the relative importance of social and institutional conditions in the planning of wind power projects abstract governments around the world try to stimulate the development and use of renewable energy technologies like wind energy while wind turbines are increasingly being implemented however a lack of social acceptance at the local level remains an important challenge for developers of wind power plants this article aims to explore the relative importance of social and institutional conditions and their interdependencies in the operational process of planning wind power schemes the article not only focuses on how negative local social conditions can frustrate public policy cf nimby syndrome but also on how positive local social conditions can compensate for a negative public policy framework we analyzed the cases of implementing wind power of two actors the regional energy distributor and small private investors in the municipality of zeewolde the netherlands both cases illustrate that the formal institutional framework formal rules procedures and instruments is neutral in a certain sense social conditions management styles interests and informal contacts put meaning in this framework the way stakeholders deal with the prevailing institutional structure clarifies social acceptance and therewith implementation

a step toward understanding wind power development policy barriers in advanced economies abstract a widely accepted premise regarding wind power development policy is that implementation of economic policy instruments which are designed to close the cost gap between wind power and entrenched fossil fuel power generation technologies will significantly catalyze enhanced levels of wind power development activity this paper contests this premise by arguing that non economic barriers to wind power development have the capacity to significantly inhibit wind power development in industrialized nations despite the implementation of economic policy instruments forces which deter wind power development in four economically advanced economies that exhibit phlegmatic progress in wind power development australia canada japan and taiwan are identified and amalgamated into a step framework describing social technical economic and political forces that inhibit wind power development the conclusions of this analysis are twofold first failure to mitigate these step forces may undermine the efficacy of any given economic policy instrument that aims to close the cost gap between wind power and entrenched generation technologies second attempts to mitigate these impediments might represent a way to achieve better policy results with less government financial commitment

planning of renewables schemes deliberative and fair decision making on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non cooperation abstract the main issues related to successful implementation policies concern the socio economic institutions that are conditional to planning in the energy policy domain but also in the domain of spatial planning successful investments and the siting of renewable power plants eventually determine the success rate of national efforts in establishing renewable capacity central planning usually has several objectives and these often have a detrimental effect on the goal of renewable energy application current problems related to implementation decisions concerning wind power schemes are an example to those who will be faced by other renewable power plants notably biomass regarding community acceptance of wind power schemes the visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on the values of the landscape is by far the most dominant factor in explaining opposition or support type of landscape fully overshadows other attitudinal attributes as well as other visual and scenic factors such as the design of wind turbines and wind farms and the number and the size of turbines planning regimes and decision making practices that really enhance the implementation processes of renewable energy require strong ecological modernization this means institutional changes that create involvement and trust of actors at the actual implementation level local opposition cannot be explained by the egotistical motives of local residents when the inclination to behave according to supposed backyard motives is investigated the scale to measure this phenomenon appears to indicate commitment to equity issues and fairness of decision making hence for wind power local involvement to represent the local values of site specific landscapes is crucial for other renewables the source specific features are different but conflicts can be expected as well because the fairness of implementation decisions will be equally significant

you can t manage right what you can t measure well technological innovation efficiency abstract this paper proposes a new approach to tackle the innovation performance relationship it addresses the so far mixed and inconclusive results of studies analyzing this relationship we argue that the undifferentiated use of innovation inputs and outputs to measure firm innovativeness is not without problems and that from a productive perspective they should be simultaneously analyzed this study follows a two stage empirical analysis using a sample of spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1992 2005 by examining two inputs and two outputs of the innovation process in the first stage we estimate technological innovation efficiency by means of an intertemporal data envelopment analysis dea bootstrap and also observe the yearly efficiency changes based on a global malmquist index in the second stage we analyze the effect of technological innovation efficiency on firm performance through a generalized method of moments gmm system the results support our arguments that the best measurement of outcomes of technological innovations is through the efficiency with which they are developed in addition we test the moderating effect of technological intensity level and firm size on the efficiency performance relationship

what do college seniors know about economics if college seniors who have taken an economics course were asked questions that test their knowledge of basic economics what would the results show would seniors give correct answers to most questions or would they show significant deficiencies students are exposed to many ideas during their undergraduate education so one would not expect them to retain all of the economic content they were taught but one would hope that they would retain at least a knowledge of basic economics this study investigates whether that is the case two data sources were used for the study the first was from a gallup survey of a national random sample of 300 college seniors walstad and max larsen 1992 the survey includes 15 multiple choice questions testing economic knowledge the responses from that survey can be separated according to whether students took economics the second data set came from the economics scores for 12 854 students who took the major field test in business ii mftb sponsored by higher education assessment of the educational testing service ets 1998 the mftb covers content typically taught in an undergraduate program in business and contains about 20 multiple choice questions on basic economics although there are differences between the two data sets we viewed this as an advantage for our study our hypothesis is that most college seniors would show relatively limited knowledge of basic economics no matter what questions were asked or how the data were collected we expected students responding to the gallup questions to score higher than students taking the mftb because the gallup questions were simpler and designed for telephone in

profit efficiency among basmati rice producers in pakistan punjab farm specific profit inefficiency among basmati rice producers was estimated from a variable coefficient profit frontier the mean level of inefficiency at farm resources and price levels was 28 with a wide range 5 87 average loss of profit was rs 1 222 per hectare socioeconomic factors related to profit loss were the farm household s education nonagricultural employment and a credit constraint institutional determinants of profit loss were a water constraint and the late application of fertilizer punjab wide benefits of increasing farmer s profit efficiency are large a 25 reduction in profit loss among basmati rice producers may generate over rs 240 million in extra profits each rice season rice is a major export commodity for pakistan generating about 2 5 billion pakistan rupees rs annually or 20 of foreign exchange earnings from commodity trade in the early 1980s two varieties dominate in pakistan s international trade in rice basmati 370 a high quality long grained aromatic variety and the medium long grained irri 6 distinct export markets exist for these rices over 90 of the basmati is exported to oil rich middle eastern nations while the mediumlong varieties are mainly marketed in southeast asia in 1983 the export price of basmati was about rs 7 900 per ton while the price of medium long grained varieties averaged rs 2 700 per ton pakistan has a comparative advantage in the international market for basmati but probably not for medium long grained rices azhar and mamhud historically pakistan had a near monopoly in international trade in basmati but now faces increased competition from thailand and the united states efferson therefore pakistan must strive to increase the efficiency of basmati production to retain its comparative advantage and competitive edge in foreign rice markets basmati 370 is a pure line selection made in

classroom experiments not just fun and games i introduction historically economics was the classic example of a science in which laboratory methods are impossible consistent with this view economics has traditionally been taught as a theory intensive science rather than as an experimental one however the view that economics is not a laboratory science has been changing in large part due to the increase in research conducted using experimental methods in addition as evidence of the benefits of active learning for students has been gathered leaders in the field of education have been urging faculty to actively engage students in the process of learning introducing experimental methods into the economics classroom is a natural step warranted both by the evolution of the discipline itself and the need to more actively involve students in the learning process this paper presents results from a research project examining the effectiveness of using economics experiments in the classroom the project involved designing course packages for the principles of microeconomics and principles of macroeconomics classes that integrate basic economic experiments into the curricula and then evaluating their success as a teaching tool the evaluation phase focused on assessing the impact of this curriculum on student performance student attitudes towards economics and economic knowledge retention the project was conducted over a three year period during the initial phase of the research project both the course materials and an assessment instrument for evaluating the effectiveness of those materials were developed 1 next a controlled experiment using students at the university of arkansas was conducted students who enrolled in principles of macroeconomics and principles of microeconomics courses were separated into control and treatment classes both groups were taught using a general lecture class discussion format but experiments designed to illustrate specific economic concepts were used in the treatment sections in place of the additional lecture class discussion and examples used in the control classes for those topics relative performance on the assessment instrument serves as the basis for evaluating the impact of the new curricula on student learning while controlling for other factors that might affect student performance an attitude survey was administered to the students at the beginning and at the end of the courses in both the treatment and control groups to gain insight into their attitudes towards the study of economics and whether those attitudes changed over the course of the semester 2 in addition to assessing the impact of classroom experiments on student performance and attitudes towards economics their impact on knowledge retention was also investigated students were tracked into a required advanced business course where their performance on a test of material covered in the introductory economics courses was used to evaluate the impact of classroom experiments on their retention of this material although we had no a priori expectations of what the specific outcomes from the evaluative portion would be we hypothesized that students would benefit overall from the use of experiments and that this benefit would be dispersed differentially based on student learning styles we also anticipated that we would find an improved attitude towards the study of economics and an increase in knowledge retention when experiments were implemented as active learning tools ii background in their 1985 edition of principles of economics samuelson and nordhaus argued one possible way of figuring out economic laws is by controlled experiments economists unfortunately cannot perform the controlled experiments of chemists or biologists because they cannot easily control other important factors like astronomers or meteorologists they generally must be content largely to observe

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

sources of productivity growth in the spanish pharmaceutical industry 1994 2000 abstract the spanish pharmaceutical industry underwent an important transformation during the 1990s to survive under the new market conditions labs had to refocus their competitive strategies towards increasing productive efficiency or reinforcing research and development r d activities this paper analyzes the evolution of the productive patterns in a sample of 80 pharmaceutical laboratories that operated in spain from 1994 to 2000 we estimate malmquist productivity indexes and decompose them into four sources of productivity change the results suggest that pure technical efficiency change and the scale change of the technology explain most of the productivity growth observed during the period the contribution of technical change to productivity growth is negligible indicating a poor result from r d activities at least in the groups of small and medium sized labs

use it or lose it teaching literacy in the economics principles course americans know little about economics recent surveys document shocking gaps in understanding of markets macroeconomic policy and the economics of government both the general public and college students including economics course takers do poorly on questions that check their knowledge in a gallup survey william b walstad and max larsen 1992 most knew that competitive prices are determined by supply and demand but 65 percent of the public and 43 percent of college seniors believed that during a crisis in the middle east government should prohibit oil companies from raising prices p 65 in a harris poll parade magazine 1999 only 58 percent of adults knew that people are likely to respond to a doubling in the relative price of beef by buying more poultry and less beef only one in three understood that those who borrow money at a fixed interest rate are most likely to benefit from inflation in a minneapolis federal reserve survey david fettig 1998 only 30 percent knew that government could reduce high inflation by decreasing spending and the money supply taking a high school or college economics course has little impact on economic understanding walstad and ken rebeck 2002 in a 15 question gallup survey of college seniors college economics course takers scored 9 highschool economics course takers scored 8 and those who took no economics scored 7 walstad and sam allgood 1999 there is hope test takers do better with questions that concern their day to day lives louis harris and associates 1999 and adults believe economics is important 88 percent want politicians to have a good understanding of economics and 96 percent think that basic economics should be taught in high school harris and associates 1999 while objections can be raised about what questions were asked and how they were worded national surveys administered by several respected firms support the same conclusion americans know little about economics

the state of economic education during the first fifty years of the american economic association aea its leaders considered the teaching of economics to be an important subject for discussion and debate aea founders set as a goal to educate public opinion about economic questions and economic literature elton hinshaw and siegfried 1991 p 373 during the last 50 years aea leaders have largely ceded questions on teaching to specialists in 1955 the association created the committee on economic education cee and charged it with improving the status of economic education within the profession stimulating and encouraging professional work on economic education and arranging economics education sessions at the aea meetings the association later revised the charge to include actively improving the quality of economic education at all levels from pre college to college adult and general economic education hinshaw and siegfried 1991 it is time to direct the attention of the entire profession not just economic education specialists toward the importance of educating a broad spectrum of the public about economics

the effects of attendance on student learning in principles of economics does attendance affect performance in college economics courses david romer 1993 found that attendance did contribute significantly to the academic performance of students in a large intermediate macroeconomics course that he taught in the fall of 1990 see the summer 1994 journal of economic perspectives vol 8 no 3 pp 205 15 for numerous comments on romer this conclusion held even after controlling for student motivation which it may be argued is the true factor determining performance and is only approximated by attendance an earlier study by kang park and peter kerr 1990 found that attendance was a determinant of student performance in a money and banking course but not as important as a student s gpa and the percentile rank on a college entrance exam a study by robert schmidt 1983 reported that time spent attending lectures contributed positively to performance in a macroeconomic principles course on the other side of the ledger is evidence from neil browne et al 1991 showing that students who did not attend a typically structured class with lectures did just as well on the test of understanding college economics tuce as those students who attended a standard microeconomic principles course they also reported however that those students who attended the lectures performed better on essay questions than those who did not a similar study by campbell mcconnell and c lamphear 1969 found no significant difference in the performance of students with no classroom attendance vis a vis those attending class finally stephen buckles and m e mcmahon 1971 found attendance at lectures that simply explained material covered in reading assignments did not enhance students understanding of economics in this paper we present new evidence on the effects of class attendance on student performance our results pertain to the principles of economics course as it is taught in a two semester sequence at a medium size comprehensive state university

patterns of acceptance and non acceptance within energy landscapes a case study on wind energy expansion in austria abstract wind energy is a key technology in the transition toward a low carbon society but acceptance is considered to be a constraining factor in achieving ambitious wind deployment targets based on an austrian case study this paper investigates eight decisive patterns of acceptance and non acceptance of wind energy we apply qualitative research methods such as interviews focus groups and worldcafe discussions with stakeholders on the national level and with citizens and local decision makers at potential wind power expansion sites the results show that local opposition to wind energy cannot be explained by single factors but is caused by a complex set of individual and collective preferences rooted in institutional and socio political arrangements the problem concerning these conflicting patterns is that they are trapped in often opposing or confronting policy core beliefs which are unlikely to change hence it is necessary to appeal to overarching targets like the claims of environmental justice to counterbalance the impacts of wind energy we conclude that there is a strong demand for fair decision making processes and an equal distribution of environmental and economic gains and losses this article is part of a virtual special issue entitled the collaborative making of energy landscapes

community perspectives of wind energy in australia the application of a justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community s social well being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day to day interactions outcomes that are perceived to be unfair can result in protests damaged relationships and divided communities particularly when decisions are made which benefit some sections of the community at the perceived expense of others through empirical research using a wind farm pilot study community perceptions of a community consultation process are explored using procedural justice principles to evaluate fairness findings from the pilot study indicate that perceptions of fairness do influence how people perceive the legitimacy of the outcome and that a fairer process will increase acceptance of the outcome a key research finding was that different sections of a community are likely to be influenced by different aspects of justice namely by outcome fairness outcome favourability and process fairness based on this finding a community fairness framework was developed which has potential application in community consultation to increase social acceptance of the outcome

societal acceptance of an emerging energy technology how is geothermal energy portrayed in australian media the media shapes and is shaped by public sentiment of emerging technologies one way to gauge the societal acceptance levels of an emerging technology such as geothermal energy technology in australia is to analyse how the technology is reported in the media this study identified the benefits and risks that have been reported and the social actors represented informed by extant research of factors that impact societal acceptance a total of 451 australian news items on geothermal energy technology published between july 1st 2011 and june 30th 2012 were used for this content analysis which encompassed the release of the australian government s clean energy plan consistent with geothermal technology being an emerging technology in australia economic feasibility and uncertainty about the technology were the most frequently reported risks industry was one of the most cited social actors in geothermal news media and it was more likely to be cited in articles reporting the economic feasibility and uncertainty about the technology reflecting the current state of the industry in australia renewable and low emission energy were the most frequently cited benefits which were often reported as part of the australian government clean energy plan overall this emerging technology has maintained a restricted profile in the media to date with limited controversy or politicisation this profile is likely to remain in particular the focus on the technology economic feasibility which remains the main challenge to the technology entering large scale development in australia c 2014 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

on research efficiency a micro analysis of dutch university research in economics and business management we argue that efficiency assessments of academic research should focus on micro units of research production rather than on conventionally employed aggregated macro units and show that such a detailed analysis of research performance provides interesting insights in addition we propose a non parametric methodology that is specially tailored for analyzing the productive efficiency of research it starts from a specification of the managerial objectives of research activities while imposing minimal structure on the typically unknown production technology we illustrate our points by assessing the productive efficiency of research in economics and business management faculties of dutch universities next to measuring productive efficiency we look for specific patterns in efficiency distributions over universities years and areas of specialization in addition we investigate the impact of external funding and the size of research programs on academic research efficiency we argue that our analysis has some interesting policy implications most notably our results show that a micro analysis of research efficiency may yield a more effective allocation of the limited financial resources that are available

shale gas policy in the united kingdom an argumentative discourse analysis shale gas has become an energy policy priority in the united kingdom in light of profitable extraction activities in the united states since 2012 the coalition government has created key economic drivers to encourage shale exploration whilst growing activism in affected site communities has stirred significant media and academic commentary this study examines the growing national debate as a matter of discourse adopting an argumentative discourse analytic approach to assess data collected from stakeholder interviews n 21 and key policy actor statements quoted in broadsheet newspapers we explore three dominant storylines emerging in relation to shale gas policy 1 cleanliness and dirt concerns the relative framing of the environmental benefits and harms of shale gas 2 energy transitions pathways and diversions concerns geographic metaphors of transitions to carbon intensive and low carbon energy systems and 3 geographies of environmental justice concerns divisions of economic benefit distribution environmental impact and procedural fairness we find that central government policy rhetoric emphasises economic development regulatory oversight and distribution of benefits to site communities whilst minimising discussion of the implications of shale gas for anthropogenic climate change the role of these discourses in influencing shale gas policy is discussed

exploring participatory energy budgeting as a policy instrument to foster energy justice abstract the ethical and sustainable production and consumption of energy are becoming increasingly important with the ongoing transformation and decentralization of the energy system for other kinds of goods and commodities ethical consumption have direct implications for and the participation of informed citizens due to its intangibility energy lacks the same levels of reflection and intervention by citizens and those aspects are yet to be fully explored in practice this paper contributes to the understanding of how energy justice might be approached we reflect on an empirical experience of participatory energy budgeting a process aimed at determining how to redistribute a share of energy linked to collective virtuous consumption behaviors we analyze through a qualitative thematic analysis how participants make sense of the participatory energy budgeting process and the emerged dynamics within the local communities and how this process can strive to reconfigure the relationship among civil society the energy sector and politics in order to remediate injustices we highlight how the construction in practice of energy justice in a local community might be closely linked to issues such as the form of energy governance that allows for the participation of citizens and the accountability of the process policies and technological limitations

institutional factors influencing strategic decision making in energy policy a case study of wind energy in france and quebec canada abstract this article studies the different institutional factors that influence a strategic wind energy decision making process through a comparative transnational study of quebec canada and france research confirms that political choices are dynamic and vary with a change in the wind energy context the balance of power between pressure groups supranational influences energy evaluation approaches and social acceptance until the 90 s an initially unfavorable national energy context combined with a neocorporatist culture as defined by szarka 2004 1 limited the place of wind energy in both jurisdictions in the 2000 s a political window opened when the private sector penetrated the market with the deregulation of the electricity sector exogenous pressure from the european union in france endogenous pressure from social actions in quebec and a more favorable energy context in both cases however this political window was short lived due to social acceptance issues in quebec political will was stronger until 2013 now the social controversy surrounding wind energy has shifted from the local to the national level projects are better accepted locally because of local financial involvement but an anticipated electricity surplus questions the relevance of new energy projects in france political support depends on the government in power between 2005 and 2013 the reduction in annual wind power installations from 1246 mw to 621 mw was due to the major influence of the anti wind lobby on a right wing government after 2013 the left wing government s arrival coincided with a phasing out of several regulatory and financial uncertainties today both jurisdictions are at a crossroads and the future energy mix will depend on the relative influence of the institutional components identified in our opinion key solutions to more sustainable political choices are conditioned by an improvement in the way projects and policies plans and programs are assessed

wind farm externalities and public preferences for community consultation in ireland a discrete choice experiments approach abstract in ireland the deployment of onshore wind turbines has become progressively more difficult in some areas because of the potential negative externalities associated with their operation using a discrete choice experiment dce we employ a willingness to accept framework to estimate the external effects of wind turbines on local residents with the inclusion of community consultation and to quantify the compensation required to permit wind farms to be built in ireland our findings reveal that the majority of respondents are willing to make monetary tradeoffs to allow for wind power initiatives and we find that respondents require less compensation if provision is made for a community representative and setback distance is increased

community renewable energy at a crossroads a think piece on degrowth technology and the democratization of the german energy system abstract degrowth activists and scholars have questioned society s current levels of material throughput and energy use the energy sector is at the core of any modern economy and germany serves as an international showcase for the transition of a large industrialized economy to a low carbon energy system diverse actors organizational models and technologies have contributed to the initiation of germany s energy transition through a wide range of community renewable energy projects the think piece investigates how far these diverse actors embrace the aims of the degrowth movement it also provides a critical account of on the ground realities through six hypotheses and contrasts them with claims made by the degrowth movement it is suggested that community renewable energy projects are at a crossroads while many projects have familiarized thousands of people with alternative economic models there is little evidence of a general change in attitudes towards technology consumption or equity in conclusion a major effort is needed to open initiatives to less affluent actors oppose recent trends of commodification and prevent community renewable energy projects from being engrossed by the dominant political and economic system

improving australia s renewable energy project policy and planning a multiple stakeholder analysis abstract renewable energy re is part of australia s and the world s energy supply matrix with over a 100 billion spent annually on re projects since 2007 businesses seeking to invest in re projects particularly in the wind and solar energy sectors may face an onerous collection of planning approvals and permitting processes that impede investment and implementation in this study we draw on international and domestic stakeholder inputs to a governmental inquiry in australia to show how re projects might be approved in shortened timeframes with reduced associated costs the process mapping and stakeholder analysis demonstrates that re supply projects can benefit from standardized approval processes and documentation a 360 deep engagement with stakeholders and expanded electricity grid access in resource areas augmented through supportive public policy and planning frameworks in addition stakeholder objections to project approval and implementation streamlining were used to contrast the efficacy of the proposed changes in policy

oil rents corruption and state stability evidence from panel data regressions abstract we examine the effects of oil rents on corruption and state stability exploiting the exogenous within country variation of a new measure of oil rents for a panel of 30 oil exporting countries during the period 1992 2005 we find that an increase in oil rents significantly increases corruption significantly deteriorates political rights while at the same time leading to a significant improvement in civil liberties we argue that these findings can be explained by the political elite having an incentive to extend civil liberties but reduce political rights in the presence of oil windfalls to evade redistribution and conflict we support our argument documenting that there is a significant effect of oil rents on corruption in countries with a high share of state participation in oil production while no such link exists in countries where state participation in oil production is low

knowledge measurement and productivity in a research program we introduce a metric based on bayesian probability theory to evaluate the determinants of scientific discovery and use it to assess an international aquacultural research program consisting of a large number of highly varied projects the metric accommodates not only project variety but a detailed breakdown of the sources of research productivity accounting for example for the contributions of failed as well as successful investigations a mean absolute deviation loss functional form permits decomposition of knowledge gain into an outcome probability shift mean surprise and outcome variance reduction statistical precision allowing productivity to be estimated for each of them separately then combined into a single knowledge production relationship laboratory size is found to moderately boost mean surprise but has no effect on statistical precision while investigator education greatly improves precision but has no effect on mean surprise returns to research scale are decreasing in the size dimension alone but increasing when size and education are taken together suggesting the importance of measuring human capital at both the quantitative and qualitative margins

engaging students in quantitative analysis with short case examples from the academic and popular press following the completion of microand macroeconomics principles courses for which the majority of students are enrolled to fulfill requirements for other majors economics majors take two intermediate micro and macro courses a course in statistics econometrics and some field courses that may or may not include more quantitative methods john siegfried et al 1991 in a national survey michael watts and i found some differences between the way statistics and econometrics courses are taught and the way the other undergraduate economics courses are taught becker and watts 1996 in particular problem sets are used more in statistics and econometrics than in other undergraduate economics courses curiously however those applications are not based on events reported in newspapers magazines and journals that economists read how timely and relevant can problem sets be if they are not documented in current events ideally instructors set problems raised by their own research and consulting problems students can expect to see on their jobs after all the rationale for teaching statistics and econometrics outside a mathematics department rests on a belief that there is something special about economic analyses that is economists use of statistics is tied to the issues they face although the calculation of a mean and a median for example is the same in medicine and economics a discussion of the average duration of economic expansions since world war ii is more pertinent to those majoring in economics than is a discussion of average blood pressure or average time to dementia with mad cow disease the importance of economic tleory is often lost when mathematicians attempt to make situations real as seen for example in the chance course j laurie snell and john finn 1992 where a potpourri of statistical applications are presented with no disciplinegrounded analyses to teach students to apply the tools of statistics to actual situations and data encountered by economists there is little justification for examples involving the drawing of balls from urns flickng of spinners tossing of coins or contrived card and dice tricks yet these methods of generating data continue to be found in the activity based teaching and assessment discussants william greene new york university robin lumsdaine brown university kim sosin university of nebraska omaha

distributional justice in swedish wind power development an odds ratio analysis of windmill localization and local residents socio economic characteristics with a fast rise in large scale wind power development in sweden and other countries in recent years issues related to energy justice generally and distributional justice specifically have become

the networked minority how a small group prevailed in a local windfarm conflict abstract this paper aims to explain through a qualitative case study how a small protest group prevailed during a local windfarm conflict in south eastern australia a social capital analytical framework was developed to analyse the data the analysis found that two communities inhabited the area for which the windfarm development was proposed the public participation process failed to address the concerns of both communities and led to the emergence of a social network of resistance the network had high stocks of bridging social capital which enabled an effective protest that led to the abandonment of the development their effectiveness was inadvertently aided by the windfarm supporters who were unable to act collectively to defend their interests because socio economic changes in the community among other factors had led to a depletion of their social capital in this context different democratic participatory processes were needed to address the concerns of the two communities guidance and tools for researching and developing the types of participatory processes needed for vulnerable communities with low social capital and those similar to the social network with high social capital are provided these will inform community appropriate public participation processes and participatory planning policy

public estimates of support for offshore wind energy false consensus pluralistic ignorance and partisan effects abstract meeting future energy demands will require large scale implementation of renewable energy projects if one of these energy sources offshore wind becomes a common sight off coastlines consideration of local public opinion and action will be critical previous research from the social sciences has lacked depth in examining the underlying factors that shape public opinion towards offshore wind development the current research brings a new perspective to the literature by showing that how members of the public perceive support among others relates to their own opinions of offshore wind energy we report results from two surveys the first focused on opinion formation relating to offshore wind in general among new england residents while the second focused on a specific offshore wind project in rhode island we find evidence that both supporters and opponents of offshore wind underestimate levels of support among others indicating a pluralistic ignorance effect and false consensus effect respectively we also find distinct patterns of perceived support among self identified republicans and democrats the findings hold important implications for policymakers and developers in understanding the nature of public support and opposition for offshore wind energy particularly with respect to individuals willingness to publicly engage with offshore wind projects

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

classroom experiments is more more studies have demonstrated that classroom experiments have a positive effect on student achievement in economics courses questions remain regarding the appropriate number of experiments in the current study we attempt to determine whether more intensive use of classroom experiments is associated with greater student achievement our data contains variation in the number of experiments administered in a principles of microeconomics course we find that participation in classroom experiments has a positive but diminishing marginal benefit on students final course scores we also find that classroom experiments can bridge some achievement gaps between older and younger students between whites and minorities

geothermal energy and the public a case study on deliberative citizens engagement in central italy abstract this paper reports on a case study on the citizens engagement with developments towards the harnessing of geothermal energy in central italy the research has been conducted within the framework of a larger project on the feasibility of further geothermal developments in italy funded by the italian government the aims of the case study research were first to explore the role of public and stakeholder engagement in the processes of innovation in the geothermal energy sector second to design implement and consolidate a methodological framework for comparative analysis of case studies on citizens engagement thus bringing a social scientific perspective into geothermal energy research the results show general support for renewable energy but knowledge and understanding of the potential of geothermal is remarkably low lack of trust in politics and unsure public communication emerged as prominent themes where the common good and community developments are sharply contrasted with corporate and private interests as geothermal energy is included and encouraged under the european strategic energy plan and in the paris agreement on halting climate change the results can make significant input into future policy making by providing concrete guidelines on citizens engagement in processes of culturally sustainable innovation

influencing factors on hydrogen energy r d projects an ex post performance evaluation abstract to enhance its energy security korea made a significant r d investment in developing hydrogen energy technology over a period of 10 years the hydrogen energy r d center was established in 2003 with a 100 billion korean won krw government investment that would fund the initiative through 2012 this paper is a meaningful attempt to evaluate the ex post performance of completed hydrogen energy r d projects using data envelopment analysis dea through empirical analysis we focus mainly on measuring ex post performance and uncovering the influencing factors on that performance the results of our empirical analysis reveal several interesting findings first overall the ex post performance of completed projects is relatively low however there are major performance gaps among projects second r d type technology type and private sector investment are factors influencing project performance more specifically projects identified as basic research storage technology or without private sector investment had the highest performance with an acceptable level of statistical significance third dea can provide unique information such as results of returns to scale and slack analysis which cannot be gleaned from parametric methods as time went on the decreasing returns to scale drs ratio increased and the increasing returns to scale irs ratio decreased this means that the r d budget was used less and less effectively as time passed moreover among the three year project period the second year s r d budget was used most efficiently in each r d project this study can provide meaningful information to policy makers to enhance the performance of future r d projects and to promote hydrogen r d projects as well as advance the hydrogen economy

public attitudes regarding large scale solar energy development in the u s abstract using data collected from both a national sample as well as an oversample in u s southwest we examine public attitudes toward the construction of utility scale solar facilities in the u s as well as development in one s own county our multivariate analyses assess demographic and socio psychological factors as well as context in terms of proximity of proposed project by considering the effect of predictors for respondents living in the southwest versus those from a national sample we find that the predictors and impact of the predictors related to support and opposition to solar development vary in terms of psychological and physical distance overall for respondents living in the u s southwest we find that environmentalism belief that developers receive too many incentives and trust in project developers to be significantly related to support and opposition to solar development in general when southwest respondents consider large scale solar development in their county the influence of these variables changes so that property value race and age only yield influence differential effects occur for respondents of our national sample we believe our findings to be relevant for those outside the u s due to the considerable growth pv solar has experienced in the last decade especially in china japan germany and the u s

chalk and talk a national survey on teaching undergraduate economics reports on the desirable goals and characteristics of economics programs and reforms proposed to attain such programs e g w lee hansen 1991 hirschel kasper et al 1991 have ignored the issue of how economics is to be taught that is surprising because several popular trade books have recently appeared condemning teaching practices at american colleges and universities some of these books were written by economists e g martin anderson s 1992 impostors in the temple and used economics courses as notable examples of these problems long before these reports and books appeared the national council on economic education ncee together with the american economic association s aea committee on economic education began sponsoring programs to improve the teaching of economics and to promote innovative teaching methods in becker and watts 1995 we describe many of these improvements and explain how economists could use alternative teaching methods in different undergraduate courses until now however we could not provide data on how widely those approaches were used we do that here based on responses to a national survey

universities as engines of r d based economic growth they think they can two issues raised by increased participation of universities in equity arrangements designed to commercialize faculty research are addressed a the effects that an increased emphasis on patenting faculty research and on enhancing the commercial value of these patents has on the characteristics of academic research net revenue streams and existing channels through which academic research enters the market and b processes of institutional change and imitation whereby changes in the policies of elite research universities exert competitive and emulative pressures on other institutions increased efforts by universities to foster the commercialization of technological innovations erodes the singular position of institutions of higher learning in the united states based on past performance there is little reason to expect that a substantial reallocation of faculty effort towards commercially oriented r d will generate appreciable net revenues for other than a select number of universities these ventures also serve to shift academic researchers from the social roles in which they are most efficient as suppliers of a collective goodscientific and technological knowledge just as very few men are both capable business managers and ingenious inventors so few are at the same time ingenious inventors and exalted altruists some twenty years ago a university professor devised a method for measuring with accuracy the content of butterfat in milk the device if patented would doubtless have yielded him a very handsome income the inventor gave it freely to the public saying modestly that to do so was but part of his duty as a servant of the people and it has come into use the world over we call his conduct noble but our very recognition of its nobility is an admission of its rarity f w taussig inventors and money makers 1915 58

the inclusion of social aspects in power planning a b s t r a c t this paper overviews previous research addressing the inclusion of the social dimension of sustainable development on power systems planning consequences of the recent energy policies and strategies are already being felt in developed countries power systems with the integration of rising quotas in renewable energy technologies however while the tools that aid decision making on power planning show that economic and environmental issues are easily quantifiable and thus modeled social concerns have been addressed in a less extensive and more subjective way implying in most cases expert participation on multi criteria decision aid techniques a survey of recent papers providing public perceptions on electricity generation technologies and projects is presented these papers were chosen and reviewed in order to present a representative array of methodologies that are used to assess social acceptance of technologies according to some of the reviewed papers this issue is suggested to be fundamental to increase project success as a conclusion stands the fact that further discussion is still needed in order to achieve solid agreement among experts over what are the positive and the negative drivers to social sustainability otherwise models will not be able to translate reality and improve it under this point of view

lessons learned in france and quebec regarding financial and legal mechanisms to develop renewable energy a hybrid model as an acceptable solution for onshore wind abstract this article shows that the unfavorable context of emergence as well as neo corporatism limited the weight of wind energy in france and quebec and delayed the project development and the wind industry as a whole indeed the level of political will to wind energy development in both jurisdictions is fluctuating and characterized by a lack of continuity in policy or regulatory instruments the efficiency of the pricing mechanisms depends on its political design while the french feed in tariff is inefficient in terms of installed capacity and is deemed too expensive by opponents the first two calls for tenders in quebec fare quite well on that front however they are perceived as unacceptable due to the multinational companies involved and the implantation of large scale wind farms in inhabited areas the third community call for tender while generally better accepted locally is poorly regarded among the cooperative movement and at the national level because of the competition with the municipal sector and higher costs to society in both cases a hybrid pricing model would achieve a better balance between costs to society and local development thus promoting social acceptance through a greater diversity in ownership types and wind farms size

technology improves learning in large principles of economics classes using our wits much recent innovation in teaching economics has focused on active learning strategies and on the use of technology at the same time budget realities make large lecture classes a fact of life for principles of economics courses at many universities unfortunately neither active learning strategies nor teaching with technology tend to work well in large classes active learning is difficult to facilitate with many students and learning with technology in economics has been limited for the most part to classes small enough to fit in computer labs we have developed a system that uses handheld devices and wireless technology to facilitate interactive learning in large classes by putting technology in the hands of the students during class the wireless interactive teaching system wits consists of handspring visors a hand held pda equipped with wireless capabilities a laptop server a wireless access point and projector and proprietary software this intranet uses the 802 11b wireless standard wits allows students to trade in markets play standard economics games prisoner s dilemma public goods 2 2 matrix etc take multiple choice quizzes and communicate with the instructor during class see http lshta vt edu index html for a sample exercise and instructional material we report the results of a controlled experiment to test the impact of wits facilitated active learning exercises our study differs from previous work in three important ways first use of the wits system allows us to implement experiments in larger classes than previous studies using hand run exercises second we measure learning using exam scores rather than the test of understanding in college economics tuce so that improved results are understandable in terms of students grades the metric that students and universities use to evaluate performance finally to isolate whether changes in learning are from substituting experiment based material for standard lectures or whether gains are the result of active learning the control class held parallel research days where students discussed the same experiment students in the wits class earned final grades that averaged 3 2 points higher than the control class though impact varies by gender and class level the impact on learning is highest for freshmen and women groups that often struggle with introductory economics and lowest for male seniors who in our sample tend to be engineering majors satisfying a general education requirement teaching evaluations are also significantly higher in the experimental class

subsidies for residential solar photovoltaic energy systems in western australia distributional procedural and outcome justice governments seek to increase renewable energy capacity by providing subsidies to householders opting to install residential solar energy photovoltaic systems the funds used to pay for these subsidies are sourced from tax revenue or electricity tariffs paid by all community members including those on a low income this sees a redistribution of funds from all community members to installers of residential solar energy systems this research compared community attitudes towards distributional justice or the fairness of this redistribution of funds with outcome justice associated with the environmental benefits of renewable energy a randomised survey distributed in four metropolitan and two regional communities in western australian resulted in 295 responses a response rate of 22 33 of community members prioritised distributional justice 30 prioritised outcome justice and 37 indicated that they were unsure about their preference however support for renewable energy was found with 80 of respondents supportive of renewable energy subsidies and 68 supportive of renewable energy taxation including in electricity tariffs qualitative comments indicate that in spite of the preoccupation with distributional justice in the residential solar energy literature community members are concerned with procedural justice issues in this case procedural justice can be interpreted as government commitment to existing policy the expanded scope of renewable energy policy and enhanced regulations

r d capital rate of return on r d investment and spillover of r d in japanese manufacturing industries the effect of r 50d on productivity growth in japanese manufacturing industries is examined using more accurate firm r 50d expenditure data than widely used data based on financial statements series of r 50d capital are constructed then rate of return on r 50d investment is estimated in addition the impact of other industries r 50d on the productivity growth of an industry is also estimated an attempt is made to determine the effect of electronics technology upon the productivity growth of other industries through the transaction of the intermediate electronics goods with improved quality and through the diffusion of the new technological knowledge discovered japanese technology trade 1977 1981 copyright 1989 by mit press

what influences the probability of wind farm planning approval evidence from ireland the purpose of this work is to explore the extent to which wind farm planning approvals in the republic of ireland are influenced by project technology institutional processes and site endowments we use principal components data reduction z score data normalization and probit regression analyses on a unique revealed preference dataset covering 354 wind farm applications and planning authority decisions between 1990 and 2011 notably a unique measure of variable importance is employed that mitigates statistical problems and allows for the ranking of predictors according to their relative influences findings reveal that the duration of the local appeal process decisions of local authorities and inspectors identities of the appellants and projects that conflict with strategic development plans or generate visual externalities emerge as key influences affecting planning approval project technology features such as area rated output capacity and hub height as well as site wind endowments appear to be of less but significant importance alternatively we find that proximity to dwellings towns or protected habitats does not influence planning outcomes

regional r d efficiency in korea from static and dynamic perspectives han u asmild m and kunc m regional r d efficiency in korea from static and dynamic perspectives regional studies research and development r d efficiency has gained great attention in regional innovation research this study examines the r d efficiency patterns of 15 korean regions for 2005 09 it employs data envelopment analysis to identify the regions r d performances relative to the best practices from the static perspective and the malmquist productivity index to evaluate their changes in performance within a given timeframe providing a dynamic perspective the results classify the korean regions into deteriorating lagging and improving groups and indicate that most regions suffer from declining r d productivity over time because of their inability to catch up with the best practices

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

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

social problems of green buildings from the humanistic needs to social acceptance abstract in the past few decades scholars have conducted research and held discussions on green building to highlight their vital significance in addressing environmental economic and social challenges it is recognized that public attitudes and views towards green building may affect its application in daily lives although studies on consumers cognition are rarely carried out the social problems related to green building such as consumers basic understanding purchase intention social and humanistic needs public attitudes and behaviors rebound effects and furthermore social acceptance are therefore studied based on three research methods including literature review questionnaire and inductive analysis through the analysis following results can be obtained i green building s sustainable design has quite important influence over consumers decision making process the general public maintains a high regard for the advantages of green building where better ventilation and lighting is a major benefit saving energy and water are the second rated and then land and construction material saving ii although the general public is not being familiar with the concept of green building the majority of participants would pay more for green buildings over the standard building when they know the environmental impacts of them iii green building should not only be limited to energy performance oriented but also be user oriented the social and humanistic needs model is thus well established based on maslow s hierarchy of needs in the life cycle of green building social and humanistic needs show a trend of dynamics which means social processes with consumer engagement and participation needs to be considered in aspects of conceptual design planning and design operation and maintenance to improve users happiness and productivity iv current user oriented solutions to green building are always based on a hypothesis that consumers are readily motivated or prefer expensive goods for reducing energy use to really reflect preference and influenced actions social acceptance should be analyzed to fully gauge interest and perspective of the people v rebound effects of post occupant building performance including energy performance human comfort indoor environmental quality greenhouse gas emission and workplace productivity can be divided into two stages at present it is necessary to establish appropriate samples methods and parameters for an unbiased and valid post occupant evaluation system in addition the social acceptance of green building framework is established based on wustenhagen et al triangular model for renewable energy innovation all the explorations to social problems of green building in this article are expected to provide a healthy social basis for the development of this green strategy

teaching economics at the start of the 21st century still chalk and talk in spring 2000 we conducted a national survey of academic economists to determine how economics is taught in four different types of undergraduate courses principles intermediate theory statistics and econometrics and other upper division courses at institutions in the five carnegie classifications research doctoral master s baccalaureate and associate as listed in a classification of institutions of higher education 1994 edition this new survey replicates our 1995 survey becker and watts 1996 therefore we can compare the results from the two surveys to document changes in teaching methods as well as the related academic issues that were addressed in the background information section of the surveys a key reason for believing that teaching methods might have changed during this period was the sharp decrease in economics enrollments during the early 1990 s becker 1997 john siegfried and david k round 2001 as we have documented elsewhere becker and watts 1998 there is evidence that economists are less likely to use non lecture teaching methods than instructors in other fields and that students rate economics instructors somewhat lower than they rate other instructors changing teaching methods and increasing the importance of teaching within economics departments in response to falling enrollments is therefore a plausible and endogenous response for faculty members and departments concerned about losing resources furthermore there is at least circumstantial evidence that economists are devoting more attention to teaching than in the recent past becker 2000 since our 1995 survey several books have been published to illustrate how economists can use a wide range of alternative teaching methods in undergraduate courses e g becker and watts 1998 william walstad and philip saunders 1998 other books have appeared focusing on specific teaching methods such as using classroom experiments spreadsheet applications or active learning and cooperative learning assignments e g diane keenan and mark h maier 1995 tod s porter and teresa riley 1995 theodore bergstrom and john h miller 1997 denise hazlett 1999 becker 2000 documents the increase in aea sessions devoted to teaching economics at the annual meetings of the allied social sciences association during the mid 1990 s at the 1998 2000 allied social sciences association assa meetings the number of sessions devoted to teaching economics ranged from 11 to 14 and presented sessions dealt with such topics as teaching economics in the transition economies chaired by world bank chief economist joseph stiglitz a retrospective on nobel laureate paul samuelson s principles textbook how faculty advisors can deal with student apprehensiveness about taking economics courses and teaching business economics chaired by nobel laureate ronald coase as recently as the 1996 assa meetings in san francisco there were only six sessions on teaching economics and at the 1994 meetings in boston there were only four such sessions similarly small numbers of sessions were scheduled through the 1980 s here we ask whether any increased emphasis on teaching in economics departments has led to changes in how economics is taught do academic economists report that they are now becker department of economics indiana university bloomington in 47405 e mail beckerw indiana edu and adjunct professor school of international business university of south australia watts department of economics purdue university west lafayette in 47905 e mail bfp mgmt purdue edu we thank julia k huffer kevin m green siddhartha kapoor chatchai meteveravong alexandre skiba and suzanne becker for help in the mailing data entry and tabulation and preparing of this paper financial support from the purdue university center for international business education and research university of south australia school of international business and the national council on economic education through its sponsorship of the journal of economic education is gratefully acknowledged

social responses to wind energy development in ontario the influence of health risk perceptions and associated concerns this study documents and analyzes the role of health risk perceptions and other associated concerns of wind energy development henceforth wed in ontario drawing on the risk society framework we conduct a longitudinal media content analysis to document and analyze perceptions of and responses to wed over a nine year period attention is paid to temporal variations in responses relative to ontario s green energy act 2009 henceforth gea legislation aimed at the rapid expansion of renewable energy the study reveals that the most radical forms of resistance to wed on health grounds are driven by perceived injustices in the treatment of potential at risk citizens and citizens with health concerns the gea is fuelling these perceptions of injustices in subtle and nuanced ways particularly by acting as a major confounder to health risk concerns contrary to several existing studies we problematize the use of financial incentives to foster the development of wind energy we also provide policy recommendations which include the need for increased public engagement in the wed process the importance of using third party health and environmental assessments to inform developments as well as the need for post development strategies to address ongoing community concerns

clean or dirty energy evidence of corruption in the renewable energy sector this paper studies the link between public policy and corruption for the case of wind energy we show that publicly subsidized renewable energy can attract criminal appetites and favor the formation of criminal associations between entrepreneurs and politicians able to influence the licensing process the insights of a simple model of political influence by interest groups are tested empirically using italian data for the years 1990 2007 using a difference in difference approach we quantify the impact of a green certificate policy aimed at supporting renewables and find robust evidence that criminal association activity increased more in windy provinces after the introduction of the generous policy regime the magnitude of the effect is large the construction of an average wind park is associated with an increase in criminal activity of 6 in the treatment compared to the control group our findings show that in the presence of poor institutions even well designed market based policies can have an adverse impact the analysis is relevant for countries that are generally characterized by heavy bureaucracies weak institutions and by large renewable potential

impact of the financial crisis on bank run risk danger of the days after abstract we examine the developments of depositor knowledge attitudes and behavior throughout the recent financial crisis and discuss their impact on bank run risk based on a self collected data set surveying depositors before 2007 at 2008 and after the peak of the crisis 2009 we observe a worrying dynamic pattern at the peak depositors knew more about deposit insurance placed more importance on deposit security and slightly raised their deposits however in the aftermath of the crisis the enhanced depositor knowledge proved to be non permanent while the increased importance of deposit security and the exposure of depositors persisted the proportion of completely uninformed strongly involved and highly exposed depositors who carry the highest risk of triggering a bank run was reduced around the peak of the crisis but rebounded strongly afterwards even exceeding pre crisis levels these findings point to a higher bank run risk in the aftermath than during the financial crisis

electric dis connections comparative review of smart grid news coverage in the united states and canada abstract the term smart grid sg has been widely used in both the united states u s and canada to represent multiple visions and configurations of electricity system change in both countries policies programs and initiatives have emerged to promote technological and social changes associated with sg and different patterns of sg implementation and governance are apparent at local regional and national levels this paper reports on a comparative analysis of sg media content in nationally circulating newspapers in the u s and canada to explore patterns of sg conversations in the two countries media reporting about sg provides a valuable lens that reflects public discourse and also contributes to setting the public agenda by shaping public opinion and framing key issues despite similarities in terms of policy program design and sg deployment strategies several prominent differences between the two countries emerge in public conversations firstly canadian sg newspaper content focuses more on implementation and describing people s experiences with smart meters while the u s content focuses more on commercial opportunities with more reference to private sector actors and various technological components beyond smart meters secondly although media coverage in both countries frequently highlights technological and economic benefits of sg positive sg framing is more frequent in the u s newspapers than in the canadian ones negative sg portrayals including cultural political and health and safety risks are more frequently mentioned in the canadian newspapers these differing sg framings could be due to national level cultural differences in the u s considered to be more of an individualistic society there is more emphasis on business opportunities being entrepreneurial and more private sector involvement in the electricity sector by contrast in canada public authorities more prominent in the electricity market than in the u s play a key role in smart grid deployment furthermore in canada considered to have more social support structures for individuals and communities there was more emphasis on the experiences of people this suggests that cultural differences at the national level be a further contextual lens helpful to policy makers and technology proponents as they embark upon energy system change initiatives

can school sports reduce racial gaps in truancy and achievement while existing research supports that participation in high school athletics is associated with better education and labor market outcomes the mechanisms through which these benefits accrue are not well established using individual microdata collected daily and team specific schedules we retrieve estimates of the causal effect of high school athletic participation on absenteeism suggesting that participation decreases absences driven primarily by reductions in unexcused absences in boys there are also strong game day effects in truancy in both boys and girls with truancy declines on game days more than offset by subsequent absenteeism important heterogeneity by race gender and family structure may serve to substantially reduce racial gaps in truancy and achievement jel i21 l83

a market clearing classroom experiment this paper describes a classroom experiment demonstrating the price mechanism and the clearing of markets in an endowment economy participants receive random endowments of two goods they may trade in order to maximize a given utility function a market clearing price is reached when no mutually beneficial trades are possible the outcome is truly endogenous with no reservation prices or willingness to trade imposed on the participants a problem set allows the participants to study the equilibrium outcome analytically the experiment can be used in intermediate micro and macroeconomic courses

what students remember and say about college economics years later in his presidential address to the american economic association george stigler 1963 offered the provocative hypothesis that students would retain very little knowledge from principles courses in economics five years or more after taking the courses the few empirical studies that have been published on this topic generally found no or small lasting effects at least for those who took fewer than four courses see e g g l bach and phillip saunders 1965 gerald j lynch 1990 that raises even broader questions about the long term effects of studying economics in college in terms of individuals behavior as consumers workers and voters which we are now beginning to investigate using both survey and transcript data we have two major goals in this study first we want to learn how students perceive their classroom experience in economics courses years after leaving school both in absolute terms and compared to other courses they took we drew samples of economics business and other majors who attended our four universities in 1976 1986 and 1996 and asked which topics regularly covered in economics courses they now viewed as being most and least important we asked whether they now viewed the economics courses they took as interesting important too difficult or too abstract we also compared their perceptions of teaching methods and grading rigor in economics courses to those developed in other courses our second major goal represents an empirical test of the common claim that economics is a unique way of thinking if it is we might reasonably expect people with more training in economics to have different views on policy issues and to make different decisions as consumers workers savers investors and voters we collected survey data on many of these choices and by matching those responses with transcript data we plan to investigate whether there are observable behavioral responses associated with being an economics major or simply taking some minimum number of economics courses compared to students who took fewer courses or none at all there are other uses for these data they can likely be used to study choice of major and course taking behavior as well as common laboreconomics issues such as human capital versus screening in the labor market certainly the data can provide insight into curriculum development for economics departments and business schools as well there is obviously the potential for response biases in the analysis of these data but we expect that having transcript data for respondents and nonrespondents will allow us to deal with these issues econometrically this first brief report from this ongoing project addresses only the first goal of the project specifically how our former students evaluate their experience with economics courses and instructors what economic courses and concepts do they now believe are most important do they wish they had taken more or less coursework in economics what do they think now about various economic issues and allgood department of economics university of nebraska lincoln ne 68588 e mail sallgood unlnotes unl edu bosshardt department of economics florida atlantic university boca raton fl 33431 e mail wbosshar fau edu van der klaauw department of economics university of north carolina chapel hill nc 27599 e mail vanderkl email unc edu watts department of economics purdue university west lafayette in 47907 and while this paper was written the german international school of management and administration hanover germany e mail mwatts mgmt purdue edu we thank the board of the calvin k kazanjian economics foundation for the grant that made this work possible and the aea committee for economic education for bringing us together to write the proposal as described in michael salemi et al 2002 mike salemi provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper april fidler provided major assistance in project coordination administration and data entry georg schaur worked extensively with data organization and preliminary tabulations

exploring the cross country gap in patenting a stochastic frontier approach abstract this paper benchmarks the patent activities of a sample of oecd countries against the world frontier and explores the sources of the cross country differences in patenting regarded as a proxy for innovation a patent production frontier is estimated for a panel of 21 oecd countries over the 1990 2002 period using stochastic frontier analysis patenting performance for each country is decomposed into basic patenting capacity and patenting efficiency the gap between europe and the world leaders in terms of basic patenting capacity remains substantial with little sign of convergence over the sample period in terms of patenting efficiency japan germany and italy have improved their relative position in recent years the gap in patenting performance between the uk and the world frontier is due to relative underperformance in both patenting capacity and efficiency in patent production institutional factors are found to be significantly associated with the patenting efficiency of an economy

the impact of classroom experiments on the learning of economics an empirical investigation i introduction in economics experimental research is still less common than in the natural sciences therefore it is not surprising that economists also make much less use of experiments for teaching purposes yet intuitively it is by no means clear that confronting a group of students with rules and incentives and observing what happens has a lower marginal impact on learning than demonstrating what happens when you put some chemicals together in a test tube however fels 1993 365 and deyoung 1993 348 49 recently called on those who actually use classroom experiments to provide evidence of the impact on students learning of economics this paper provides some limited evidence section ii describes the method used to evaluate the impact of classroom experiments section iii describes the experiment and offers some hints for those who want to try it section iv provides the results ii method a first indication that experiments might be useful as a teaching tool comes from isaac and walker s 1991 experiment they found that those with experience in the experiment behave differently from those without presumably due to some reflection on the problem the approach of this study is more straightforward and not confined to those who actually take part in the experiment our hypothesis is that merely following the experiment and its outcome also has an impact on learning seven instructors teaching courses in environmental economics or public finance were asked to give their usual lecture on the tragedy of the commons afterwards the control group about half of the students filled out a multiple choice test on that topic as an incentive to put some thought into that task in each course one of those students with no mistakes won a book on environmental economics namely beckenbach 1991 worth 26 80 german marks 1 the questions are reported in section iv the same questions were answered by the other students following the classroom experiment iii the experiment the experiment itself which takes only five to ten minutes was a simple take some game of which a more general account is given by mitter 1986 it involves five students who volunteer before the rules are explained in order to give the participants a chance to clarify remaining open points the experimenter should not forget to mention that tabular data for table i omitted on average the volunteers will not be worse off or might even carry off a small profit but that nevertheless they need to have some change in their pockets because there might be losers each receives two cards with the stylized picture of one cow on one card and five on the other the rules are explained roughly as follows imagine you are peasants using a common field every one of you has to decide how many cattle to keep on the commons one cow or five cows if you give me the card which shows one cow you receive one german mark if you give me the card which shows five cows you receive five marks however for every five cow card i receive every one of you gets one mark less for example if two of you put five cows on the common those two will each receive three marks i e five minus two for the others the payoff is one mark minus two marks which means they have to pay one mark now you can calculate for yourself what the payoffs for other constellations will be please make your decision secretly the participants were placed at some distance from each other and it was ensured that they could not communicate immediately after the experiment the payments were made and the experiment was repeated once with a different group of students five cows is the dominant strategy but the collective payoff would be greater if no one played it this method of demonstrating the commons dilemma is less complicated than the procedures reported in powers 1987 and tsai 1993

issues of social acceptance on biofuel development alongside with biofuel development social acceptance issues have been underestimated while social acceptance can emerge as powerful barrier for biofuel development this article provides discussion on social acceptance in biofuel context an acceptance framework based on life cycle biofuel production had been referred for a better understanding on social acceptance issues malaysia has been referred for the discussion as the country has faced with acceptance issue in their biofuel program the discussion point out different societal groups will demand specific consideration for either support or oppose biofuel this paper concludes that biofuel development will be constraint if social acceptance issues remain neglect

is small beautiful a multicriteria assessment of small scale energy technology applications in local governments in its 2003 white paper the uk government set ambitious renewable energy targets local governments and households have an increasing role in the overall energy system as consumers suppliers of smaller scale applications and citizens discussing energy projects in this paper we consider if small scale or large scale approaches to renewable energy provision can achieve energy targets in the most socially economically and environmentally see effective way we take a local case study of renewable energy provision in the metropolitan borough of kirklees in yorkshire uk and apply a multi criteria decision analysis methodology to compare the small scale schemes implemented in kirklees with large scale alternatives the results indicate that small scale schemes are the most see effective despite large scale schemes being more financially viable the selection of the criteria on which the alternatives are assessed and the assigned weights for each criterion are of crucial importance it is thus very important to include the relevant stakeholders to elicit this information

levelling the playing field the influence of national wind power planning instruments on conflicts of interests in a swedish county slow and complicated wind power planning and permitting procedures have been a large obstacle for wind power diffusion in sweden and other countries this paper complements previous siting oriented literature with a planning perspective on these problems the focus is two national planning instruments implemented in sweden in the early 2000s a national planning target and an appointment of areas of national interest for wind power the paper identifies different types of conflicts of interest related to wind power in addition to the conflict between wind power as a national public interest and various local private interests and analyses the impact of the national planning instruments on the handling of these conflicts in the land use planning process in the county of ostergotland the analysis shows that the planning target actually made local planning officials even more inclined to treat wind power as a private rather than a public interest and that the method used to identify areas of national interest of wind power forced wind power to compete with the combined strengths of all other public interest the planning instruments thus left wind power to fight an uphill battle rather than to meet other interests face to face on a level playing field

measuring the efficiency of china s regional innovation systems application of network data envelopment analysis dea chen k and guan j measuring the efficiency of china s regional innovation systems application of network data envelopment analysis dea regional studies this study applies a relational network data analysis envelopment to the systematic evaluation of the innovation efficiency of china s regional innovation systems by decomposing the innovation process into the two connecting sub processes technological development and subsequent technological commercialization the results show that only one fifth of china s regional innovation systems are operating on the empirical best practice frontier during the whole process from technological development to commercialization furthermore it is found that substantial inconsistencies exist between technological development capacity and commercialization capacity in most regional innovation systems and that downstream commercialization capacity plays a more important role in the innovation performance of regional innovation systems chen k et guan j evaluer

relative efficiency of r d activities a cross country study accounting for environmental factors in the dea approach abstract this paper applies the production framework associated with the data envelopment analysis dea method to evaluate the relative efficiency of r d activities across countries r d capital stocks and manpower are treated as inputs while patents and academic publications are considered as outputs a three stage approach which involves using dea for evaluating efficiency and using tobit regressions for controlling the external environment is applied to 30 countries in recent years the results show that less than one half of the countries are fully efficient in r d activities and that more than two thirds are at the stage of increasing returns to scale most countries have a more significant advantage in producing sci cum ei publications than in generating patents

does oil corrupt evidence from a natural experiment in west africa abstract this paper explores the oil discovery announcements in sao tome and principe 1997 1999 to assess the role of natural resources in determining corruption for this purpose we use a natural experiment framework which contrasts sao tome and principe to cape verde a control west african country sharing the same colonial past and important recent economic and political shocks our measurement is based on tailored household surveys we conducted in both island countries the unique survey instrument was retrospective and used personal histories to elicit memories from the respondents we analyze changes in perceived corruption across a wide range of public services and allocations we find clearest increases on vote buying education namely in the allocation of scholarships and customs ranging from 31 to 40 of the subjective scale we interpret these findings as symptoms of increased competition for core state resources