy supply to meet demand rapidly increasing energy demand is a major concern for asian countries because the increase in demand is being met through the increased use of fossil fuel supply largely domestic coal and imported fuel renewable energy supply presents a lower emission pathway that could be a viable option for steering off the higher emissions path however several market economic institutional technical and socio cultural barriers hinder countries in moving from high to low emission pathway following a discussion on the rising demand for energy in asia and the prospects of partly satisfying it with renewable energy we outline the reasons for government support to tackle the barriers for widespread diffusion of grid based renewable energy additionally we also discuss workable models for strategic government intervention to support diffusion of grid based renewable energy in asia

an analysis of the efficiency of the oil refining industry in the oecd countries abstract this study investigated the efficiency of the oil refining industry using the two stage method of markowitz portfolio optimization theory and panel data analysis of about 30 oecd countries from 2005 to 2016 which is a new methodology for measuring the efficiency of the oil industry the oil refining industry s efficiency is derived from the prices of petroleum products naphtha gasoline kerosene diesel and fuel oil using the portfolio theory the panel data was constructed using the following dependent variables the crude oil production efficiency energy consumption renewable energy consumption and r d investment using the panel data analysis empirical analyzes are conducted on how the efficiency of the oil refining industry is affected by explanatory variables the results show that crude oil production and energy use in oecd countries have a negative effect on the efficiency of the oil refining industry and consumption of renewable energy and r d investment have a positive effect contrary to conventional perception the petroleum industry can coexist with the renewable energy industry for sustainable development

exploiting the oil gdp effect to support renewables deployment the empirical evidence from a growing body of academic literature clearly suggests that oil price increases and volatility dampen macroeconomic growth by raising inflation and unemployment and by depressing the value of financial and other assets surprisingly this issue seems to have received little attention from energy policy makers in percentage terms the oil gdp effect is relatively small producing losses in the order of 0 5 of gdp for a 10 oil price increase in absolute terms however even a 10 oil price rise oil has risen at least 50 in the last year alone produces gdp losses that could they have been averted would significantly offset the cost of increased re deployment this paper draws on the empirical oil gdp literature which we summarize to show that i by displacing gas and oil renewable energy investments can help nations avoid costly macroeconomic losses produced by the oil gdp effect and ii that these avoided losses represent a significant external macroeconomic benefit of such investments we show that a 10 increase in re share avoids gdp losses in the range of 29 53 billion in the us and the eu 49 90 billion for oecd these avoided losses offset one fifth of the re investment needs projected by the erec and half the oecd investment projected by a g 8 task force for the us the figures further suggest that each additional kw of renewables on average avoids 250 450 in gdp losses a figure that varies across technologies as a function of annual capacity factors we approximate that the offset is worth 200 kw for wind and solar and 800 kw for geothermal and biomass while we focus only on renewables the gdp offset will apply in some measure to other non fossil technologies including energy efficiency dsm and nuclear the societal valuation of non fossil alternatives must reflect these avoided gdp losses whose benefit is not fully captured by private investors this said we fully recognize that wealth created in this manner does not directly form a pool of public funds that is easily earmarked for renewables support finally the oil gdp relationship has important implications for correctly estimating direct electricity generating cost for conventional and renewable alternatives and for developing more useful energy security and diversity concepts we also address these issues

labour supply incentives and the taxation of family income taxing family income richard blundell and ian walker will lower marginal rates of income tax increase incentives to work the traditional theoretical argument ignores the fact that many individuals are members of households with more than one potential participant in paid employment the theory of optimal income tax is utilized to argue that the tax system should discriminate between individuals in the same household if their labour supply responses are different empirically the response of labour supply to changes in after tax wages is largest for secondary workers particularly married women hence the largest beneficial incentive effect is obtained if such individuals face lower tax rates since these individuals typically have below average pre tax earnings this suggests a simple way to implement our proposal establish a progressive income tax with individual earnings as the basis of assessment this might have additional advantages of fairness but its primary purpose would be to ensure that low earning but highly responsive individuals face low marginal tax rates while high earning but relatively unresponsive individuals face higher marginal tax rates contrary to popular wisdom a flat rate tax system would be less favourable for work incentives we illustrate this theoretical argument using an empirical model of labour supply embedded in a micro computer programme capable of simulating alternative tax systems

policies and market factors driving wind power development in the united states abstract in the united states there has been substantial recent growth in wind energy generating capacity with growth averaging 24 percent annually during the past five years about 1700 mw of wind energy capacity was installed in 2001 while another 410 mw became operational in 2002 during 2003 development activity has remained strong with an estimated 1600 mw of capacity installed with this growth an increasing number of states are experiencing investment in wind energy projects currently about half of all states host at least one wind power project this paper explores the key factors at play in the 12 states in which a substantial amount of wind energy capacity has been developed or planned some of the factors that are examined include policy drivers such as renewable portfolio standards rps federal and state financial incentives as well as market drivers such as consumer demand for green power natural gas price volatility and wholesale market rules

household labour supply with rationing in spain this paper provides new empirical evidence on household labour supply with rationing to that end we use the latest spanish data in order to estimate three flexible functional forms namely the nles the quadratic and the hausman ruud forms and calculate the income and wage elasticities we find that the number of dependants has a negative effect on the labour supply of the female moreover the north and the east spanish regions have a clearly positive effect on the labour supply of the female whilst the north has the same effect on that of the male the elasticities of three functional forms are very similar male labour supply is slightly decreasing with the wage whilst for the female it is increasing leisure is a normal good for both spouses as expected whilst the labour hours are net substitutes

an empirical model of a household s choice of activities this paper analyses how households of school age children choose to participate in the labour force volunteer work democratic assemblies and child related leisure activities contrary to previous studies the model presented in this paper treats all of these household s choice of activities involving time allocation decisions as simultaneously determined the empirical section uses qualitative data estimation techniques which permit a wide range of joint and interaction effects among the variables of the model the results confirm the importance of time opportunity cost variables as major determinants of household s choice of activities with the mother s education consituting a particularly important factor

why are more women working in britain in britain female labor force participation rose steadily from the second world war to 1977 to explain this we estimate a pooled time series cross section supply function for single year age groups of women the life cycle pattern is explained quite well by the presence of children at a second stage we try to explain the rising level of the cohort intercepts estimated at the first stage real wage growth may be an explanatory factor as cross section evidence suggests it should be finally we point to the 15 rise in the relative pay of women in the mid 1970s caused by the equal pay act this did not cause the expected decline in the relative demand for female employees

in kind transfers and work incentives recent developments in rationing theory are used to examine the differences between the effects of in kind and cash transfers on labor supply it is not possible to tell a priori which type of transfer will cause the greater reduction in hours of work the answer depends on the extent to which in kind transfers distort consumption choices and on the relationship between the transferred commodities and leisure hicks allen complements can cause greater reductions in labor supply than equally generous cash transfers while strong hicks allen substitutes can induce increases in market work

lifetime consumption labor supply and fertility a complete demand system this paper applies an empirical method based on a complete demand system to the study of lifetime consumption labor supply and fertility previous research in this area has not used complete demand systems or rigorously connected empirical analysis with the theoretical model an approach to estimating crucial but unmeasured variables is proposed the results are generally supportive of a price income effects model excerpt

renewable energy consumption co2 emissions and oil prices in the g7 countries abstract economic and societal issues related to energy security and global warming is placing greater emphasis on the consumption of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates an empirical model of renewable energy consumption for the g7 countries panel cointegration estimates show that in the long term increases in real gdp per capita and co2 per capita are found to be major drivers behind per capita renewable energy consumption these results are robust across two different panel cointegration estimators oil price increases have a smaller although negative impact on renewable energy consumption deviations from equilibrium are driven mostly by the error correction term as opposed to short term shocks short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take anywhere from between 1 3 years france and 7 3 years japan to correct

green energy market development in germany effective public policy and emerging customer demand this paper reviews the development of renewable energy in germany from 1973 to 2003 it investigates the relative importance of energy policy and green power marketing in shaping the renewable energy market more than a decade of consistent policy support for renewables under the feed in law streg and its successor eeg has been an important driver for increasing renewable electricity generation to date putting the country in a better position than most of its peers when it comes to achieving european union targets for renewable energy green power marketing driven by customer demand on the other hand is growing but has had limited measurable impact so far we discuss potential intangible benefits of green power marketing and scenarios for future market development the paper concludes with lessons that can be learned from the german case for policy design and market development in other countries

the effects of male and female labor supply on commodity demands we examine the effects of male and female labor supply on household demands and present a simple and robust test for the separability of commodity demands from labor supply using data on individual households from six years of the uk fes we estimate a demand system for seven goods which includes hours and participation dummies as conditioning variables allowance is made for the possible endogeneity of these conditioning labor supply variables we find that separability is rejected furthermore we present evidence that ignoring the effects of labor supply leads to bias in the parameter estimates

does green consumerism increase the acceptance of wind power abstract in this paper we discuss what might be termed an action based learning approach to promoting important pro environmental actions such as support for or acceptance of environmental policy such an approach involves promoting simple and easy behaviours as entry points for more radical steps towards sustainability referred to as catalytic or wedge behaviours despite the obvious need for innovative approaches to promote important pro environmental behaviour and sound theoretical backing for such concepts there is a lack of research testing the key propositions of this approach in a survey study based on a random sample of residents of the state of maine usa we find that both everyday green behaviour and the acceptance of an expansion of wind power are rooted in environmental concern and that everyday green behaviour gives a significant contribution to predicting acceptance of wind power when controlling for environmental concern hence the promotion of everyday green behaviours may prepare the grounds for increasing acceptance of more far reaching changes in the population such as an expansion of wind power

determinants of renewable energy development in the eu countries a 20 year perspective abstract the objective of the paper is to identify factors which determine energy policy in the eu countries in the middle of 1990s this objective is achieved in three stages first the changes in the distribution of res in 26 eu countries in the period between 1995 and 2014 are investigated the analysis demonstrates that over the last 20 years the eu countries diversify the res they use which results in substantial changes in their distribution second the distribution of energy sources in 1995 is described as it is assumed that the distribution might be a crucial factor influencing energy policy in each country third several other factors related to energy security environmental concerns economy and politics are considered as potential determinants of renewable energy development two statistical methods of variable selection namely the best subset regression and the lars method reveal that the present in 2014 share of res in the energy mix significantly depends on the condition of the eu countries in the middle of 1990s the distribution of energy sources in 1995 is the crucial determinant of renewable energy development countries without their own fossil fuel sources are the ones which develop renewable energy to the greatest extent other important factors boosting re development include gdp per capita concentration of energy supply swi and the costs of consumption of energy obtained from fossil fuels in relation to gdp

demand pull instruments and the development of wind power in europe a counterfactual analysis renewable energy technologies are called to play a crucial role in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions since most of these technologies did not yet reach grid parity public policies have been implemented in order to foster their deployment the approach that has been privileged in europe is the demand pull approach that aims at creating a demand for these new technologies and at stimulating their diffusion this paper examines the effect of demand pull policies on the diffusion of onshore wind power technology in six european countries denmark france germany italy portugal and spain in a first step a micro founded model of diffusion is calibrated in order to replicate the observed diffusion of wind power in these six countries in a second step a counterfactual analysis is conducted by investigating several scenarios by taking into account the complex self sustained dynamics of diffusion and the learning spillovers that operate in the wind power sector we can derive several insights about demand pull policies first the impact of a demand pull policy on the diffusion of wind power is determined by the stage at which it comes to support it the effect seems to be stronger at the beginning of the diffusion second international spillovers do operate in the wind power sector these international spillovers however are not strong enough to foster the diffusion of wind power in a country having no demand pull support we can derive from these two statements that a strategy consisting in not implementing any demand pull policy with the expectation that international spillovers will reduce the cost of wind power and foster the diffusion of the technology that then shall become competitive is not a good option for a country targeting a high share of wind power in its energy mix

functional forms for labor supply and commodity demands with and without quantity restrictions one of the most important current questions in economic analysis is whether or not labor markets clear in the short run to answer this it is necessary to be able to distinguish between restricted and unrestricted behavior by consumers supplying labor this paper investigates the forms of preferences which lie behind linear models of labor supply and derives the functional forms for commodity demands which accompany them both with and without quantity restrictions in the labor market simple linkages between restricted and unrestricted demands are also considered as is the question of perfect aggregation over consumers in the presence of quantity restrictions

the employment of married women in the united kingdom 1970 83 the proportion of married women in employment in the united kingdom grew rapidly during the 1970s rising from around 50 to 60 per cent the paper investigates this change using a time series of cross sections from the family expenditure survey an attempt is made to assess how much of the change was due to trends in the observable characteristics of the population and what part was played by changes in behavioural and other factors reflected in the coefficients of the model a technique of growth accounting is proposed and used to this purpose excerpt

green electricity policies in the netherlands an analysis of policy decisions over the last decades fundamental changes can be observed in both market conditions and the national policy framework for green electricity in the netherlands the dutch government has regularly intervened in markets demonstrating fundamental shifts in policy and approach this study aims to analyse the developments in renewable energy policy making in the netherlands it assesses changes in the choice of policy instruments and target groups the role of stakeholders and offers explanations behind policy successes and failures dutch green electricity policy over the last decade can be characterised roughly by three phases in the early 1990s the government negotiated voluntary agreements with the energy distribution sector on targets for green electricity sales which were never met in the second half of the 1990s a regulatory energy tax was introduced from which customers of green electricity were exempt this led to a substantial increase in demand which was largely met by green electricity imports and did not lead to additional domestic renewable energy capacity finally a change in policy has taken place recently 2003 shifting the focus from promotion of demand to the promotion of supply through a system of regulated feed in tariffs despite the renewable energy policies growth of the renewable energy market in the netherlands has been small and targets have not been fully met the dutch government has not yet succeeded in substantially reducing market uncertainties and in building confidence among market parties because the policies have not been stable and policy objectives have frequently been partly ambiguous in addition the influence of stakeholders in renewable energy policy making has been small which has the early acceptance and implementation of alternative policies

a model of female labour supply in the presence of hours restrictions abstract we develop a discrete choice model of female labour supply in finland using a data set constructed by merging the 1980 labour force survey and housing and population census this contains observations on the perceived incidence of constraints in the labour market and allows us to identify the effects of such constraints on observed labour supply approximately one in five women appears to be seriously constrained in her choice of hours of work our estimated model implies that the response of labour supply to variation in tax and wage rates is rather small

estimating labour supply functions under the rationing constraints of over and under employment in this study explicit parametrizations of labour supply are specified and estimated on a sample of single unattached individuals using data from the panel study of income dynamics and a generalized tobit maximum likelihood method which is consistent under the assumption that employed hours are exogenous the estimation methodology explicitly incorporates information on the existence and degree of over employment and under employment for the cases examined it is found that increased generality in the representation of preference is to be desired when estimating labour supply a surprising finding is that the labour supply responsiveness of a group of single american women who live alone and have no dependants is on a par with estimates for married women examined in earlier studies and is significantly higher than estimated for american men

income risk the tax benefit system and the demand for children because children represent an irreversible commitment parents might hedge against higher income risk by having fewer children we show that under plausible assumptions recent increases in income risk might have reduced prudent parents desired fertility responses to this via the tax benefit system are considered introducing an expected revenue neutral transfer cum child benefit system under proportional taxation which lets the government share the household s income risk increases desired fertility for parents who would choose to have small families in this system s absence pound for pound the targeted child benefit enhances fertility more than the lump sum transfer

factors impacting diverging paths of renewable energy a review abstract considered an essential factor for countries development energy demand is growing worldwide unlike conventional sources the use of renewable energy sources has multiple benefits including increased energy security sustainable economic growth and pollution reduction in particular greenhouse gas emissions nevertheless there is a considerable difference in the share of renewable energy sources in national energy portfolios this study conducts a systematic literature review to identify drivers and barriers which could help understanding the diverging paths of renewable energy deployment for countries among a total of 1431 academic studies 60 qualitative and quantitative studies were identified using a multistage selection process designated manuscripts were explored in detail including publication years length of the studies countries represented and renewable energy sources referenced factors explaining countries renewable energy deployments were defined and organized into seven main categories economic environmental political regulatory social technical potential and technological within these categories economic considerations appeared most frequently across manuscripts while environmental factors were least represented these categories were then classified as drivers barriers or undetermined towards renewable energy deployment based on a one sample proportion statistical test economic environmental and social factors were found to be drivers whereas political regulatory technical potential and technological factors were not classified as either a driver or a barrier i e undetermined each main category contains several subcategories among which only national income was found to have a positive impact whereas all other subcategories were considered undetermined no significant barriers to the deployment of renewable energy sources were found over the analyzed period

fertility and the tax benefit system a reconsideration of the theory of family taxation the author examines the simultaneous nature of the decision to have children the decision to spend money on them and the decision to seek employment it will be argued that the children income trade off emphasised by the present paper is more relevant to most family decisions than the income leisure trade off on which much of the policy debate has been centred in order to do that we shall bring together the recently developed economic theory of the family or new home economics with the microeconomic branch of the theory of public finance a model of family choice is developed the main message of the present paper is that if as the evidence suggests parents have some control over the number of children they put into the world then the effect of taxes and subsidies on the familys allocation of time and money will be generally weaker and in some respects the opposite of what it would be if the number of children were physiologically constrained or exogenously given another is that if parents derive utility from having children this has to be taken into account in any welfare calculation fertility may thus affect the design of optimal policy in two ways indirectly through its effect on market behaviour and directly through its effect on welfare excerpt

state renewable energy electricity policies an empirical evaluation of effectiveness over the past decade state governments have emerged as us energy policy leaders across the country states are adopting policy instruments aimed at carbon mitigation and renewable energy deployment one of the most prevalent and innovative policy instruments is a renewable portfolio standard rps which seeks to increase the share of renewable energy electrification in the electricity market this analysis evaluates the effectiveness of state energy programs with an empirical investigation of the linkage between state rps policy implementation and the percentage of renewable energy electricity generation across states we use a variant of a standard fixed effects model referred to as a fixed effects vector decomposition with state level data from 1998 to 2006 results indicate that rps implementation is not a significant predictor of the percentage of renewable energy generation out of the total generation mix yet for each additional year that a state has an rps policy they are found to increase the total amount of renewable energy generation these findings reveal a potentially significant shortcoming of rps policies political institutions natural resource endowments deregulation gross state product per capita electricity use per person electricity price and the presence of regional rps policies are also found to be significantly related to renewable energy deployment

estimation of complete demand systems from household budget data the linear and quadratic expenditure systems in this paper we explore two issues in empirical demand analysis the estimation of complete systems of demand equations using household budget data section i and the incorporation of demographic characteristics into such systems section ii although there are numerous studies which use time series data to estimate complete demand systems and many which estimate engel curves from household budget data there are virtually none which combine budget data from different periods to estimate complete systems since each budget study corresponds to a single price situation one might conjecture that estimation of complete systems would not be possible unless budget studies were available from a large number of periods this is incorrect in section i we argue that interesting complete demand systems can be estimated from a small number of budget studies despite the limited price variability represented in such data to demonstrate this we use budget study data for two periods to estimate a pair of related demand systems the familiar linear expenditure system les and a quadratic expenditure system qes a generalization of les in which the demand equations are quadratic in total expenditure the inclusion of demographic variables in the analysis of household consumption patterns is desirable because there are likely to be systematic differences in the consumption behavior of households with different demographic characteristics but the effects of demographic characteristics have seldom been studied within the framework of complete demand systems in section ii we propose translating as a general method for incorporating demographic variables into complete systems of demand equations this method has not previously been discussed as a general technique for bringing demographic variables into demand systems although it has been employed in several studies to improve the estimates of the les and the qes presented in section i we reestimate these two systems using translating to incorporate family size

renewable energy costs potentials barriers conceptual issues renewable energy can become the major energy supply option in low carbon energy economies disruptive transformations in all energy systems are necessary for tapping widely available renewable energy resources organizing the energy transition from non sustainable to renewable energy is often described as the major challenge of the first half of the 21st century technological innovation the economy costs and prices and policies have to be aligned to achieve full renewable energy potentials and barriers impeding that growth need to be removed these issues are also covered by ipcc s special report on renewable energy and climate change to be completed in 2010 this article focuses on the interrelations among the drivers it clarifies definitions of costs and prices and of barriers after reviewing how the third and fourth assessment reports of ipcc cover mitigation potentials and commenting on definitions of renewable energy potentials in the literature we propose a consistent set of potentials of renewable energy supplies

estimation of a labour supply model with censoring due to unemployment and underemployment this study proposes and implements a method of labour supply estimation which is appropriate when the sample contains unemployed and underemployed workers the estimation method consists of excluding unemployed and underemployed workers from the sample and then using to avoid selection bias an extension of heckman s approach to the case where two correlated selection rules generate the sample hausman s specification test is then used to determine whether ignoring constrained workers has led to biases in traditional labour supply estimates and the empirical results suggest that previous estimates of several important parameters are biased since the biases go in the direction that would be predicted by the hypothesis that the unemployed and underemployed are constrained the results support this hypothesis

a household production specification of demographic variables in demand analysis empirical investigations into the expenditure and time allocation decisions of households usually allow the variation in demographic characteristics across households in particular the number and ages of dependent children to affect these decisions the motivation for allowing such demographic effects is two fold first it permits the researcher to pool observations from households with differing demographic characteristics secondly it has been argued that it allows the researcher to construct an index normally called an equivalence scale to show the full income required by a household with some given composition to attain the same level of utility as some reference household and hence permits comparisons of welfare levels across households there are two areas of controversy surrounding this literature which directly relate to its two sources of motivation first what is the appropriate demographic specification second can the estimated parameters be used to undertake welfare comparisons a series of demand studies including barten 1964 blundell 1980 blundell and walker 1982 gorman 1976 muellbauer 1974 1977 hurd and pencavel 1981 pollak and wales 1978 1981 and ray 1983 have attempted to answer the first problem by considering the current allocation of goods and in some cases household time conditional on demographic structure this literature treats demographic variables as exogenous whereas in contrast the neoclassical fertility literature see for example the contributions in schultz 1973 treats the numbers and ages of children as endogenous nonmarket goods within a lifecycle optimising framework the second problem has been raised by pollak and wales 1979 who argue convincingly whether household composition is the result of endogenous decisions or not it is impossible to compare the welfare of households with different compositions using the results of empirical demand analysis since market decisions do not reveal how the households feel about the presence or absence of children thus estimated equivalence scales are necessarily based on the households preferences conditional on their demographic compositions the object of this paper is to suggest a new approach to the problem of demographic specification and to show that this approach both highlights the problem of making welfare comparisons and at least in part resolves it