the impact of industrial structure on changes in unemployment in gb travel to work areas 1989 92 the impact of industrial structure on changes in unemployment has been hard to establish conclusively this article examines this issue for gb travel to work areas for the period from december 1989 to december 1992 and concentrates in particular on the potential role of public and semi public sector employment in dampening the impact of recession in areas where such employment is relatively important it is concluded that industrial structure was of some importance in the changes in unemployment over this time a high percentage of employment in public and semi public agencies did mitigate the impact of recession other important explanatory variables included dummies to discriminate between north central and southern regions and changes in house prices

thinking about need public spending on the regions mackay r r and williams j 2005 thinking about need public spending on the regions regional studies 39 815 828 the uk treasury accepts that need is the correct guide to spending on public services in different parts of the uk but the formula used to decide changes in devolved spending in scotland wales and northern ireland depends on the population it does not compensate for differences in need with devolved spending determined by need there would be consistency across 11 of the 12 uk regions london would be the sole exception the heavy cost of the capital s public services is part of the argument for a more even distribution of income wealth and employment

barriers to energy efficiency a comparison across the german commercial and services sector abstract based on a large sample for the german commercial and services sector this paper econometrically assesses the relevance of various types of barriers to energy efficiency at the sectoral level and across fifteen sub sectors the results at the level of entire sectors suggest that the lack of information about energy consumption patterns and about energy efficiency measures lack of staff time priority setting within organizations and in particular the investor user dilemma are all relevant barriers allowing for sector specific differences in the relevance of these individual barriers yields a more heterogeneous picture the numbers and types of relevant barriers vary across sub sectors and the majority of sub sectors are subject to relatively few barriers the statistically most significant barriers are found for the sub sector of public administrations these findings are robust independent of whether the definition of an organization s energy efficiency performance includes only measures that have actually been realized or also those that are being planned for planned projects however organizations appear to underestimate internal priority setting as a barrier to energy efficiency

selection of energy performance contracting business models a behavioral decision making approach abstract as a market based mechanism which can actively promote energy efficiency energy performance contracting epc is now universally accepted throughout china and has been incorporated into various business models four of these business models are frequently adopted in china the share savings model the guaranteed savings model the energy cost trust model and the finance lease model the choice of a suitable business model has been recognized as one of the most important factors in the effective implementation of epc projects in this paper the selection of epc business models is formulated as a multi criteria decision making mcdm problem when selecting an epc business model it is natural for decision makers dms to express their preferences opinions in linguistic terms given the characteristics of epc projects taking dms psychological behavior into account is of considerable and realistic significance todim an acronym in portuguese of interactive and multicriteria decision making has been verified as an effective behavioral decision making method to address the problem of epc business model selection an extended todim method based on multi granularity linguistic terms and entropy measure is proposed the sensitivity and comparison analyses show that dms psychological behavior can affect the selection order with respect to the given epc business models one case of a real life campus epc project demonstrates that the validity and applicability of the proposed extended todim method for solving the epc business model selection problem

spatial divisions of welfare the geography of welfare benefit expenditure and of housing benefit in britain hamnett c spatial divisions of welfare the geography of welfare benefit expenditure and of housing benefit in britain regional studies this paper examines the structure of state welfare expenditure in britain it argues that the geography of state welfare expenditure and its impacts have been relatively neglected given their importance in terms of state expenditure regional distribution and spatial equality it shows that welfare spending is a key component of government expenditure and that it has a distinct regional and local geography the paper shows that there are distinct differences in the geographical incidence of different welfare benefits some of which function to redistribute income from the south to the north of britain and it focuses on the geography of housing benefit as an example of what has been termed spatial divisions of welfare hamnett c les ecarts geographiques de l aide sociale la geographie des prestations sociales et des allocations logement en grande bretagne regional

regional per capita income convergence in austria hofer h and worgotter a 1997 regional per capita income convergence in austria reg studies 31 1 12 the question of whether there is a tendency for regional convergence has become a central topic for economic research this paper examines growth and dispersion of output per capita across nine austrian regions and 84 districts time series analysis of the austrian regions finds no evidence for cointegration between regional output and national output we extend our empirical work by estimating convergence regressions for austrian regions and districts the rate of convergence is about 1 a year and indicates a convergence pattern with a very slow pace if we include dummy variables for type of district we estimate 2 which is a familiar value from other studies hofer h et worgotter a 1997 la convergence des revenus regionaux par tete reg studies 31 1 12 la tendance eventuelle a la convergence regionale est devenue un theme principal de la recherche economique cet article examine la cro

public private partnerships for energy efficiency projects a win win model to choose the energy performance contracting structure abstract to stimulate private sector investments and promote energy efficiency in recent years through public private partnership arrangements the public sector uses private companies the energy service company esco to perform one or more activities related to the provision of energy services and the contractual arrangements defining the contracting parties obligations and rights are traditionally based on energy performance contracting epc although epc is a valuable model for delivering public energy efficiency projects the adoption is still far from its vast potential mainly because of two unresolved issues the dilemma of equally sharing the benefits between the public and private parties so as assuring a win win condition and the lack of adequate public procedures that support the selection of the most appropriate epc schema given certain circumstances and projects characteristics the existing literature have analyzed the advantages of epc mechanism for delivering energy efficiency projects and explored the critical success factors of epc however it does not provide any solution to address the issues that hamper the adoption of epcs in public sector to fill this gap this paper proposes a model for assessing and benchmarking the net benefits of the different epc structures so as choosing the epc schema that creates a win win solution for both the esco and the government by balancing the private sector s profitability needs and the public sector s economic interests the assessment of the benefits of the epc schema for contractual parties and the benchmark among the contracts are based on an economic approach which expresses the net benefit gained by each party through the three epc contracts in monetary terms and benchmarks the three epc schema through the net present value npv method the win win condition is ensured by the contract that minimizes the difference between the net profits npv gained by the contractual parties this will support the public authority in the decision making process about the epc structure to be adopted to develop an energy efficiency project as a ppp to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model we apply it to an energy efficiency project launched by the municipality of noci southern italy

regional spending a comment on mackay mackay 2001 recently examined the regional pattern of taxation and spending in the uk concluding that for four regions london the south east scotland and northern ireland public expenditure was well above the level expected for their degree of prosperity mackay 2001 had a very approximate measure of the regional pattern of non identifiable government expenditure a major component of the latter is defence spending and a more precise allocation of this suggests that london and the south east get very preferential treatment moreover so does the south west which should be added to the list of well favoured regions this raises important issues of spatial balance and efficiency

policy debates government output and expenditure in uk regions and sub regions an analysis of the new experimental accounts data gripaios p and bishop p 2005 government output and expenditure in uk regions and sub regions an analysis of the new experimental accounts data regional studies 39 805 813 this paper examines the regional and sub regional distribution of uk state spending by analysing new data available from recently published regional government accounts the data indicate wide variations in public spending per head across regions with london being a particular beneficiary the results do not indicate any relationship between gross domestic product per head and public spending and they suggest that in total government spending is doing little to ameliorate regional inequality if the state wishes to pursue an active regional policy it hence needs to consider the regional dimension of all state functions not simply those associated with traditional regional policy

measuring hospital performance a non parametric approach abstract in this paper a technique for assessing the relative performance of firms is introduced and applied to a sample of hospitals in california hospitals are compared on the basis of their relative technical efficiency the reference technology is constructed from observed outputs and inputs including physicians using programming techniques and efficiency is assessed relative to the frontier of the technology using measures similar to those suggested by farrell the technique used here imposes no prespecified functional form allows for multiple outputs and inputs allowing for differences in case mix and yields information on the productive performance of individual hospitals this technique can also be used to determine whether different types of hospitals use different technologies our results although illustrative rather than definitive suggest that ownership affects efficiency as measured here public and nfp hospitals have different best practice frontiers and public hospitals appear to use relatively fewer resources these results could reflect differences in quality of care by ownership

enterprise level amount of energy saved targets in china weaknesses and a way forward abstract recognizing the industrial sector s high energy use and vast potential for energy saving many national governments have established voluntary or negotiated agreements that set quantitative energy saving targets for individual industrial enterprises the most commonly used energy saving targets worldwide are volume and energy intensity targets since 2006 the chinese government has set mandatory enterprise level energy saving targets in terms of the amount of energy saved this represents a unique category that differs from both volume and energy intensity targets based on first hand data collected at ten case enterprises this paper represents one of the first attempts to verify the reliability of the amount of energy saved data reported by the chinese government and to rigorously and systematically investigate the inherent weaknesses of the amount of energy saved targets through a comparison with the mainstream categories of energy saving targets the ten case enterprises reported four different types of amount of energy saved while all of the case enterprises claimed full achievement of their amount of energy saved targets four enterprises exaggerated their performance by violating the national standard for calculating the amount of energy saved of enterprises the paper thus hypothesizes that the national top 1000 enterprise program s alleged achievement of performance 65 higher relative to its amount of energy saved target is likely an overestimation although amount of energy saved targets constitute an innovative energy saving indicator they do not represent a step forward from conventional volume and intensity targets because of the following four weaknesses 1 amount of energy saved targets provide limited potential for comparison given the different types of amount of energy saved and the different calculation methods 2 they generate uncertain environmental outcomes as it is possible to meet a portion of an amount of energy saved target through production volume expansion 3 they are difficult to enforce due to the complexity of data verification on the part of local government agencies and 4 they are poorly correlated with the national target for reducing energy intensity amount of energy saved targets should therefore be replaced with double control targets that impose both volume and intensity targets on industrial enterprises

stochastic growth with correlated production shocks this paper extends the stochastic growth model of brock and mirman j econ theory 4 1972 497 513 to allow the production shocks to be correlated over time the resultant optimal savings and consumption policies depend not only upon the current level of output but also upon the most recent realization of the random shock the properties of these policy functions are studied and it is shown that the markov process on output capital stock and consumption resulting from the application of these policies converges to a stationary distribution

a lottery within a lottery an examination of the distribution of lottery funds in england the uk national lottery has been in operation since 1994 an examination of the regional distribution of awards per head of population suggests marked spatial disparities with london doing particularly well and scotland northern ireland wales and the north east faring much better than other regions such disparities also exist at english local authority level with london and some major provincial centres doing much better than more rural authorities such inequalities may give grounds for concern given that they appear to replicate those for other types of government spending the results of an empirical model designed to explain the spatial distribution of awards suggest that in addition to a london effect levels of deprivation have a positive impact another important explanatory variable which has a positive impact on lottery funding is the qualifications of residents which might plausibly reflect the quality of lottery bids received from an area however once these factors are taken account of

the failure of regeneration policy in britain two main types of urban problem exist in the uk the first is problem localities in prosperous cities the second is depressed towns and cities per se in both cases and despite years of policy intervention there is little evidence that the situation is improving there are fundamental economic problems to be addressed on both the supply and demand side recent government policy directed at regions urban areas and the planning system is very much supply focused preferences will have to be altered so that peripheral regions and problem neighbourhoods become more desirable a changing balance of government spending and increased costs of motoring should be priorities

beyond case studies barriers to energy efficiency in commerce and the services sector to assess the empirical relevance of various barriers to the diffusion of energy efficient measures we conduct econometric analyses for 19 sub sectors in the german commercial and services sectors results from estimating a separate logit model for each sub sector suggest that the most important barriers are the investor user dilemma and the lack of information about energy consumption patterns typically multiple types of barriers are found to be statistically significant but they vary considerably across sub sectors finally we discuss policy implications for the most relevant barriers

factors impacting investments in energy efficiency and clean technologies empirical evidence from slovenian manufacturing firms abstract promoting energy efficiency is one of the top priorities of the eu energy strategy manufacturing is identified there as one of the sectors holding the potential for substantial energy efficiency improvements this paper therefore examines factors impacting firms decisions to invest in energy efficiency and clean technologies drawing on the energy efficiency gap literature the impact of three groups of factors is analysed namely economic firm specific characteristics and market drivers organisational and regulatory employing probit and bivariate probit models on a panel data set for 848 slovenian manufacturing firms over 7 years 2005 2011 the paper finds that decisions to invest in energy efficiency and in clean technologies are impacted by similar yet not identical factors the following factors significantly increase the likelihood of both energy efficiency and clean technology investments share of energy costs market share and export orientation importantly other types of investments except for investments in the expansion of existing capacities do not crowd out energy efficiency or clean technology investments on the other hand foreign ownership and managers expectations of future demand only impact energy efficiency investments while clean technology investments are influenced by managers expectations of the future business condition of the firm further the economic and financial crisis reduces the likelihood of clean technology investments but not energy efficiency investments this is explained by the fact that investments in energy efficiency represent a cost effective solution for the firm the same argumentation can be used to explain why high energy costs also play an important role for investments in clean technology in addition the likelihood to invest is found to be importantly influenced by industry specific characteristics which captures the effect of industry differences in environmental regulation and other conditions the paper adds to the existing literature in three important ways it employs data on actual rather than intended investments it examines investment decisions over a number of years thereby allowing for an analysis of the impact of the recession on firms decisions and it examines relationships among different types of investments accounting for a potential crowding out effect based on the paper s findings it can be concluded that the energy efficiency gap is less likely to exist in large and well performing firms implying that policy measures should primarily target less energy intensive small and medium sized enterprises

regional taxing and spending the search for balance the financial settlement has been described as the key to devolution public spending above tax in scotland and wales has been criticized public spending is above tax in seven uk regions including four english regions if we treat equal citizens equally public spending will be above tax in poorer regions there is nothing extraordinary about spending above tax but there are important questions with regard to regional levels of expenditure in four regions london south east scotland and northern ireland public expenditure is well above the level expected for their degree of prosperity this article provides possible explanations

industrial structure energy saving regulations and energy intensity evidence from chinese cities abstract exploring the drivers of declining energy intensity is necessary in order to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy in china to date studies have typically adopted case analysis to link enterprise features and energy saving performance the impact of internal industrial configuration in terms of size and ownership structure on aggregate energy intensity remains to be examined to fill this research gap this paper tests the impact of the internal structure of industries on city level energy intensity by employing a unique panel dataset of 283 cities for the period 2005 to 2010 the driscoll kraay method and instrumental variable are used to treat residual cross sectional dependence and endogeneity respectively results suggest that small scale enterprises exerts a negative effect on energy intensity a 1 increase in the output value proportion of small sized firms will lead to a decrease in total energy intensity of 0 067 in contrast the same change by medium enterprises will raise energy intensity by 0 031 a negative and or non significant coefficient suggests that for most energy intensive large and state owned enterprises china s 2006 top down energy saving regulation has been quite effective in targeting key energy intensive enterprises in china the findings reveal that state owned enterprises soes can act as promoters of rather than barriers to low carbon policy implementation in china given that the effectiveness of energy saving regulation will be undermined as a result of diluted regulatory strength in each enterprise market oriented energy price reform is proposed as a fundamental driver for guaranteeing a continual decline in energy intensity

incentives for investment in energy efficiency an econometric evaluation and policy implications technical studies suggest that there exist many opportunities to improve energy efficiency and that a substantial proportion is profitable by current business standards this study deals with the question why so many of these profitable opportunities are not used reasons for not implementing profitable opportunities are idetified and their effect is estimated on the basis ofa survey among dutch firms designed specifically for this study the reasons that prevail indicate what policy measures may accompany energy taxes in the pursuit of energy efficiency improvement in addition energy efficiency elasticities are estimated as well as the factors that determine the elasticities these too indicate opportunities for government policy if it wants to improve the effectiveness of energy taxes

trust in buyer supplier relations the case of the turkish automotive industry while the topic of interorganisational trust is gaining attention in academic literature research on developing countries remains sparse with the premise that certain contextual elements may be more relevant for developing countries we expand on existing models by testing the effect of initial support use of just in time delivery and informal commitment to predict the trust that turkish automotive suppliers have towards their buyers the results support the predictions that soft technologies and informal commitment increase trust

begging bowl meets baseball bat lessons for the uk from the australian fiscal model the uk has taken a historic step towards regionalized government with its creation of a scottish parliament and welsh and northern ireland assemblies however this has raised important question marks about the existing funding system the barnett formula the purpose of this article is to examine the experience offered by a mature federal fiscal system namely that of australia the australian system and in particular its fiscal system of distribution is outlined as are the effects of this system and the political manipulations of it that have taken place issues arising and important implications for uk policy makers are then discussed

regional allocation of public infrastructure investment the case of greece lambrinidis m psycharis y and rovolis a 2005 regional allocation of public infrastructure investment the case of greece regional studies 39 1231 1244 this paper develops a model on the determinants of the regional allocation of public infrastructure investment and applies it to greece for 1982 94 using panel methods of estimation the principal conclusions are that regional allocations of infrastructure investment 1 were negatively associated with regional product per capita as well as with population size and population density 2 were positively associated with the existing stock of infrastructure capital as well as with the share of agriculture in regional gross domestic product and 3 were increased across prefectures in years preceding national elections these results are related to national and european regional policy

investment stability and taxation in a long run macroeconomic model abstract this paper investigates for a one sector model in which the consumer investor s preferences are randomly changing the relationship between an economy s size and variability it is observed that means and variances of the stationary probability distributions on capital stock and output move together for given parameter changes unless some specific form of government intervention is introduced

a note on the effects of capital income taxation on the dynamics of a competitive economy abstract in this paper we investigate the effect of changing capital income tax rates on the time paths of a competitive economy in an uncertain environment

barriers to industrial energy efficiency investments in greece abstract this paper sets out to investigate the main determinants of industrial decision making process with respect to energy efficiency investments based on a survey among greek industries in the empirical analysis probit models are employed the results support that an energy saving campaign should regard industries as subgroups with different needs and different managerial aspects the importance of qualified employees is also established from this survey an energy conservation framework would be more effective if the diffusion of information with regard to industrial energy saving investments is based on investment in human capital

sustainable supply chain management a case study of british aerospace bae systems sustainability is viewed as possessing environmental economic and social dimensions the sustainability approaches adopted by individual businesses and the supply chains to which they belong must include these facets these three components of sustainability are collectively termed the triple bottom line or 3bl the idea of a triple bottom line which originated in the 1990s implies attending to the traditional financial aspects of an organisation as well as to the social and environmental criteria the economic aspect of the 3bl refers to profit making and attaining and sustaining competitive advantage through sustainability the environmental dimension involves factors relating to climate change global warming air land and water pollution or preservation and ozone layer depletion the social aspect involves health and safety issues community well being employment opportunities charities cultural sensitivities and requirements and organisational behaviour as global warming climate change and depletion of resources are on a rise alongside greater demand for improvement in business processes economic standards and technology it has become necessary to sustain processes along the value chain in order to contribute to sustainability this paper examines the drivers of sustainability and related key features based on extant literature and a case study an overview is given of the british aerospace bae systems sustainability initiatives and activities on the basis of the bae systems case study two resultant frameworks emerge that display the interdependence of the triple bottom line and the essential elements required for a sustainable supply chain

review of us esco industry market trends an empirical analysis of project data abstract this comprehensive empirical analysis of us energy service company esco industry trends and performance employs two parallel analytical approaches a survey of firms to estimate total industry size and a database of 1500 esco projects from which we report target markets and typical project characteristics energy savings and customer economics we estimate that industry investment for energy efficiency related services reached us 2 billion in 2000 following a decade of strong growth esco activity is concentrated in states with high economic activity and strong policy support typical projects save 150 200 mj m2 year and are cost effective with median benefit cost ratios of 1 6 and 2 1 for institutional and private sector projects the median simple payback time spt is 7 years among institutional customers 3 years is typical in the private sector reliance on dsm incentives has decreased since 1995 preliminary evidence suggests that state enabling policies have boosted the industry in medium sized states escos have proven resilient in the face of restructuring and will probably shift toward selling energy solutions with energy efficiency part of a package we conclude that appropriate policy support both financial and non financial can jump start a viable private sector energy efficiency services industry that targets large institutional and commercial industrial customers

the barnett allocation mechanism formula plus influence christie a and swales j k the barnett allocation mechanism formula plus influence regional studies this paper seeks to explain why the operation of the barnett formula has failed to generate convergence in the per capita public expenditure levels in the four countries of the united kingdom using scotland as an example this paper argues that a formula plus influence allocation mechanism has been in place this offers improved flexibility greater political integration and increased information flows than would be available through either a straight bargaining or a formula process while devolution has not changed the barnett formula it has altered the environment in which it operates and that this may well destabilize an otherwise secure system christie a et swales j k la methode d affectation barnett formule plus influence regional studies cet article cherche a expliquer pourquoi l application de la formule barnett n a pas reussi la convergence des depenses publiques par tete dans les

energy and climate policy in china s twelfth five year plan a paradigm shift the twelfth five year plan fyp endorsed by the people s national congress in march 2011 plays a crucial role in shaping china s development trajectory over the next decades and especially for the fulfillment of the 40 45 carbon intensity reduction target by 2020 the plan will condition both the medium and long term perspectives of economic restructuring rebalance between the inclusive economic growth and environmental objectives which are compounded by multiple constraints faced by china such as aging population natural resources depletion energy supply security and environmental deterioration this article investigates the major energy and climate targets and actions specified in the 12th fyp to gain insights into the nature and magnitude of challenges and difficulties with regard to the medium and long run economic and environmental policies it points out that china should articulate sectoral policies with the global climate mitigation targets to avoid long term carbon lock in based on an in depth analysis of the objectives in the plan it is argued that the implementation should include mainstreaming developments of appropriate instruments to support cost effective energy efficiency improvements and carbon intensity reduction in the next five years

energy performance contract models for the diffusion of green manufacturing technologies in china a stakeholder analysis from smes perspective abstract small and medium sized enterprises smes are significant to china s emission reduction programme this research aims to improve our understanding of the challenge of diffusing green manufacturing technologies among smes in china specifically this study examines the chinese government s effort to facilitate reduction of energy consumption among smes through energy performance contracts epcs to incentivize domestic manufacturers to adopt energy efficient measures eems in order to reduce demand for energy and corresponding drop in emissions the data is gathered from relevant epc stakeholders in the national motor upgrading demonstration project and its implementation in dongguan city which is based on 30 in depth interviews and 6 focus group discussions using stakeholder analysis this study finds that guaranteed energy savings model is the favorite model in implementation given the gained benefits outweigh committed resources and the control capability overrides possible risks among the two core stakeholders the outcomes of this study may allow the government to have a clear understanding of stakeholder perception of the different epc models used in china so the design and deployment of these mechanisms can be improved

the efficiency paradox bureaucratic and organizational barriers to profitable energy saving investments abstract the paradox of why profitable energy saving investments are not undertaken continues to provoke debate the underlying phenomenon might be called the efficiency paradox because it represents a case in which business firms which are often presumed or taken axiomatically to be economically efficient make decisions that do not maximize profits new data from one of the us environmental protection agency s voluntary pollution prevention programs enables this paradox to be explored statistically the data show that both the level and variation in returns to lighting upgrade investments cannot be explained by standard economic models substantial gains in energy efficiency can be achieved without sacrificing profitability both economic and organizational factors account for some of the variation in observed returns to these investments but the results suggest a need for improved and more comprehensive theories of the investment behavior of firms and other organizations

turning green into gold a framework for energy performance contracting epc in china s real estate industry abstract there is a growing interest in a sustainable built environment and green technologies are gaining worldwide attention however implementing green technologies usually requires more investment than using traditional technologies and the payback period tends to be very long in china most developers sell their properties and subsequently transfer the ownership to customers hence a crucial problem for promoting green construction is that developers cannot obtain economic profits gold from implementing green technologies meanwhile other stakeholders such as property management companies are also hesitant to adopt green technologies because of the large investment involved and their lack of experience to tackle this problem an energy performance contracting epc based framework is proposed to turn green investment into gold benefit by careful sharing of the risks existed the framework was developed by conducting a focus group meeting with three experienced representatives from developer property management company and energy service company respectively a real life case study which includes both energy efficient system retrofit and new construction is used to estimate the costs and benefits involved to demonstrate and verify the conceptual framework the results show that the proposed framework can support the application of green technologies in both types of projects economic benefits as well as environmental benefits can be gained for the project stakeholders and the whole society

the regional dimension of taxes and public expenditure in ireland morgenroth e regional dimension of taxes and public expenditure in ireland regional studies in ireland as in many other countries there has been an ongoing debate on the nature degree and trends of regional imbalance however relatively little is known about the effects of policies at the regional level in ireland this paper considers two aspects of public policy namely the fiscal system and public expenditure in particular regional government accounts are constructed that identify the level of taxation subsidization and public expenditure at the regional level the analysis of these data confirms that the fiscal system does reduce relative income differences in ireland furthermore there are substantial resource transfers across regions morgenroth e les impots et les depenses publiques en irlande le point de vue regional regional studies en irlande comme dans la plupart des pays on discute du desequilibre regional de sa nature son importance et ses tendances cependant on sait tres

energy conservation through energy service companies empirical analysis from china abstract china s energy service companies escos have developed only modestly despite favorable political and market conditions we argue that with sophisticated market institutions still evolving in china trust based relations between escos and energy customers are essential for successful implementation of energy efficiency projects chinese escos who are predominantly small and private enterprises perform poorly in terms of trust building because they are disembedded from local business social and political networks we conclude that in the current institutional setting the esco model based on market relations has serious limitations and is unlikely to lead to large scale implementation of energy efficiency projects in china

measuring hospital efficiency with frontier cost functions this paper uses a stochastic frontier multiproduct cost function to derive hospital specific measures of inefficiency the cost function includes direct measures of illness severity output quality and patient outcomes to reduce the likelihood that the inefficiency estimates are capturing unmeasured differences in hospital outputs models are estimated using data from the aha annual survey medicare hospital cost reports and medpar we explicitly test the assumption of output endogeneity and reject it in this application we conclude that inefficiency accounts for 13 6 percent of total hospital costs this estimate is robust with respect to model specification and approaches to pooling data across distinct groups of hospitals

china s industrial energy consumption trends and impacts of the top 1000 enterprises energy saving program and the ten key energy saving projects abstract this study analyzes china s industrial energy consumption trends from 1996 to 2010 with a focus on the impact of the top 1000 enterprises energy saving program and the ten key energy saving projects from 1996 to 2010 china s industrial energy consumption increased by 134 even as the industrial economic energy intensity decreased by 46 decomposition analysis shows that the production effect was the dominant cause of the rapid growth in industrial energy consumption while the efficiency effect was the major factor slowing the growth of industrial energy consumption the structural effect had a relatively small and fluctuating influence analysis shows the strong association of industrial energy consumption with the growth of china s economy and changing energy policies an assessment of the top 1000 enterprises energy saving program and the ten key energy saving projects indicates that the economic energy intensity of major energy intensive industrial sub sectors as well as the physical energy intensity of major energy intensive industrial products decreased significantly during china s 11th five year plan fyp period 2006 2010 this study also shows the importance and challenge of realizing structural change toward less energy intensive activities in china during the 12th fyp period 2011 2015

the regional dimension of public expenditure in england public expenditure in the uk has a location dimension with respect to the devolved arrangements for scotland wales and northern ireland there is no location dimension to the allocation of public expenditure to the regions of england nevertheless whether planned or not public expenditure impacts on the regions through the provision of services and associated employment and income generation this paper examines the methodological issues in assigning public expenditure to countries and regions and reviews existing and past patterns of public expenditure in english regions it then considers the relevance of this analysis to policy options for introducing an explicit regional dimension to the public expenditure allocation mechanism in england paradoxically english regional devolution is potentially more radical in its implications in terms of rupturing existing allocative mechanisms that lead to flows of expenditure than devolution in the territories where it can be interpreted as putting democrat

electricity consumption and economic growth in china abstract this paper applies the error correction model to examine the causal relationship between electricity consumption and real gdp for china during 1971 2000 our estimation results indicate that real gdp and electricity consumption for china are cointegrated and there is unidirectional granger causality running from electricity consumption to real gdp but not vice versa in order to overcome the constraints on electricity consumption the chinese government has to speed up the nation wide interconnection of power networks to upgrade urban and rural distribution grids and to accelerate rural electrification

testing for convergence across the greek regions siriopoulos c and asteriou d 1998 testing for convergence across the greek regions reg studies 32 537 546 during the last five years few issues have proved more controversial in empirical economics than the so called convergence hypothesis this paper examines the issue of convergence across greek regions following the theoretical basis of the neoclassical model of economic growth our empirical results support the popular view prevailing in greece about the existence of dualism across the southern and northern regions of greece a possible explanation for this may be the lack of experience that poor countries like greece have in comparison with the rich ones rich countries have the combined ability to educate themselves as they grow rich and the endogenous ability to accumulate the knowledge upon which these efforts are made the same argument can be also used as an explanation for regional differences the fact that poor regions do not have previous experience and knowledge for efficient i

designing and implementing open book accounting in buyer supplier dyads a framework for supplier selection and motivation abstract though open book accounting oba is a well known practice in supply chain management the lack of guidelines to support managers to implement it effectively has been highlighted in the literature this paper discusses a methodology to support the selection of suppliers with whom to successfully cooperate in oba projects and the identification for each buyer supplier dyad of appropriate incentives to enable cost data disclosure the methodology has been developed using empirical findings from an action research the authors have conducted in close collaboration with an italian manufacturer of modular kitchens and 19 of its suppliers it emerges that the sourcing strategy and the nature of cost data disclosed should drive the buyer s decisions on how to use disclosed account data and how to select the most appropriate set of incentives to encourage suppliers participation in particular the sourcing strategy mainly affects the supplier s reaction to incentives and the uses of cost data shared while the nature of open books agreements primarily influences the buyer s attitude to commit resources to specific suppliers and therefore to activate the more costly incentives these findings have interesting implications for the identification of the suppliers with whom to collaborate in open books programs for the selection of incentives to mitigate suppliers natural reluctance to disclose cost data and for restrictions in the use of disclosed data to ensure that they are not abused within and outside the relation

nursing home care in the netherlands a nonparametric efficiency analysis abstract this paper analyzes the technical efficiency of dutch nursing homes with respect to the use of labor inputs by means of data envelopment analysis dea in addition the determinants of the efficiency scores are investigated using censored regression analysis special attention is paid to checking the robustness of the results to using different versions of dea and to the econometric specification of the censored regression models fifty percent of the nursing homes are fully efficient according to the theoretically preferred frontier with constant or decreasing returns to scale there is some evidence of a trade off between labor input efficiency and the quality of care

investigating productivity change and hospital size a nonparametric frontier approach the study obtains measures of the productive efficiency of larger and smaller northern ireland hospitals during the 1986 92 pre trust period the measures provide insights into how these hospitals were responding to the pressures for increased efficiency prior to trust status they also constitute a useful benchmark for evaluating productivity change under the post 1992 trust status environment a nonparametric frontier approach is used to measure productivity change and to decompose this into technical change or shifts in the best practice frontier and efficiency change or change in how far a hospital is from the frontier the latter change in efficiency is also decomposed into changes in scale efficiency pure technical efficiency and input congestion the findings indicate that smaller hospitals starting from a less efficient base achieved greater productivity gains than larger hospitals over 1986 92 for smaller hospitals this was due to progressive shifts in the best practice frontier outw

a survey study of energy saving activities of industrial companies in the republic of korea abstract this study measures industrial energy saving activities esas in the republic of korea and identifies their determinant factors by a questionnaire survey to the energy intensive companies more than 90 of the samples have practiced the institutional and managerial esas requiring relatively lower costs and efforts although the companies have felt strong pressures from the governmental regulations and recognized the importance of industrial associations the externally coercive normative and mimetic factors still indicate no significant influence on their esas at present as internal factors the willingness for energy saving support from top management and internal training specific for energy saving determine a company s practice level of esas economic incentives like financial subsidies are useful for encouraging the company s involvement in esas korean government shall also provide more technical support to the companies particularly the small and medium sized ones for enhancing their capacities in promptly reacting to the newly initiated mandatory regulations on industrial energy efficiency

local implementation for green manufacturing technology diffusion policy in china from the user firms perspectives abstract in recent years china has started to change its growth strategy to a more sustainable model in response to the limits to growth dilemma specifically the national policy advocates to promote the use of green manufacturing technologies through demonstration projects and to incentivize chinese manufacturers to adopt these green technologies that are also encouraged by local governments these green technologies can increase the economic gains of manufacturers by reducing costs on energy consumption and shift away from selling low margin products however the local authorities often encounter obstacles when implementing policies for promoting these technologies among manufacturing firms this paper explores the factors that affect the decision making of user firms throughout the policy implementation process based on the econometric analysis of the survey for china s electric motors upgrading project in guangdong province this study shows that three key factors are helpful in the local government s effort to implement the national project i e manufacturers awareness the understanding of the energy efficiency technology and the long term macroeconomic benefits in addition encouraging the participation of financial institutions is especially useful for local governments to convince small and medium sized firms these findings are beneficial for local implementation of green manufacturing technology diffusion policies in china and have worldwide policy implication as well

competitive dialogue procedure for sustainable public procurement the construction sector has adopted green public procurement to improve its environmental performance green public procurement is a process whereby contracting authorities aim to procure services and products that meet environmental requirements in recent years green public procurement has extended to sustainable public procurement which involves the incorporation of both environmental and social considerations in the procurement of goods and services previous studies have suggested the relevance of contractor engagement strategies and the need for appropriate models to promote dialogue in sustainable public procurement this paper illustrates one such model called the competitive dialogue procedure this newly introduced procurement procedure allows the contracting authority to hold discussions with shortlisted contractors regarding the authority s requirements the paper uses the practical case of the kvarnholmen link project in sweden the kvarnholmen link is an infrastructure project that includes the construction of a bridge tunnel underpass and pedestrian and bike path action research was conducted to examine the competitive dialogue procedure this paper has strengthened the conceptualisation that the procedure can facilitate sustainable public procurement with the aid of its key elements such as provisionally preferred solution and dialogue sessions in addition the paper analyses the consequences of the weight used for environmental considerations in the bid evaluation process this paper recommends that contracting authorities implementing competitive dialogue procedure must use provisionally preferred solution to identify sustainable public procurement preferences dialogue sessions with contractors should involve discussions regarding sustainable public procurement to ensure consistency between the weight for environmental considerations and respective preferences

convergence and divergence in regional household incomes per head in the united kingdom 1984 93 this paper examines the convergence of regional household incomes in the uk and finds support for the idea that regions in the uk have in the recent past tended to diverge during booms and converge during slumps a new way of presenting the change in the distribution of regional incomes is offered the results are extended to the consideration of movements in the higher moments of the underlying distributions

monetary and fiscal policy under deep habits allowing habits to be formed at the level of individual goods deep habits can radically alter the fiscal policy transmission mechanism as the counter cyclicality of mark ups this implies can result in government spending crowding in rather than crowding out private consumption in the short run we explore the robustness of this mechanism to the existence of price discrimination in the supply of goods to the public and private sectors we then describe optimal monetary and fiscal policy in our new keynesian economy subject to the additional externality of deep habits and explore the ability of simple policy rules to mimic fully optimal policy we find that the presence of deep habits at empirically estimated levels can imply large externalities that significantly affect the conduct of monetary and tax policy however despite the rise in government spending multipliers implied by deep habits government spending is barely used as a stabilisation tool under the optimal policy

supply chain management a strategic issue in engineer to order manufacturing abstract the characteristics of engineer to order eto companies are described in terms of their markets products and the internal processes of their organisation these are set in the context of current trends in supply chain management the business processes associated with the procurement and marketing functions and the interactions with other processes are analysed these are compared for a number of different types of eto company the variety of work in eto projects the customised complex products and the underlying uncertainties of markets all indicate that procurement and marketing need to be integrated with other processes particularly tendering and design these characteristics put constraints on the application of established supply chain management methods it is argued that a strategic view of supply chain management in which procurement makes a greater contribution in the tendering and early product development activities has the potential to improve performance

getting the incentives right energy performance contracts as a tool for property management by local government energy conservation is a challenging and difficult task because disincentives in the building sector inhibit innovation the municipality of rotterdam experimented with an energy performance contract that aimed to avoid disincentives and replace them with a stimulus for innovation this article investigates whether the design requirements for performance management found in the management literature were fulfilled during the development of the contract and its implementation the outcomes of the experiment show substantial energy conservation around 30 percent the existing incentive structure was changed through the use of a performance management contract and perverse effects that are mentioned in the literature were limited the incentives established between the commissioning party and the contractor triggered better performance and innovation although balancing the responsibilities between the principal and the agent was demanding and time consuming energy performance contracts are a useful piece of the sustainability puzzle but tailor made refinements are necessary

barriers to increasing energy efficiency evidence from small and medium sized enterprises in china abstract this paper analyzes financial informational and organizational barriers to energy efficiency investments for small and medium sized enterprises smes in china its findings are based on a survey of 480 smes in zhejiang province and complemented by semi structured interviews with enterprises contained in the survey sample responses reveal that only a minority of smes in china actively perform energy saving activities at a significant level the survey data suggest further that informational barriers are the core bottleneck inhibiting energy efficiency improvements in china s sme sector financial and organizational barriers also influence a company s energy saving activities with interview based evidence stronger than statistical evidence the interviews point out three additional barriers to energy saving activities the role of family ownership structures lax enforcement of government regulations and the absence of government support as well as a lack of skilled labor more than 40 of enterprises in the sample declared themselves unaware of energy saving equipment or practices in their respective business area indicating that there are high transaction costs for smes to gather assess and apply information about energy saving potentials and relevant technologies one policy implication of the study is that the chinese government could play a more active role in fostering the dissemination of energy efficiency related information in the sme sector

infrastructure and education as instruments of regional policy evidence from spain regional policy and spain infrastructure and education as instruments of regional policy evidence from spain governments have often tried to influence the regional distribution of economic activity through supply side measures such as investment in training and infrastructure using evidence from spain we examine whether such policies can have an impact and whether they have done so in the past our results indicate that disparities in the stocks of human and public capital account for a third of observed regional inequality about evenly split between the two factors hence public investment can in principle be used to reduce regional disparity its actual impact however will depend both on its overall volume and on the extent to which its regional allocation does indeed vary with regional need in spain investment in infrastructure has made only a small contribution to regional convergence primarily because it has not in practice been allocated to redistribute across regions to any great extent in contrast efrd transfers have clearly been allocated among regions with redistribution in mind the impact of the fund has been significant but it has been limited by the relatively small size of the programme angel de la fuente and xavier vives

automatic stabilisers european union and national unity tradition seems to require that economists argue forever about the question whether in any disequilibrium situation market forces acting alone are likely to restore equilibrium now this is certainly an interesting question but as social scientists we surely must address ourselves to the broader question is the disequilibrium situation likely to be corrected at all by market or nonmarket forces or by both acting jointly it is our contention that nonmarket forces are not necessarily less automatic than market forces hirschman 1958 p 63 emphasis in the original hirschman and myrdal 1957 consistently insist that the image of a relentlessly taut economy can be a check to curiosity and a bar to true enquiry a proper search for understanding hirschman and myrdal h and m suggest must relax the assumptions which ensure fully informed price signals and reactions that are automatic elastic responsive only then can one approach an economy which is consistent with reality an economic system where bargains and contracts are made at prices which do not clear markets where resources remain unemployed underemployed unrecognised and where there are problems in encouraging adjustment to constantly changing opportuni ties in such an imperfect but realistic economy there may be a role for nonmarket forces h and m make stronger claims given particular emphasis by hirschman is the idea that non market forces emerge naturally inevitably even without conscious volition when the market fails to discover reasonable balance society will recognise will sense the gap and state policies and social institutions will emerge in an attempt to bridge it the argument applies to different forms of balance and has links to myrdal s claim

analysis of esco activities using country indicators energy service companies escos are private sector instruments that offer energy emission improvement energy saving energy efficiency energy conservation emission reduction projects in the developed and in some developing countries literature reveals that energy emission improvements of countries may be related to their innovation and r d activity levels in this work we use a literature data on the activities and the sectors targeted by escos in 38 countries summarized in terms of the age of esco market aem number of esco companies ne and total value of esco projects ve along with the global innovation index gii data of the countries we investigate the relationships among the esco indicators eis aem ne ve sectors targeted by escos and the country indicators cis gii and per capita gdp energy consumption co2 emission we observe noteworthy dependencies between the eis and cis using the simple trend equations we estimate the missing ves in the original data we also project as a hint for the size and orientation of the upcoming turkish esco market the set of eis and the distribution of the sectors that are likely to be targeted by escos in turkey

risk assessment and profit sharing in business networks abstract nowadays network is the preferred governance form to conduct economic transactions network solution allows to reach flexibility maintaining cost and quality level since network concept refers to a great variety of organizational hybrids it is possible to choose the one that fits better market requirements the new trends in inter organization relationships push towards network solutions companies are interested in relationships with partners and customers to overcome resource dependence to enter too risky market or simply differentiate their business portfolio the proposed research focuses on the network concept aiming at highlighting threats and opportunities to investigate the double nature of the risk concept network structures offer flexibility and higher profit as a consequence and business risk sharing opportunity these two aspects profit and risk are strictly related and have to be considered together to depict a complete scenario this implies that risk assessment and management in network environment cannot neglect profit sharing or in other words that profit sharing mechanisms should use risk as driver in this context our research proposes a methodology to measure risk taking into account network peculiarities risk estimation is a basic step to evaluate the opportunity cost of capital needed to compute the network net present value npv that is assumed as base in the profit sharing process the profit sharing process has been tackled using the shapley value approach that is inspired to the fairness principle while the opportunity cost of capital is assessed using the capital asset pricing model capm

the choice of energy saving modes for an energy intensive manufacturer considering non energy benefits in practice energy intensive manufacturers have two main options when improving their energy efficiency design and implement energy efficiency projects on their own we call this self saving or enter into an energy performance contracting epc which mainly includes shared savings and guaranteed savings in this paper we will discuss an energy intensive manufacturer facing self saving and shared savings options and how this manufacturer chooses the optimal energy saving mode when non energy benefits are considered we only consider costs and profit as non energy benefits and formulate an optimization model of self saving and a stackelberg game model of shared savings from our model analysis when considering only energy savings we find that the optimal unit savings has a monotonic impact on the optimal profit of the manufacturer our results indicate that the manufacturer will prefer the second option to the first when the investment cost factor ratio of the energy service company esco to the manufacturer is small otherwise the manufacturer will prefer the first to the second furthermore when considering non energy benefits we find that the results change in some cases

testing for convergence of the eu regional economies i introduction variations in the economic performance of different regions of the european union have become a matter of increasing concern for policymakers in recent years 1 this paper is however less concerned with the details of the european union s regional policy than with attempting to assess the degree to which economic convergence has occurred across its regions the question of economic convergence has been rather surprisingly a neglected and under researched topic in economics although there has been something of an upsurge of interest following baumol s work on the convergence of oecd economies baumol 1986 the more rigorous analyses of convergence have tended to focus on monetary phenomena and look at the national rather than regional level e g the work of haldane and hall 1991 and hall et al 1992 on nominal exchange rate and inflation convergence in the european union barro and sala i martin s 1991 study of u s and european regions is an exception to this while their paper offers interesting insights into convergence it is forced to rely for its empirical analysis on a number of disparate data sets and to use a number of alternative proxies for variables such as industrial composition in different time frames as explanatory variables in contrast we employ a consistent data base to both re examine and update the findings of barro and sala i martin and to extend the analysis to embrace a wider set of variables that are often thought to have an influence on the convergence process in particular the calculations offered by barro and sala i martin relate to a period before the creation of stronger monetary ties between some union members that have changed the long standing nature of national regional policy instruments in particular the quasi fixing of exchange rates reduces the ability of countries to stimulate their national economies and depressed regions by currency depreciations ii approaches to studying economic convergence general methods for examining convergence include using such indicators as changes in the coefficient of variation of the dispersion of regional performance over time sometimes called sigma convergence 2 table i provides coefficients of variation for regional household gdp at level one regional aggregation within the european union for the period 1977 to 1990 and the ratios of top to bottom deciles 3 the changing coefficients provide general guidelines for example relating to the implications for regional income disparities as successive enlargements have brought more peripheral regions into the union commission of the european communities 1988 but offer little beyond this the major difficulty with these types of measures is that they can be subject to outliers hence convergence or nonconvergence may be excessively influenced by an outlying region further it is not possible or at least very difficult to consider any causes of change through time the data set used in this study is cross section data across the level one regions of the european union for 1975 1981 and 1988 this data set differs from that employed in the earlier work by barro and sala i martin 1991 in three main ways first it is a consistent set with all measures of output per head coming from eurostat and based upon gross domestic product gdp per head at market prices in purchasing power parities standard second it is based on official european union level one administrative regions rather than the mixed system of regions employed by barro and sala i martin this means that for the whole sample period we have three cross sections of annual data on fifty one regions across nine countries consisting of the uk eleven regions west germany eleven regions france eight regions the netherlands four regions belgium four regions and denmark luxembourg and ireland each of which is a single region in contrast barro and sala i martin used data on seventy three european community regions but across only seven countries

energy efficiency analysis of g7 and brics considering total factor structure abstract energy is the driving force of world economy with the increase in the world s population and consumption additional efforts must be made to guarantee energy availability for all economies and consequently to avoid a number of serious problems related to its scarcity therefore measures to ensure energy efficiency are now a priority for any nation willing to develop its economy given the fast economic development seen in the brics group which has played an important role in the global economy the objective of this study is to measure and analyze energy efficiency in the countries that comprise the brics group brazil russia india china and south africa and the g7 group canada france germany italy japan united kingdom and united states considering the total factor structure for this data envelopment analysis was used with slacks based measure model and the window analysis and the total factor energy efficiency index was calculated from the slacks provided by this tool for the countries analyzed the model used as inputs gross fixed capital formation and workforce and energy consumption additionally two outputs were used carbon dioxide emissions undesirable output and gross domestic product desired output moreover the factors that lead to better energy efficiency measures were sought using an econometric model the results indicate that the brics and g7 are statistically different groups and therefore justify being analyzed separately energy efficiency in brics ranged from 23 54 to 99 95 with brazil as the country which had the highest total factor energy efficiency index in the analysis performed for the g7 group every country had a total factor energy efficiency index above 95 the tobit model was used and the results show that patents are significant for energy efficiency in the brics countries while in the g7 countries the gross domestic product per capita measured by purchasing power parity life expectancy and years of schooling are significant these findings indicate that in the brics countries the results of energy efficiency measures are more related to investments in low energy consumption technologies while in the g7 countries the energy efficiency tends to be better when countries have better social conditions which in addition to high life expectancy ensures a fair income distribution the results of this study are important in terms of being useful for public policies related to energy efficiency especially 1 to contribute to the discussions related to evaluating the countries energy use helping to identify those with the best practices with regard to environmental and economic aspects in each group and 2 to guide policy decisions regarding government incentives to promote the development of efficient countries in terms of economic growth with minimal use of resources capital labor energy without harming the environment

frontier estimation how useful a tool for health economics the journal is pleased to publish in this issue three papers that apply frontier estimation techniques to hospitals and nursing homes together with an exchange over the usefulness of those techniques in the health care context the papers represent the current state of the art with respect to applications of frontier estimation in health care because of the growing popularity of the technique no doubt in part from its availability in standard software packages it seems useful to take this opportunity to appraise its usefulness one might begin by asking usefulness for what assuming one could define a frontier with certainty how would one use such knowledge a straightforward application in health care appears to be to reimbursement because both data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier estimation specify the least cost mix of inputs for a given output both methods can in principle be used to determine whether a given firm hospital or nursing home is efficient and if the answer to that question is no the magnitude of any inefficiency it is not a large step from that information to the notion that a regulator should reduce the firm s budget by the amount of the measured inefficiency indeed vitaliano and toren mention the boren amendment s requirement that the medicaid program reimburse hospitals and nursing homes at the cost incurred by an efficiently operated

globalization and the death of the local firm the automobile components sector in south africa barnes j and kaplinsky r 2000 globalization and the death of the local firm the automobile components sector in south africa reg studies 34 797 812 as in the case of many developing countries south african industry is facing a new competitive environment as trade barriers fall this involves both the need to enter external markets and to cope with new entrants in the domestic market in the case of the south african automobile assembly industry responding to this new global environment has increasingly meant that domestic subsidiaries are being integrated into the global strategic operations of their parent companies this is increasingly leading them to the foreign sourcing of components in part because of perverse and unintended consequences of the motor industry development plan where local production of components is involved there is decreasing space for locally owned component suppliers and almost no space for component suppliers using local technology south african component supplie

a fiscal stimulus and jobless recovery we analyze the effects of a government spending expansion in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with mortensen pissarides labor market frictions deep habits in private and public consumption investment adjustment costs a constant elasticity of substitution ces production function and adjustments in employment at both intensive and extensive margins the combination of deep habits and ces technology is crucial the presence of deep habits magnifies the responses of macroeconomic variables to a fiscal stimulus while an elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in the range of available estimates allows the model to produce a scenario compatible with the observed jobless recovery

towards a sustainable society the status and future of energy performance contracting in china abstract associated with the rapid economic growth last decades have witnessed significant increases of both energy production and energy consumption in china it is also recognized that the air pollutants emissions brought by excessive fossil energy consumptions have caused serious environmental problems it is imperative to save energy and reduce emissions in china as an innovative market mechanism energy performance contracting epc can effectively reduce the energy consumption china has released a series of laws polices regulations and plans that include epc related contents due to the massive demand as well as the facilitation efforts from the governments epc has developed rapidly in china for instance the number of employees the aggregate investment and the total output value of energy service companies increased by 31 8 times 56 times and 73 2 times between 2005 and 2013 the evolution of policy system of epc in china is examined in this study the results show that legal protection policy guidance and fiscal incentives are main measures to promote the development of epc these policies showcase china s efforts on achieving energy conservation enhancing energy efficiency and improving environmental performance by encouraging the implementation of epc however the analysis also reveals some existing issues further development of epc depends on a number of factors such as a complete legal security system a mature market mechanism flexible economic incentives and the specific development plan for epc the experiences gained in china are helpful for promoting the development of epc industry especially in the developing countries

optimizing the production scheduling of a single machine to minimize total energy consumption costs abstract the rising cost of energy is one of the important factors associated with increased production costs at manufacturing facilities which encourages decision makers to tackle this problem in different manners one important step in this trend is to reduce the energy consumption costs of production systems considering variable energy prices during one day this paper proposes a mathematical model to minimize energy consumption costs for single machine production scheduling during production processes by making decisions at machine level to determine the launch times for job processing idle time when the machine must be shut down turning on time and turning off time this model enables the operations manager to implement the least expensive production scheduling during a production shift to obtain near optimal solutions genetic algorithm technology has been utilized furthermore to determine whether the heuristic solution provides the minimum cost and the best possible schedule for minimizing energy costs an analytical solution has also been run to generate the optimal solution next a comparison between the analytical solution and heuristic solutions is presented for larger problems the heuristic solution is preferable the results indicate that significant reductions in energy costs can be achieved by avoiding high energy price periods this minimization process also has a positive environmental effect by reducing energy consumption during peak periods which increases the possibility of reducing co 2 emissions from power generator sites

implementing china s national energy conservation policies at state owned electric power generation plants abstract china s 11th five year guideline identified energy conservation as one of the country s fundamental policies and established a mandatory target 20 reduction in national average energy intensity by 2010 despite the various policies laws and administrative reforms to support energy conservation china fell behind schedule for meeting its conservation targets in 2006 and 2007 using a combination of available literature and an interview based case study this paper examines the implementation of energy conservation and investigates impediments to achieving china s conservation goal in the electric power generation sector three key impediments are detailed 1 municipal governments incentives to overlook conservation related central directives primarily because of budget pressures linked to financial decentralization 2 procedural obstacles in the form of time required to obtain project approvals for high efficiency power generation units and 3 financial obstacles making it difficult for power generation enterprises to raise capital for energy conservation projects an interview based case study of a state owned coal fired electric power generation company demonstrates the influence of the aforementioned obstacles while procedural obstacles are notable they can be managed however electricity pricing reforms and or stronger subsidy programs will be needed to address the financial obstacles facing chinese power generation companies

measuring production efficiency of acute hospitals in scotland 1991 94 validity issues in data envelopment analysis data envelopment analysis is a potentially useful technique for measuring production efficiency and is being increasingly applied to health care services as with other areas however some fundamental concerns need to be addressed before data envelopment analysis can be accepted widely as a routine tool these include issues of validity and specification error this paper suggests a broad framework for assessing validity which should be developed further and gives illustrative examples of the problems in a real application within health care data from 75 scottish acute hospitals for three years from 1991 94 are analysed internal validity is assessed by examining the effect on the results obtained of the choice of inputs and outputs selected for analysis external validity is assessed by examining differences in the results obtained from the data for each of the three years in both cases it is concluded that there is a disturbing lack of concordance between the different results obtained caution mu

complementarities between jit purchasing practices an economic analysis based on transaction costs the objective of this paper is to analyse the complementarities and interrelationships between the different jit purchasing practices which have extended in industrial markets in recent years the incorporation of trust as an explicative element in a framework based on transaction costs economics leads us to propose that the success of logistics related jit purchasing practices which fundamentally transform the physical exchange process depends on the implementation of additional practices which transform the way of governing and controlling the relationships and which support and rely on a co operation climate empirical tests carried out over a sample of 148 spanish auto components suppliers confirm this reasoning

economies of scale in non revenue producing cost centers implications for hospital mergers this paper uses semiparametric methods to estimate the magnitude of economies of scale in 14 non revenue producing cost centers in hospitals there are substantial economies of scale in small hospitals but economies are exhausted in hospitals with over 10 000 discharges annually in recent hospital mergers challenged by federal antitrust agencies one or both hospitals had over 10 000 discharges suggesting that efficiency gains in non revenue producing cost centers will be small and could easily be offset by nominal price increases

economics of devolution decentralization in the uk some questions and answers mcgregor p g and swales k 2005 economics of devolution decentralization in the uk some questions and answers regional studies 39 477 494 the paper explores the economic implications of the radical process of devolution decentralization and delegation of decision making and policy delivery initiated by the post 1997 uk labour government it is argued that the economies of all the presently devolved regions ultimately suffer if the barnett formula is rigorously imposed it is shown that the efficiency of devolving fiscal authority involves a balance of positive and negative elements depending on wage bargaining and migration responses it is then argued that delegation devolution of regional economic development policies while exploiting regional information advantages neglects regional economic interdependence so there are potential gains from greater cooperation coordination

fiscal policy and lending relationships this paper studies how fiscal policy affects loan market conditions in the us first it conducts a structural vector autoregression analysis showing that the bank spread responds negatively to an expansionary government spending shock while lending increases second it illustrates that these results are mimicked by a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model where the bank spread is endogenized via the inclusion of a banking sector exploiting lending relationships third it shows that lending relationships represent a friction that generates a financial accelerator effect in the transmission of the fiscal shock

differences in gdp per head in gb counties some suggested explanations this paper examines the evidence concerning the convergence of gross domestic product gdp per head across gb counties during 1977 1995 in general the evidence rejects the hypothesis of convergence although there is some evidence of a north south divide with convergence in the north in the 1990s cross section results suggest that variation in gdp per head may be related to different economic activity rates and some aspects of industrial structure