intraurban residential mobility the role of transactions costs market imperfections and household disequilibrium abstract this paper presents a model of household residential search and mobility that focuses on microeconomic elements of household behavior and incorporates housing market features the model is cast explicitly in terms of a rigorous model of housing demand allowing the benefits from moving to be measured as the compensating income variation of the potential change in consumption the empirical results indicate that large changes in economic variables such as income and prices produce only small potential gains from moving and that a major factor in the moving decision is the magnitude of search and moving costs

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

normal markets market imperfections and energy efficiency abstract the conventional distinction between economic and engineering approaches to energy analysis obscures key methodological issues concerning the measurement of the costs and benefits of policies to promote the adoption of energy efficient technologies the engineering approach is in fact based upon firm economic foundations the principle of lifecycle cost minimization that arises directly from the theory of rational investment thus evidence that so called market barriers impede the adoption of cost effective energy efficient technologies implies the existence of market failures as defined in the context of microeconomic theory problems of imperfect information and bounded rationality on the part of consumers for example may lead real world outcomes to deviate from the dictates of efficient resource allocation a widely held contrary view that the engineering view lacks economic justification is based on the fallacy that markets are normally efficient

the rise and decline of managerial development alfred d chandler s work highlighted the complicated interplay between markets and firms especially the arrangements created by firms to buffer and manage market forces arguably his most important work examines one aspect of firms organizational structure and how it changed in response to the competitive needs of growing businesses much the same approach can be applied to understanding other aspects of firms such as the structure of the most important jobs in corporations executive positions and how those positions have been filled over time here the interplay includes a different market the labor market the arguments that follow trace the evolution of executive roles from the early days of corporations where executive jobs were largely shaped by the labor market to internalized and bureaucratized arrangements consistent with the idea of an integrated chandlerian firm after the 1950s back to something much closer to the market dominated approach following the 1982 recession in large measure the change seems driven by the different context that business faced and the interplay with labor markets that made internal development more difficult the implications for the future of large scale chandlerian firms may be considerable copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

moving and housing expenditure transaction costs and disequilibrium abstract this paper specifies and estimates a model of rental housing expenditure that explicitly incorporates moving transaction costs parameter estimates reveal low income elasticities and substantial moving costs which vary considerably among families the model is employed to evaluate the effects of proposed subsidy schemes simulated responses indicate that high moving costs deter many families from adjusting current rental expenditure to higher levels in response to subsidies an additional dollar of unconstrained subsidy payment will on average increase rental expenditures by only 2 7 cents schemes with minimum rent requirements are also quite ineffective and involve substantial deadweight loss comparisons of the model predictions with estimated program effects based on experimental data are also included

getting into the energy efficiency scene does corporate social responsibility matter for energy efficiency in smes a growing body of literature argues that improving energy efficiency is an essential step that firms must take to mitigate climate change issues it is assumed that corporate social responsibility

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

determinants of energy efficiency investments in the us this paper analyses decisions on energy efficiency ee investments by small and medium manufacturing enterprises in the us which have received assessment from the department of energy doe the results confirm the importance of payback time and investment costs as the main determining factors in deciding whether to invest in energy efficiency such investment recommendations are frequently not implemented even though they apparently entail major advantages and give rise to considerable energy savings the data show results which are compatible with a series of elementary valuation processes limited to availability of information far removed from other more academically ambitious methods such as net present value npv and the real options ro method the paper analyses the impact of the primary resource streams electricity natural gas other energy waste and others physical situation of firms in line with their geographical locations in different us states and changes over time from 1984 to 2009 ee investment decisions are analysed here using probit models whose parameters are calibrated on the basis of the information held in the industrial assessment centres iac database the results suggest various ideas to improve policies for promoting investment in ee specially the iac programme

the demand for rental housing evidence from the housing allowance demand experiment abstract this paper provides new evidence on the price and income elasticities of demand for rental housing by low income households housing expenditures of households participating in the housing allowance demand experiment and receiving housing allowances in the form of a proportional rent rebate are analyzed these rent rebates experimentally vary the effective relative price of housing and thus enable estimation of the price elasticities natural income variation enables estimation of income elasticities analysis is carried out using two functional forms and a variety of models of housing dynamics the estimated income and price elasticities of demand are 0 36 and 0 22 respectively when the sample is restricted to include only households headed by couples the elasticity estimates are 0 47 for income and 0 36 for price these estimates are lower in absolute value than have been previously estimated and it is suggested that this may be due to the low income nature of the sample

ceo pay and appointments a market based explanation for recent trends ceos increased from an average of 700 000 in 1970 in 2002 constant dollars to over 2 2 million in 2000 1 during the same period the ratio of ceo cash compensation to average pay for production workers increased from about 25 in 1970 to nearly 90 in 2000 2 the most prevalent explanation in the popular press for this trend is the fat cat theory a variant of which has been espoused among academics by lucian bebchuk et al 2002 3 accord

exploring the role of households hurdle rates and demand elasticities in meeting danish energy savings target abstract the eu s energy efficiency directive eed sets a binding target for energy savings in eu member states the eed further requires member states to perform ex ante evaluations of energy efficiency policies implemented to achieve these savings however ex ante evaluation of energy efficiency policies is difficult as it requires detailed modelling of end users investment and energy demand behaviour this paper details the danish interact modelling approach for ex ante evaluation of energy efficiency policies directed at residential heating interact integrates the energy system model times dk into a computable general equilibrium framework the paper explores the potential for meeting denmark s eed target through a policy induced increase in households investments in energy efficiency retrofits the paper considers the effect of energy efficiency policies on households investment behaviour by applying different levels of hurdle rates on households investments in energy efficiency retrofits the paper shows that reducing the hurdle rate from 25 to 4 could meet more than a third of danish energy saving requirements for the period 2021 2030 this result includes a direct rebound effect of 31 finally the paper demonstrates that reducing the hurdle below 10 has a substantial negative impact on households disposable income making such policy less viable from a policy perspective

implied discount rate and payback threshold of energy efficiency investment in the industrial sector the industrial sector is responsible for about a third of the energy usage in the united states and there is significant energy saving potential from the industrial sector however the phenomenon of energy efficiency gap the scenario in which cost effective energy efficient technologies enjoy only limited market success appears frequently in the industrial sector this article tries to explain this efficiency gap in the industrial sector by empirically estimating the implied discount rates and payback thresholds industrial firms use to evaluate their energy efficiency investments using the industrial assessment centers iac database from 2002 to 2011 with more than 30 000 energy efficiency recommendations this article builds structural models of firms evaluation of an energy efficiency project the model results show that the implied discount rates of medium to small industrial firms range from 40 to 45 and the average payback threshold is about 9 months

trends in job instability and wages for young adult men data and measurement problems have complicated the debate over trends in job instability in the united states we compare two cohorts of young white men from the national longitudinal surveys nls construct a rigorous measure of job change and confirm earlier findings of a significant increase in job instability we then benchmark the nls against other main data sets in the field and conduct a thorough attrition analysis extending the analysis to wages we find that the wage returns to job changing have both declined and become more unequal for young adults mirroring trends in their long term wage growth

the impact of dwelling quality and neighbourhood quality on the estimation of the income elasticity of demand for rental housing in jeddah saudi arabia this study provides new evidence on the estimation of the income elasticity of demand for rental housing based on individual interviews with 405 households it looks specifically at the impact of both dwelling and neighbourhood quality aspects on the evaluation of this elasticity the study finds that the income elasticity of demand for rental housing in jeddah is 0 519 when the sample is restricted to include saudi households only the elasticity estimate is 0 465 these values are within the range of previous empirical estimates the results also indicate that for a range of various quality measures the income elasticity is estimated to be less than unity but our suggested quality aspects were found to exert sizeable differences on the magnitude of this elasticity for the full sample from 0 351 to 0 802 as well as for the saudi sample from 0 382 to 0 603 stratified income elasticity estimates for saudis were also found to be generally less than those for the whole sample

the production of housing services and the derived demand for residential energy most studies of residential energy usage treat energy as a final consumer good this study explicitly considers the production of housing service flows from stocks of real estate and flows of operating inputs and considers the demand for residential energy as a factor input the empirical results based upon analysis of a sample of newly constructed dwellings and their occupants are used to evaluate the effects of energy price changes on the price of housing services and on the demand for housing and real estate thus indicating the extent of residential energy conservation in response to higher prices finally the results are used to analyze federal and state tax subsidies for residential energy conservation

investment in energy efficiency do the characteristics of firms matter the literature on energy efficiency provides numerous examples of apparently profitable technologies that are not universally adopted yet according to the standard neoclassical theory of investment profit maximizing firms should undertake all investments with a positive net present value the standard theory also holds that the discount rate for computing the present value of a project should be the return available on other projects in the same risk class and therefore should not depend on characteristics of the firm this model as applied to energy saving investments is tested by examining whether firms characteristics influence their decision to join the environmental protection agency s voluntary green lights program a discrete choice regression is estimated over a large sample of participating and nonparticipating firms missing values in the data matrix are replaced with multiple imputations from a distribution estimated using the expectation maximization algorithm the results show that 1 sub

barriers within firms to energy efficient investments abstract many investments in energy efficiency fail to be made despite their apparent profitability internal hurdle rates are often set at levels higher than the cost of capital to the firm reasons for these practices include bounded rationality principal agent problems and moral hazard the policy implication is that government can simultaneously improve overall energy efficiency and increase private sector productivity by providing informational and organizational services that go beyond the traditional regulatory framework

housing consumption under a constrained income transfer congress is considering increasing the emphasis in federal housing policy toward use of existing housing as against new construction e g levine 1978 debate continues as well between advocates of an unrestricted cash transfer and those in favor of housing based subsidies e g khadduri

housing demand and disequilibrium abstract researchers have recently begun relying heavily on samples of recent movers to estimate housing demand parameters estimates from mover equilibrium and disequilibrium samples are compared to determine whether significant differences exist the results suggest that income elasticities are not affected by the sample distinctions but demographic effects vary across the different subsamples

housing consumption and permanent income in developing countries estimates from panel data in el salvador the estimation of the parameters of housing demand equations occupies a prominent place in the urban economics literature of developed countries see de leeuw 4 and mayo 20 for thorough reviews of the state of the empirical art most research has focused on income and price elasticities of housing demand using both aggregated and micro level data the main conclusions of those studies which do not suffer from aggregation or other biases seem to be that a on average for a large segment of the population including both renters and owners permanent income elasticities are well below one b permanent income elasticities for owners ranging mostly from 0 5 to 0 7 in mayo s review are slightly higher than estimates for renters which ranged mostly from 0 3 to 0 5 c as predicted by the theory the permanent income demand elasticity generally exceeds that of current

secular changes in the work and retirement patterns of older men this paper examines trends in the work and retirement patterns of males aged 58 to 63 in 1969 and 1989 respectively the labor force attachments of this group have fallen for reasons unrelated to changes in individual characteristics or occupational attainment especially sharp reductions at age 62 hint at an increasingly important role for the early retirement provisions in social security attachments to longest jobs have also declined substantially beginning at age 55 although pension incentives may be significant the observed correlations between pensions and employment status may also reflect the role of confounding factors such as poorly measured nonpension wealth

theory and estimation in the economics of housing demand the main purpose of this paper is to review recent theoretical and empirical developments in the economics of housing demand in particular we ask what is known concerning the permanent income elasticity of housing demand vis a vis the current or measured income elasticity what is known concerning price elasticities what is the appropriate functional form for housing demand equations what is the role of demographic variables what is known concerning dynamic aspects of housing demand what appear to be the major sources of bias in existing estimates of demand equations

a review of optimal energy policy instruments on industrial energy efficiency programs rebound effects and government policies abstract industrial energy efficiency programs ieeps are defined as one of the most popular government policies that aim to reduce energy consumption in industrial energy intensive sectors in this paper we review and classify the most important academic studies that have addressed the environmental and economic aspects of ieeps using a systematic review the classification of energy policy instruments has been developed based on an analytical approach we discuss also the outputs benefits and barriers of ieeps besides a comprehensive argument about the restrictive policies on the rebound effects made after the implementation of these programs the results disclose that china usa and sweden are the most addressed countries on ieeps and their applications in this regard incentive energy policies e g voluntary agreements and subsidies have been applied more than others in the last decade furthermore most of the reviewed studies emphasize energy price reform as an effective practical policy while a few analytical methods can be seen to help policy makers determine the optimal levels of decision variables finally according to the state of the art analysis the authors provide some novel recommendations to improve the performance of ieeps using some restrictive policies on the negative impacts of rebound effects

factors influencing commercial buildings to obtain green certificates abstractidentifying the key factors that influence commercial buildings decision to obtain voluntary green certificates is essential to building sustainability enhancement using commercial buildings in the state of new york multinomial logit and nested logit models demonstrate that there is a significant correlation between the characteristics of commercial buildings such as square footage lot size and years built and green certification more interestingly if a commercial building is occupied by its owner likelihood of green certification is actually smaller this finding not only confirms that ongoing energy savings are heavily discounted when deciding whether to incur the upfront cost of green certification but also suggests that the rental premium enjoyed by green buildings is likely greater in terms of present value than the expected operating cost savings another explanation could be that investor owners must operate in a competitive market for tenants while owner occupiers do not operate

returns on investments in energy saving technologies under energy price uncertainty in dutch greenhouse horticulture conventional net presentvalue calculations evaluating the profitabilityof investments in energy saving technologies indutch horticultural outlays predict a muchhigher rate of adoption of these technologiesthan is actually observed this paper tries toexplain this gap by applying a real optionsframework hurdle rates for investments in twotypes of energy saving technology are estimatedusing simulated future revenue streams givenuncertainty regarding energy prices and energytax policies hurdle rates found in this wayare on average about 1 76 times the hurdlerates that result from net present valuecalculations furthermore this paper tests thepredictive value of the theory by estimating alogit model this model relates the incidenceof having invested in an energy savingtechnology to the difference between the returnon investment and the hurdle rate thepredictive power turns out to be encouraging as the statistical tests indicate that higherhurdle rates tend to reduce rates of technologyadoption

changing consequences of job separation in the united states using the panel study of income dynamics the author examines the consequences of job loss between the periods 1976 81 and 1986 91 he finds stability in the overall incidence of job separation but a statistically significant increase in the incidence of involuntary job loss relative to quits for older workers he also finds that the consequences of involuntary job loss worsened the reemployment rate of workers who experienced involuntary job loss dropped from 67 in 1976 81 to 62 in 1986 91 and among those who found new jobs the odds of receiving a large wage cut rose from 9 in 1976 81 to 17 in 1986 91