economies of scale in energy use in adult only households the residential sector is responsible for 18 of australia s primary energy use thus improved knowledge about household energy use is vital to future energy management this study examines economies of scale in energy use and expenditure among adult only households and across three adult only household types significant economies of scale are found in all cases small households suffer a double penalty of greater per capita energy use and higher charge per unit of energy with older households the most affected the trend towards smaller average household size means that economies of scale are continually being lost offsetting gains in energy efficiency achieved through other means

the carbon footprint of uk households 1990 2004 a socio economically disaggregated quasi multi regional input output model this paper presents a socio economically disaggregated framework for attributing co2 emissions to people s high level functional needs based around a quasi multi regional input output qmrio model the study in theory takes into account all co2 emissions that arise from energy used in production of goods and services to satisfy uk household demand whether the emissions occur in the uk or abroad results show that co2 emissions attributable to households were 15 above 1990 levels in 2004 and that although absolute decoupling occurred between household expenditure and co2 during the uk s switch from coal to gas in the early 1990s since then only slight relative decoupling is evident the proportion of co2 that arises outside uk borders in support of uk consumption is rising and reducing these emissions is particularly problematic in a global trading system investigation into the carbon footprint of different segments of the uk population shows wide variation the segment with the highest carbon footprint emits 64 more co2 than the segment with the lowest results show that recreation and leisure are responsible for over one quarter of co2 emissions in a typical uk household in 2004 we conclude that expanding lifestyle aspirations are significant factors in driving household co2 emissions but the study also emphasizes that attention must be paid to the infrastructures and institutions that result in considerable amounts of co2 being locked up in basic household activities through which people meet their everyday needs for subsistence protection and communication with family and friends the findings highlight the sheer scale of the challenge facing uk policy makers and suggest that policies should be targeted towards segments of society responsible for the highest carbon footprints

do formula or competitive grant funds have greater impacts on state agricultural productivity this article examines the impact of public agricultural research and extension on agricultural total factor productivity at the state level the objective is to establish whether federal formula or competitive grant funding of agricultural research has a greater impact on state agricultural productivity a pooled cross section time series model of agricultural productivity is fitted to annual data for forty eight contiguous states over 1970 1999 our results show that public agricultural research and agricultural extension have statistically significant positive impacts on state agricultural productivity in addition hatch formula funding has a larger impact on agricultural productivity than federal competitive grant funding and a reallocation of hatch formula funds to competitive grant funding would lower agricultural productivity this seems unlikely to be a socially optimal policy furthermore from a cost benefit perspective our study shows that the social marginal annualized real rate of return to public resources invested in agricultural research is 49 62 and to public agricultural extension the rate is even larger

the structural changes and determinants of household energy choices and energy consumption in urban china addressing the role of building type abstract understanding the energy use and choice behaviors in urban china is essential to curb its energy consumption and air pollutant emissions current energy consumption estimates for urban households in china rarely account for the effects of building types on energy choice behavior thus may lead to biased policy implications in this paper we estimate the determinants of household energy consumption for different energy choice scenarios through the seemingly unrelated regression sur model using urban household data the empirical results show that household use of various energy carriers is driven by household income fuel price demographics building attributes and lifestyles results show building types have a significant effect on household energy consumption behaviors households living in old houses have less access to clean energy such as piped gas income and price elasticities of energy consumption vary with energy type in each scenario and there exist certain substitution effects among different types of energy carriers in particular inter fuel substitute elasticities between coal and clean energy are asymmetric our study highlights the significance of city planning and infrastructure expansion policies and also offers a better basis for coordinating and designing energy policies in urban china and other developing countries

gains from an integrated market for tradable renewable energy credits abstract decoupling the environmental attributes of renewable energy re generation from the physical unit of energy is an innovative mechanism for marketing green or renewable power the introduction of tradable renewable energy credits trecs allows the green power attributes of energy to be sold or traded separately from the physical unit of energy since the green power certificate system removes potential locational and physical bottlenecks both suppliers and consumers gain flexibility in the marketplace the trec is also an efficient tool to meet renewable portfolio standard rps required by different states in the us this paper discusses the rps requirements for different states and examines the implications of an integrated trec market it offers a competitive setting to the consumers to pay for renewable energy and a cost effective tool to support renewable energy generation grace and wiser 2002 this paper also highlights some practical difficulties that should be addressed in order to establish an efficient integrated trec market

reassessing patent propensity evidence from a dataset of r d awards 1977 2004 it is well known that not all innovations are patented but the exact volume of innovative activities undertaken outside the coverage of patent protection and relatedly the actual propensity to patent an innovation in different contexts remain to a major degree a matter of speculation this paper presents an exploratory study comparing systematically patented and unpatented innovations over the period 1977 2004 across industrial sectors the main data source is the r d 100 awards competition organized by the journal research and development since 1963 the magazine has been awarding this prize to the 100 most technologically significant new products available for sale or licensing in the year preceding the judgments we match the products winners of the r d 100 awards competition with uspto patents and we examine the variation of patent propensity across different contexts industries geographical areas and organizations finally we compare our findings with previous assessments of patent propensity based on several sources of data

redefining recs part 2 untangling certificates and emission markets abstract renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions markets are currently in a state of confusion regarding the treatment of renewable energy certificate recs how should emission trading schemes treat recs how can emission mitigation policies provide real incentives for renewable generation the objective of rec markets should be to promote additional renewable energy investments the author asserts that defining recs in terms of attributes especially off site attributes does not further this goal ambiguous language such as environmental attribute or environmental benefit creates confusion in the marketplace while failing to address the relevant coordination issues with renewable portfolio standard compliance markets voluntary emission offset markets or emission cap and trade markets specifically defining recs in terms of off site attributes creates a number of problems including that once an emissions cap and trade scheme is in place such definitions of a rec can become indefensible the author proposes to redefine recs in terms of on site attributes which resolves the aforementioned problems and allows compliance and voluntary renewable energy and emission markets to function without conflicts ideally environmental commodities should be homogeneous first best measures of the relevant environmental good as well as easily measured and verified the author proposes tradable environmental commodities that achieve these characteristics

modelling household energy expenditures using micro data this paper is concerned with the empirical modeling of domestic demand for energy in the united kingdom at the level of the individual household a two stage budgeting model of household demand for energy conditional on durable ownership is developed at the first stage income is allocated between energy and nonenergy consumption while at the second stage energy expenditure is disaggregated the second stage allocation is assumed to be between gas electricity and a composite good other fuels estimation takes place using a sample of some 50 000 households drawn from the annual u k family expenditure survey for the years 1972 83 a source that has not been fully exploited in the analysis of energy demand to date copyright 1989 by royal economic society

residential energy use and conservation economics and demographics energy consumption in the residential sector offers an important opportunity for conserving resources however much of the current debate regarding energy efficiency in the housing market focuses on the physical and technical determinants of energy consumption neglecting the role of the economic behavior of resident households in this paper we analyze the extent to which the use of gas and electricity is determined by the technical specifications of the dwelling as compared to the demographic characteristics of the residents our analysis is based on a sample of more than 300 000 dutch homes and their occupants the results indicate that residential gas consumption is determined principally by structural dwelling characteristics such as the vintage building type and characteristics of the dwelling while electricity consumption varies more directly with household composition in particular income and family composition combining these results with projections on future economic and demographic trends we find that even absent price increases for residential energy the aging of the population and their increasing wealth will roughly offset improvements in the energy efficiency of the building stock resulting from policy interventions and natural revitalization

residential energy expenditures and the relevance of changes in household circumstances this paper analyses the impact that dwelling characteristics and characteristics and behaviours of household members have on per capita energy expenditures it also analyses whether changes in household socio economic circumstances translate in changes in energy expenditures socio economic characteristics have a moderate impact while dwelling characteristics and especially household size have much larger impacts the largest changes in energy expenditures are due to changes in household size the recent socio demographic trends will make it harder to design policies to effectively reduce the carbon footprint of a country while policies influencing cohabitation and family size may have positive indirect effects

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in germany abstract we first examine the determinants of household expenditures on space heating and hot water supply in germany a number of socio economic characteristics of households are included along with building characteristics our analysis covers information on more than 12 000 households in germany for the years 1998 and 2003 the analysis continues by investigating whether different kinds of households are affected differently by increases in energy prices households in owner occupied properties are less affected compared to those in rented accommodation this could be because owners are more likely to have installed energy efficient heating and hot water supply systems and landlords have less of an incentive to improve the conditions of their rented accommodations an energy policy targeting especially the latter group might benefit not only households in rented accommodation but might also increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well

switch off the light please energy use aging population and consumption habits abstract in parallel with worldwide population growth europe is experiencing a fast demographic shift widely studied but generally undervalued by policymakers population aging may imply smaller household sizes and more home based energy consumption which will change the energy mix consumer preference shifts and different attitudes towards environment among the generations determine additional effects study of the link between an aging population and energy demand is even more important for italy because its energy dependence is almost complete and its population is aging quickly this paper aims to assess the role of changing generational preferences in the energy expenditure trend in italy by distinguishing between a pure age effect and a cohort effect the decomposition shows significant differences in the shape of age and cohort effects thus confirming that beside an aging effect we must consider that recent generations have a higher residential energy expenditure indeed the energy culture of post war italian generations seems more linked to thermal comfort heating and air conditioning than to environmental attitudes

cost effectiveness as energy policy mechanisms the paradox of technology neutral and technology specific policies in the short and long term when choosing policy mechanisms to design and deploy energy policies policymakers typically seek cost effective ones linking cost effectiveness to the lowest cost of support for res e generation and or consumer costs the objectives of this paper are to analyze the cost effectiveness of renewable portfolio standards rps feed in tariffs fit and auctions in the short and long term considering both technology neutral and technology specific approaches results show that rps and auctions are more cost effective than feed in tariffs fit in the short term if cost effectiveness is defined as minimizing consumer costs also if one or more emerging technologies with higher levelized life cycle costs lcc low cumulative production and high experience elasticity are considered in the pool of res e policy design a technology neutral approach in the short term could lock out these emerging technologies avoiding a long term lcc reduction in this case a technology specific policy used in the short term would reflect lower total generation policy costs in the long term if compared with a technology neutral policy in both short and long term this paper calls this phenomenon the paradox of technology neutral and technology specific policies in the long term considering the results this paper suggests a mix of technology neutral and technology specific policies using rps or auction mechanisms to promote res e

labor market regulation the diversity of knowledge and skill and national innovation performance abstract the diversity of knowledge and skill is an important element of a national system of innovation we propose a theory of how certain labor market institutions affect diversity and through that route affect levels of innovation specifically unemployment protection up encourages diversity by reducing the risk burden of a broad range of learning or human capital investment for that reason up fosters innovation employment protection ep reduces the risk burden of a much narrower range of learning for this reason it will not enhance diversity to the extent up does and it may actually depress overall diversity and innovation our approach differs from previous research on labor market insurance and skill formation much of which has dealt with a distinction between general and specific skills and which has treated the effects of up and ep as similar estimating the effects of up and ep on patenting for 25 oecd countries over 24 years we find a positive effect from up a negative effect from ep and evidence that the up effect is mediated by diversity of skill

the danish green certificate system some simple analytical results we formulate a simple static equilibrium model for the electricity market taking account of both green certificates and co2 emission permits the objective is to investigate the relationship between these markets under the existence of upper and lower price bounds on the green certificates both in the short and in the long run we perform various comparative static changes of the parameters of the model and study how these affect the endogenous variables of the model as well as producers and consumers surplus we also investigate the effects of imports and exports of electricity several comparative static results are derived and in particular it is shown that harsher co2 emission constraints and increased import wholesale price both may lead to reduced capacity of green electricity

implications of carbon cap and trade for us voluntary renewable energy markets many consumers today are purchasing renewable energy in large part for the greenhouse gas ghg emissions benefits that they provide emerging carbon regulation in the us has the potential to affect existing markets for renewable energy carbon cap and trade programs are now under development in the northeast under the regional greenhouse gas initiative rggi and in early stages of development in the west and midwest there is increasing discussion about carbon regulation at the national level as well while renewable energy will likely benefit from carbon cap and trade programs because compliance with the cap will increase the costs of fossil fuel generation cap and trade programs can also impact the ability of renewable energy generation to affect overall co2 emissions levels and obtain value for those emissions benefits this paper summarizes key issues for renewable energy markets that are emerging with carbon regulation such as the implications for emissions benefits claims and voluntary market demand and the use of renewable energy certificates recs in multiple markets it also explores policy options under consideration for designing carbon policies to enable carbon markets and renewable energy markets to work together published by elsevier ltd

the propensity to patent abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between 1974 rd among the exceptions the tendency was toward diminishing returns variables measuring overseas sales federal r d support diversification scope of invention use and invention type had only modest explanatory power there was no significant evidence of disproportionate patent accumulation in the more highly concentrated industries

the relative effectiveness of patents and secrecy for appropriation abstract changes in patent law global competition and the rise of several new technologies suggest that patents could be of greater value than secrecy for many innovative firms particularly small firms that are unable to use market power or other factors to appropriate their investments in innovation data from the 1993 european community innovation survey cis for up to 2849 r d performing firms is analysed to determine the relative importance of secrecy vs patents this particular combination of appropriation methods is interesting because secrecy can act as a mutually exclusive alternative to patents the results show that a higher percentage of firms in all size classes rate secrecy as more valuable than patents however ordered logit regressions show that the probability that a firm rates secrecy as more valuable than patents declines with an increase in firm size for product innovations while there is no relationship for process innovations the firm s r d intensity has no effect on the relative value of secrecy vs patents there is weak evidence to show that participation in cooperative r d increases the value of patents over secrecy for product innovations the results are relevant to ongoing debates over changes to the patent system and the need for policies to encourage small firms to patent more

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

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

inducement prizes and innovation we examine the effect of prizes on innovation using data on awards for technological development offered by the royal agricultural society of england at annual competitions between 1839 and 1939 we find large effects of the prizes on competitive entry and we also detect an impact on patents especially when prize categories were set by a strict rotation scheme thereby mitigating the potentially confounding effect that they targeted only hot technology sectors prizes encouraged competition and medals were more important than monetary awards the boost to innovation we observe cannot be explained by the re direction of existing inventive activity

characteristics of patent litigation a window on competition we examine the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation recent survey evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents to appropriate returns to r d yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically since the mid 1980s we explore this apparent paradox by conducting interviews with industry representatives and analyzing the patenting behavior of 95 u s semiconductor firms during 1979 1995 the results suggest that the 1980s strengthening of u s patent rights spawned patent portfolio races among capital intensive firms but it also facilitated entry by specialized design firms copyright 2001 by the rand corporation

energy performance certificates and investments in building energy efficiency a theoretical analysis abstract in the european union energy performance certificates epcs provide potential buyers or tenants with information on a property s energy performance by mitigating informational asymmetries on real estate markets the conventional wisdom is that they will reduce energy use increase energy efficiency investments and improve social welfare we develop a model that partly contradicts these predictions although epcs always improve social welfare in the absence of market failures other than asymmetric information their impact on energy use and investments is ambiguous and depends both on the time horizon considered and the distribution of energy needs in the population this implies that in a second best world where energy externalities are under priced epcs can damage social welfare

optimal expenditures for agricultural research and extension implications of underfunding significant increases in agricultural productivity will be needed for the united states to meet its future food policy goals related to an abundant and stable food supply the nation s ability to meet this challenge will depend on the level of investment in agricultural research and extension each dollar of underfunding relative to the economically efficient level of research and extension expenditures a will cost the government 2 56 1 50 discounted if it later makes up for the low investment level or b will cost consumers 4 39 3 07 discounted if the government does not make up for the low level of investment

densification what does it mean for fuel poverty and energy justice an empirical analysis energy is increasingly at the forefront of the global political agenda while there is a longstanding literature relating to fuel poverty and increasingly energy justice there remains little evidence which explores its link with the urban form specifically the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the urban consolidation hypothesis and the cultivation of energy justice in australia this study uses data from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey years 2007 2014 a national probability sample and indefinite life panel the substantive findings of this study demonstrate that for low income and renting households greater urban density corresponds to a higher likelihood of experiencing fuel poverty further for households with a dwelling type described as an apartment two or three storeys there is a separate and quite generalisable indication that this type of dwelling is associated with a lower likelihood of experiencing fuel poverty this study connects the debate regarding urban consolidation and energy consumption to the fuel poverty and energy justice literature alongside this contribution this study also provides policymakers and planners with new evidence to inform remediation policies that are directed at supporting the fuel poor

not irrational but habitual the importance of behavioural lock in in energy consumption abstract a substantial body of literature has shown that our behaviour is often guided by habits the existence of habits not fully conscious forms of behaviour is important as it contradicts rational choice theory their presence thus calls for the setting of new instruments as they make it unlikely that consumers be capable of exercising control over their energy consumption in reaction to given incentives this is further increased in the evolutionary perspective where the current carbon based socio technical system constrains and shapes consumers choices through structural forces habits being potentially counterintentional they may explain the efficiency paradox in energy as well as the continued increase of energy consumption despite the rising environmental awareness among the population policies aiming at reducing energy consumption should thus specifically address the performance context of habits for instance targeting new residents has proven to be more effective given that their preceding habits have been disturbed the results of our empirical analysis confirm this idea by showing how a change of context makes people more receptive to a proposed measure our analysis of the role played by habits also suggests that individuals do not consider the need to change existing habits as an obstacle even though this is contradicted implicitly in the answers they provided to open questions this unconsciousness is one of the most delicate features of habits and it should thus be accounted for when designing measures given the other characteristics of habits the joint use of feedbacks and commitment strategies appears promising

who emits most associations between socio economic factors and uk households home energy transport indirect and total co2 emissions abstract does the association between household characteristics and household co2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy transport and indirect emissions this question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others so far this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household co2 emissions using a representative uk expenditure survey this paper compares how household characteristics like income household size education gender worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions we find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains in particular whilst all types of emissions rise with income low income workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions this demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains

modeling household energy expenditure in the united states abstract energy consumption is one of the main source of air pollution greenhouse gas emission and global warming reducing household energy consumption is a key goal of policymakers we develop statistical models using socio economics and demographics building characteristics location temperature and energy prices to estimate household energy expenditure in the u s we use household energy expenditure for more than 560 000 households in the u s from 2010 to 2012 we first employ multivariate regression models to investigate and identify the impacts of the explanatory variables on household energy expenditure next we use principal component analysis pca to convert correlated co linear explanatory variables into orthogonal components and estimate household energy expenditure by principal component regression we find newer attached buildings to be effective in decreasing household energy expenditure particularly among educated people in metropolitan areas with sufficient data availability our model could be used by state regional or even city level policymakers and planners to optimize their infrastructural investments

how do patent laws influence innovation evidence from nineteenth century world fairs studies of innovation have focused on the effects of patent laws on the number of innovations but have ignored effects on the direction of technological change this paper introduces a new dataset of close to fifteen thousand innovations at the crystal palace world s fair in 1851 and at the centennial exhibition in 1876 to examine the effects of patent laws on the direction of innovation the paper tests the following argument if innovative activity is motivated by expected profits and if the effectiveness of patent protection varies across industries then innovation in countries without patent laws should focus on industries where alternative mechanisms to protect intellectual property are effective analyses of exhibition data for 12 countries in 1851 and 10 countries in 1876 indicate that inventors in countries without patent laws focused on a small set of industries where patents were less important while innovation in countries with patent laws appears to be much more diversified these findings suggest that patents help to determine the direction of technical change and that the adoption of patent laws in countries without such laws may alter existing patterns of comparative advantage across countries jel d2 k11 l51 no 014

carbon tax incidence on household demand effects on welfare income inequality and poverty incidence in thailand abstract studying the impact of a carbon tax on household demand can be relevant in terms of securing public acceptance of a carbon tax and clarifying the implications for policy design this paper aims to fill a gap in the academic literature by simulating carbon tax scenarios and estimating distributional effects of the tax on household welfare income inequality and poverty rates based on household consumption in thailand the study employs a microsimulation model incorporating the economy wide effects of the tax on prices and consumers behavioral responses to changes in prices the results indicate that a carbon tax is progressive in thailand under revenue recycling scenarios by expanding social transfer programs when carbon tax revenues are recycled through pensions for elderly people the carbon tax could reduce the poverty rate and improve the welfare of households in the lowest quintile the results imply that the distributional impacts of environmental taxes could result in favorable outcomes for income inequality and poverty reduction in developing countries

generation capacity expansion in a risky environment a stochastic equilibrium analysis we cast models of the generation capacity expansion type formally developed for the monopoly regime into equilibrium models better adapted for a competitive environment we focus on some of the risks faced today by investors in generation capacity and thus pose the problem as a stochastic equilibrium model we illustrate the approach on the problem of the incentive to invest agents can be risk neutral or risk averse we model risk aversion through the cvar of plants profit the cvar induces risk adjusted probabilities according to which investors value their plants the model is formulated as a complementarity problem including the cvar valuation of investments an illustration is provided on a small problem that captures several features of today s electricity world a choice often restricted to coal and gas units a peaky load curve because of wind penetration uncertain fuel prices and an evolving carbon market we assess the potential of the approach by comparing energy only and capacity market organizations in this risky environment our results can be summarized as follows a deterministic analysis overlooks some changes of capacity structure induced by risk whether in the capacity market or energy only organizations the risk neutral analysis also misses a shift towards less capital intensive technologies that may result from risk aversion last risk aversion also increases the shortage of capacity compared to the risk neutral view in the energy only market when the price cap is low this may have a dramatic impact on the bill to the final consumer the approach relies on mathematical programming techniques and can be extended to full size problems the results are illustrative and may deserve more investigation

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in great britain in great britain several policy measures have been implemented in order to increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions in the domestic sector this could for example be achieved by improving space heating efficiency and thus decreasing heating expenditure however in order to efficiently design and implement such policy measures a better understanding of the determinants affecting heating expenditure is needed in this paper we examine the following determinants socio economic factors building characteristics heating technologies and weather conditions in contrast to most other studies we use panel data to investigate household demand for heating in great britain our data sample is the result of an annual set of interviews with more than 5000 households starting in 1991 and ending in 2005 the sample represents a total of 64 000 observations over the fifteen year period our aim is to derive price and income elasticities both for britain as a whole and for different types of household our results suggest that differences exist between owner occupied and renter households these households react differently to changes in income and prices our results also imply that a number of socio economic criteria have a significant influence on heating expenditure independently of the fuel used for heating understanding the impacts of different factors on heating expenditure and impact differences between types of household is helpful in designing target oriented policy measures

the ex post impact of an energy tax on household energy demand this paper presents an econometric study dealing with household demand for energy in the netherlands the main objective of the paper is to present an estimation of the actual impact of an already implemented energy tax introduced in the netherlands in 1996 the approach differs from the existing literature in that 1 it uses panel data for the same period in which the tax was introduced and 2 it estimates a demand function that controls for a large set of variables such as outside temperature type of house and of house insulation household cooking behavior and an extensive number of durable goods and electrical appliances the study concludes that in the short term the energy tax had a small but significant impact on energy consumption in the netherlands concretely the yearly average demand reduction was of 8 for electricity and 4 4 for gas additionally the influence of variables other than price and income on household energy demand is discussed using this information the impact that the energy tax had on household energy use can be compared with the energy reduction that could have been achieved when using other policy instruments

what is the value of agricultural economics research the output of agricultural economics research is information much of it aimed at designing or improving institutions bayesian decision theory and economic surplus analysis have been suggested as possible approaches to evaluate that information this article takes a critical look at the strengths and weaknesses of combining those approaches for empirical evaluation of agricultural economics research it presents three case studies utilizing prior and posterior probabilities elicited from key decision makers direct application of the probabilities to a simple set of states and actions is best suited to situations involving a single policy making center or a consensus decision making process most economists feel their work has value but few can say how much economists have made significant contributions to our understanding of the value of technology oriented research but have devoted little attention to assessing the benefits of social science research ssr including agricultural economics research aer as accountability concerns have increased federal and state officials increasingly ask for evidence of research impacts many professional associations in the production sciences have drawn on quantitative estimates provided by economists to bolster their claims that research in their areas is a good investment social sciences make do with anecdotal evidence a nascent literature on evaluating social science research including agricultural economics includes studies by gardner

interactions between the power and green certificate markets abstract the current trend of liberalising the power markets is combined with ambitious deployment plans for power production based on renewable energy supplies a new policy scheme to ensure this extension has been developed in the form of a green certificate system with a politically determined target of deployment in such a system producers of renewably based electricity receive tradable certificates in proportion to the electricity they produce the producer can thereby sell these certificates and receive additional revenue apart from the power price this paper studies the price and consumption effects of such a system with a simple model we show that the effects are ambiguous this ambiguity is caused by the interaction between the two markets therefore the green certificate system is difficult to manage if the state has parallel energy targets such as a desired deployment of renewably based energy and a stabilisation or reduction of the energy consumption in addition this complicates the regulation through a deployment target of renewably based power production as the regulator has to be aware of the different effects which follow a specific target until now these effects have not been considered in the analyses of the green certificate system when introducing the system even though it might have considerable consequences for the success of the system

what is behind the recent surge in patenting abstract we investigate the cause of an unprecedented surge of us patenting over the past decade conventional wisdom points to the establishment of the court of appeals of the federal circuit by congress in 1982 we examine whether this institutional change which has benefited patent holders explains the burst in us patenting using both international and domestic data on patent applications and awards we conclude that the evidence is not favorable to the conventional view instead it appears that the jump in patenting reflects an increase in us innovation spurred by changes in the management of research

re examining the reported rates of return to food and agricultural research and development reply hurley rao and pardey 2014 analytically and empirically evaluate the internal rate of return irr vis a vis the modified internal rate of return mirr for investments in agricultural research and development r d they find that estimates of the irr are 2 5 to 5 times larger than the mirr for a wide range of assumptions leading them to question the value of the irr as a metric to represent the rate of return to agricultural r d oehmke 2016 defends the irr by arguing that it has important properties that the mirr does not possess in this article we critically examine these properties demonstrating that some are not inherent to the mirr for other properties we simply disagree with oehmke s assessment of their desirability therefore we are not compelled to change our original recommendation

what percentage of innovations are patented empirical estimates for european firms abstract a 1993 survey on the innovative activities of europe s largest industrial firms obtained useable results on patenting activities for 604 respondents the data are used to calculate the sales weighted propensity rates for 19 industries the propensity rates equal the percentage of innovations for which a patent application is made the propensity rates for product innovations average 35 9 varying between 8 1 in textiles and 79 2 in pharmaceuticals the average for process innovations is 24 8 varying from 8 1 in textiles to 46 8 for precision instruments only four sectors have patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations combined that exceed 50 pharmaceuticals chemicals machinery and precision instruments regression results that control for the effect of industry sector show that patent propensity rates increase with firm size and are higher among firms that find patents to be an important method for preventing competitors from copying both product and process innovations the effect of secrecy is not so straightforward firms that find secrecy to be an important protection method for product innovations are less likely to patent as expected but secrecy has little effect on the propensity to patent process innovations the r d intensity of the firm has no effect on patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations the sector of activity has a strong influence on product patent propensities but very little effect on process patent propensities after controlling for the effect of other factors

academic patent quality and quantity before and after the bayh dole act in the united states abstract this paper summarizes the results of empirical analyses of data on the characteristics of the pre and post 1980 patents of three leading us academic patenters the university of california stanford university and columbia university we complement the analysis of these institutions with an analysis of the characteristics of the patents issued to all us universities before and after 1980 our analysis suggests that the effects of the bayh dole act on the content of academic research and patenting at stanford and the university of california were modest the most significant change in the content of research at these universities one associated with increased patenting and licensing at both universities before and after 1980 was the rise of biomedical research and inventive activity but bayh dole had little to do with this growth both uc and stanford university administrators intensified their efforts to market faculty inventions in the wake of bayh dole this enlargement of the pool of marketed inventions appears to have reduced the commercial yield of this population at both universities but we find no decline in the importance or generality of the post 1980 patents of these two universities the analysis of overall us university patenting suggests that the patents issued to institutions that entered into patenting and licensing after the effective date of the bayh dole act are indeed less important and less general than the patents issued before and after 1980 to us universities with longer experience in patenting inexperienced academic patenters appear to have obtained patents that proved to be less significant in terms of the rate and breadth of their subsequent citations than those issuing to more experienced university patenters bayh dole s effects on entry therefore may be as important as any effects of the act on the internal research culture of us universities in explaining any decline in the importance and generality of us academic patents after 1980

exclusionary manipulation of markets for pollution rights abstract strategic price manipulation can affect the distribution of transferable pollution rights across polluters and the efficiency of pollution control efforts prior research has concentrated on market manipulation by firms seeking only to minimize the sum of pollution rights costs and pollution abatement costs in this paper we explore the potential for the exclusionary manipulation of pollution permit markets intended to drive up the costs of one s rivals and we distinguish between the resource allocation effects of exclusionary manipulation and cost minimizing manipulation we find that exclusionary manipulation can sometimes worsen and sometimes ameliorate the abatement inefficiency which occurs under cost minimizing manipulation and that an overbuying rule can obviate or at least limit damages from this form of strategic behavior

redefining recs part 1 untangling attributes and offsets abstract renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions markets are currently in a state of confusion regarding the treatment of renewable energy certificates recs should consumers buy recs or emission offsets after examining this question the author concludes that recs are not equivalent to emission offset credits and as currently defined the retiring of a rec may have no impact on emissions from electric power generation consumers who purchase recs in voluntary green power markets are providing financial assistance to renewable generators in the form of a production subsidy generators that sell recs are not transferring emission reductions since they are unlikely to have ownership or the ability to quantify reductions using a commonly accepted standard more importantly recs currently sold in voluntary markets do not pass credible additionality tests and can at best be expected to have a market demand effect which will be less than the supply of recs on the market rec definitions that use the term environmental attributes or environmental benefits are almost universally ambiguous providing the mistaken impression that consumers are purchasing a good instead of subsidizing a public good

evaluating the dynamic performance of energy portfolios empirical evidence from the dea directional distance function abstract in recent years the complex global energy commodity market has led to increased uncertainty for energy investment returns and tremendous challenges for investors to design appropriate energy portfolios therefore we employ four popular portfolio methods to determine energy portfolios based on daily fossil fuel futures prices during 2006 2015 moreover we use the dea window analysis method and dea directional distance function to comprehensively evaluate the dynamic performance of these energy portfolios based on the efficiency perspective the empirical results indicate that first to increase investment returns the mean variance method that exclusively emphasizes the maximization of returns shows the best performance however in order to decrease the volatility and risk of investment returns the mean variance method that aims to resist risk more than make profits and the bootstrap historical simulation value at risk var method have the best performance second when the global financial crisis broke out in the second half of 2008 and energy markets experienced a sharp downturn in the second half of 2014 the dea efficiency of energy portfolios appeared relatively lower than those of their neighboring periods regardless of which portfolio method is employed finally the average dea efficiencies of energy portfolios are all higher than those of single energy investment throughout the sample period except when the equally weighted method and the information entropy comprehensive index method are used meanwhile the mean variance method that prefers profit making to risk resisting possesses the highest average dea efficiency among various methods concerned

assessment of the cost associated with wind generation prediction errors in a liberalized electricity market in this paper a probabilistic methodology for estimating the energy costs in the market for wind generators associated with wind prediction errors is proposed generators must buy or sell energy production deviations due to prediction errors when they bid in day ahead or hour ahead energy markets the prediction error is modeled through a probability density function that represents the accuracy of the prediction model production hourly energy deviations and their associated trading costs are then calculated three study cases based on real wind power installations in spain are analyzed the three study cases show that the error prediction costs can reach as much as 10 of the total generator energy incomes

implications of the eu emissions trading system for the south east europe regional electricity market as part of its climate policy the european union eu aims to reduce greenhouse gas ghg emissions levels by 20 by the year 2020 compared to 1990 levels although the eu is projected to reach this goal its achievement of objectives under its emissions trading system ets may be delayed by carbon leakage which is defined as a situation in which the reduction in emissions in the ets region is partially offset by an increase in carbon emissions in the non ets regions we study the interaction between emissions and hydropower availability in order to estimate the magnitude of carbon leakage in the south east europe regional electricity market see rem via a bottom up partial equilibrium framework we find that 6 3 to 40 5 of the emissions reduction achieved in the ets part of see rem could be leaked to the non ets part depending on the price of allowances somewhat surprisingly greater hydropower availability may increase emissions in the ets part of see rem however carbon leakage might be limited by demand response to higher electricity prices in the non ets area of see rem such carbon leakage can affect both the competitiveness of producers in ets member countries on the periphery of the ets and the achievement of eu targets for co2 emissions reduction meanwhile higher non ets electricity prices imply that the current policy can have undesirable outcomes for consumers in non ets countries while non ets producers would experience an increase in their profits due to higher power prices as well as exports the presence of carbon leakage in see rem suggests that current eu policy might become more effective when it is expanded to cover more countries in the future

innovation without patents evidence from world s fairs abstractthis paper introduces a unique historical data set of more than 8 000 british and american innovations at world s fairs between 1851 and 1915 to explore the relationship between patents and innovations the data indicate that the majority of innovations 89 percent of british exhibits in 1851 were not patented comparisons across british and u s data also show that patenting decisions were unresponsive to differences in patent laws cross sectional evidence suggests that high quality and urban exhibits were more likely to be patented the most significant differences however occurred across industries inventors were most likely to use patents in industries in which innovations are easy to reverse engineer and secrecy is ineffective relative to patents in the late nineteenth century scientific breakthroughs including the publication of the periodic table reduced the effectiveness of secrecy in the chemical industry difference in differences regressions suggest that this change resulted in a

aiming low and achieving it a long term analysis of a renewable policy in chile abstract we use an integrated resource planning model to assess the costs of meeting a 70 renewables target by 2050 in chile this model is equivalent to a long term equilibrium in electricity and renewable energy certificate rec markets under perfect competition we consider different scenarios of demand growth resource eligibility e g large hydropower and transmission system configuration our numerical results indicate that the sole characteristics of the available renewable resources in the country and reductions in technology costs will provide sufficient economic incentives for private investors to supply a fraction of renewables larger than 70 for a broad range of scenarios meaning that the proposed target will likely remain a symbolic government effort increasing transmission capacity between the northern and central interconnected systems could reduce total system cost by 400 million per year and increase the equilibrium share of nonconventional renewable energy ncre in the system from 45 to 52 without the need for any additional policy incentive surprisingly imposing a 70 of ncre by 2050 results in a rec price lower than the noncompliance fine used for the current target of 20 of ncre by 2025 the latter of which represents the country s maximum willingness to pay for the attributes of electricity supplied from ncre resources

market power and transferable property rights the appeal of using markets as a means of allocating scarce resources stems in large part from the assumption that a market will approximate the competitive ideal when competition is not a foregone conclusion the question naturally arises as to how a firm might manipulate the market to its own advantage this paper analyzes the issue of market power in the context of markets for transferable property rights first a model is developed that explains how a single firm with market power might exercise its influence this is followed by an examination of the model in the context of a particular policy problem the control of particulate sulfates in the los angeles region

residential energy demand in the united states analysis using static and dynamic approaches abstract the residential sector is the main consumer of energy in the united states and reducing energy consumption is an important goal for policymakers in each state to know how reducing residential energy demand could be achieved this study develops a set of static and dynamic models to investigate and identify the impact of socio economic and demographic characteristics building age energy prices and weather conditions on residential energy demand at the state level from 2005 to 2013 next this study proposes two alternative scenarios to reduce residential energy demand based on the most precise model for every 10 000 dollars of per capita income in each state 1 increasing residential electricity price by 1 cent per kw h and 2 decreasing average building age by 1 in the first scenario the findings indicate that annual residential electricity demand would decrease by 7 3 on average with the highest reductions in washington 11 9 north dakota 10 9 and idaho 9 7 in the second scenario residential gas demand would decrease by an average of 15 8 annually with the highest reduction in connecticut 33 2 followed by new york 33 0 and massachusetts 30 7 these proposed scenarios assist policymakers in optimizing decisions and investments to reduce residential energy consumption

the patent paradox revisited an empirical study of patenting in the u s semiconductor industry 1979 1995 we examine the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation recent survey evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents to appropriate returns to r d yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically since the mid1980s we explore this apparent paradox by conducting interviews with industry representatives and analyzing the patenting behavior of 95 u s semiconductor firms during 1979 1995 the results suggest that the 1980s strengthening of u s patent rights spawned patent portfolio races among capital intensive firms but it also facilitated entry by specialized design firms

who rebounds most estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for different uk socioeconomic groups this study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from various types of energy efficiency improvement and behavioural change by uk households and explores how these effects vary with total expenditure the methodology is based upon estimates of the expenditure elasticity and ghg intensity of 16 categories of goods and services and allows for the capital cost and embodied emissions of the energy efficiency measures themselves the study finds that rebound effects in ghg terms are modest 0 32 for measures affecting domestic energy use larger 25 65 for measures affecting vehicle fuel use and very large 66 106 for measures that reduce food waste furthermore measures undertaken by low income households are associated with the largest rebound effects with direct emissions forming a larger proportion of the total rebound effect for those households measures that are subsidised or affect highly taxed energy commodities may be less effective in reducing aggregate emissions these findings highlight the importance of allowing for rebound effects within policy appraisals as well as reinforcing the case for economy wide carbon pricing

when renewable portfolio standards meet cap and trade regulations in the electricity sector market interactions profits implications and policy redundancy emission trading programs c t and renewable portfolio standards rps are two common tools used by policymakers to control ghg emissions in the energy and other energy intensive sectors little is known however as to the policy implications resulting from these concurrent regulations especially given that their underlying policy goals and regulatory schemes are distinct this paper applies both an analytical model and a computational model to examine the short run implications of market interactions and policy redundancy the analytical model is used to generate contestable hypotheses while the numerical model is applied to consider more realistic market conditions we have two central findings first lowering the co2 c t cap might penalize renewable units and increasing the rps level could sometimes benefit coal and oil and make natural gas units worse off second making one policy more stringent would weaken the market incentive which the other policy relies upon to attain its intended policy target

a penny for your quotes patent citations and the value of innovations the use ofpatents in economic research has been seriously hindered by the fact that patents vary enormously in their importance or value and hence simple patent counts cannot be informative about innovative output the purpose of this article is to put forward patent counts weighted by citations as indicators of the value of innovations thereby overcoming the limitations of simple counts the empirical analysis of a particular innovation computed tomography scanners indeed shows a close association between citation based patent indices and independent measures of the social value of innovations in that field moreover the weighting scheme appears to be nonlinear increasing in the number of citations implying that the informational content of citations rises at the margin as in previous studies simple patent counts are found to be highly correlated with contemporaneous rd however here the association is within afield over time rather than cross sectional

when outcomes are the reflection of the analysis criteria a review of the tradable green certificate assessments abstract the tradable green certificates tgc framework is a prevalent policy support scheme enacted to stimulate investments in electricity from renewable energy sources res e in several countries including sweden and norway the tgc framework is currently under reevaluation in this process academic literature plays a crucial role in reflecting the outcomes of this policy framework the outcomes however are often limited by the analysis criteria which reflect what has been accounted for or disregarded when assessing the performance of the tgc framework the analysis criteria also stress what is considered as a successful outcome given the importance of such criteria this paper presents an extensive and systemic literature review of academic publications assessing the performance of the tgc framework the findings are to provide an overview of the publications analysis criteria and outline their outcomes we also provide descriptive statistics for the publications and examine the average citation record of the publications that use various analysis criteria in order to explore their relative impact on later studies these findings can help policymakers put the assessments into perspective when reevaluating a country s tgc system they also suggest several intriguing directions for future studies in this field

market power in renewable portfolio standards abstract renewable portfolio standard rps which requires a certain percentage of electricity production from renewables has received considerable attention one emerging issue is the possibility of strategic behavior in the renewable energy certificate credit rec market and its spillover effects on the electricity market this paper develops dominant firm competitive fringe models that account for market power we show that market power could have significant impacts on the rec and power prices in particular when a nonrenewable generator is a dominant firm and a renewable generator is a competitive fringe the nonrenewable firm has a strong incentive to lower the rec price even to zero for avoiding rec costs the zero rec price would negate price impacts in the power market thereby mitigating market power of the dominant firm however this could lead to an underinvestment in renewables in the long run as subsidies received by renewables in form of recs vanish therefore regulatory agencies need to carefully oversee the market performance to ensure a healthy development of renewable industries under the rps policies

poverty human development and growth an emerging consensus this paper considers several issues relevant to the debate on the extent to which poverty or development progress in general should be measured by income or by a broader set of objectives issues covered here are practical implications of the two approaches for poverty reduction efforts the impact of growth on basic social indicators and how national achievement on social indicators is best measured sri lanka and pakistan countries often cited in this debate are used as examples

sustainable transmission planning in imperfectly competitive electricity industries balancing economic and environmental outcomes abstract we explore the role of a transmission system operator tso that builds a transmission line to accommodate renewable energy in order to lower emissions as required by government policy in contrast to central planning a tso in a deregulated electricity industry can only indirectly influence outcomes through its choice of the transmission line capacity via a bi level model we show that this results in less transmission capacity and with limited emissions control in a perfectly competitive industry vis a vis a benchmark centrally planned system a carbon charge on industry that fully accounts for the cost of pollution damage leads to a perfect alignment of incentives and maximised social welfare only under perfect competition by contrast a carbon charge may actually lower social welfare under a cournot oligopoly as the resulting reduction in consumption facilitates the further exercise of market power

renewable generation expansion under different support schemes a stochastic equilibrium approach abstract following the deregulation of electricity markets a current challenge of policy makers is to facilitate the transition to a sustainable power system at the highest welfare for society in this paper we investigate the efficiency of different support schemes such as a feed in tariff a feed in premium and tradable green certificates with respect to incentivizing the required investments in renewable generation we consider a number of generation expansion problems and formulate stochastic equilibrium models that account for uncertainty in demand and renewable supply the risk aversion of investors and the competitiveness of the market the problem of the policy maker is formulated as a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints mpec and as a non linear complementarity problem ncp for the feed in schemes and the certificate market respectively our models are solved for a small illustrative example and a larger case study based on the danish power system the results confirm that the main driver for the optimal choice of renewable support scheme is the aversion of power producers towards price and volume risk while the competitiveness of the market rarely affects such choice

patent quality and research productivity measuring innovation with multiple indicators we analyse the determinants of the decline in research productivity using panel data on manufacturing firms in the us for the period 1980 93 we focus on three factors the level of demand the quality of patents and technological exhaustion we develop an index of patent quality using detailed patent information and show that using multiple indicators substantially reduces the measured variance in quality research productivity at the firm level is inversely related to patent quality and the level of demand as predicted by theory and patent quality is positively associated with the stock market value of firms

the impact of singapore s residential electricity conservation efforts and the way forward insights from the bounds testing approach abstract this article provides fresh empirical evidence of residential electricity demand in singapore over the period of 1980 2014 using the bounds testing procedure to cointegration the residential electricity demand comprises of income price temperature rainy days old age dependency and the impact of energy efficiency policies our results are consistent with previous studies where income and price elasticities are inelastic hence from a policy perspective subsidies will not be effective in reducing electricity demand we also found that old age dependency is an important determinant that reduces electricity consumption at least in the short run suggesting that policies that target the younger population may bring more savings the model findings suggest that in general energy efficiency interventions introduced after 2007 which comprises of both informational strategies and efficiency standards were effective in reducing household electricity consumption however in order to realise greater electricity reduction potential policy efforts have to intensify into the future with the main objectives being to permanently change energy habits and consider the role of hassle costs when rolling out energy saving measures

are prosumer households that much different evidence from stated residential energy consumption in germany abstract this paper discusses the effect of residential energy prosuming on households energy consumption behavior with the objective of finding evidence of a prosumer rebound effect on energy consumption prosuming is the partial self consumption of distributed energy production we hypothesize that prosumer households are systematically different from consumer households with regard to housing situation and socio economic characteristics we ensure an appropriate quasi randomized comparison by using propensity score matching as our identification strategy we employ data from a nationwide online survey among homeowners in germany while the data show a correlation between lower energy consumption and prosumer households we find no significant difference in energy consumption behavior between prosumers and non prosumers in a comparable sample with regard to socio economic and housing characteristics instead the lower energy consumption of prosumer households is attributed to more energy efficient technical equipment and thus to purchasing behavior our results do not show evidence of either negative or positive externalities of prosuming on residential energy consumption behavior and therefore we conclude that there is no need for additional governmental measures e g in the form of taxation or subsidies to address behavioral changes in energy prosuming