international direct real estate investment a review of the literature this paper provides a critical review of research on international direct real estate investment issues to date no review article has explored the various findings of studies completed on the benefits of international real estate diversification in the past 10 years the quantity and variety of work have increased dramatically the paper is organised by how investing in a real estate asset is analysed in a mixed asset portfolio context or a real estate only portfolio context a fourth section focuses on research that has explored currency risk one of the prevailing risks associated with international investing the last section provides conclusions about the research and offers ideas for future research in this growing area of real estate investment

statistical efficiency of double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the statistical efficiency of conventional dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys can be improved by asking each respondent a second dichotomous choice question which depends on the response to the first question if the first response is yes the second bid is some amount greater than the first bid while if the first response is no the second bid is some amount smaller this double bounded approach is shown to be asymptotically more efficient than the conventional singlebounded approach using data from a survey of californians regarding their willingness to pay for wetlands in the san joaquin valley we show that in a finite sample the gain in efficiency can be very substantial

optimal investment in learning curve technologies we study optimal investment in technologies characterized by the learning curve there are two investment patterns depending on the shape of the learning curve if the learning process is slow firms invest relatively late and on a larger scale if the curve is steep firms invest earlier and on a smaller scale we further demonstrate that learning investment differs greatly from investment in technologies without learning effects learning investments generate substantial initial losses and are very sensitive to downside risk we show that the most susceptible to losses and risk are technologies with intermediate speed of learning

valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments increasing the proportion of power derived from renewable energy sources is becoming an increasingly important part of many countries s strategies to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions however renewable energy investments can often have external costs and benefits which need to be taken into account if socially optimal investments are to be made this paper attempts to estimate the magnitude of these external costs and benefits for the case of renewable technologies in scotland a country which has set particularly ambitious targets for expanding renewable energy the external effects we consider are those on landscape quality wildlife and air quality we also consider the welfare implications of different investment strategies for employment and electricity prices the methodology used to do this is the choice experiment technique renewable technologies considered include hydro on shore and off shore wind power and biomass welfare changes for different combinations of impacts associated with different investment strategies are estimated we also test for differences in preferences towards these impacts between urban and rural communities and between high and low income households

can poor consumers pay for energy and water an affordability analysis for transition countries low income households spend a substantial share of their income on utility services such as electricity heating and water the difficulty of these socially vulnerable consumers to absorb further price increases is often used as an argument against tariff reform however detailed quantitative information on the affordability of tariff adjustments for low income consumers is actually quite scarce much of the available information is based on households this paper takes a more detailed look at the affordability of electricity district heating and water for low income consumers in transition countries while the available data are incomplete the paper finds that affordability is a problem for low income consumers in most countries in particular in the water sector and in the commonwealth of independent states cis the affordability consequences of tariff reform ultimately depend on the speed of tariff adjustments relative to the growth in household income the level of tariffs needed for cost recovery the level of effective tariffs at the outset tariffs adjusted for non payment and the demand response to the tariff increase the paper finds that delaying tariff reform by a few years makes little difference to affordability constraints and may therefore not be an effective way to mitigate the social impact of utility reform

electricity outages in ghana are contingent valuation estimates valid african countries experience persistent and serious energy outages but while multiple valuation studies provide estimates of the costs of electricity outages in high income countries evidence is scarce for lower and middle income countries the few studies that assess the value of reliable energy supply rely on the contingent valuation method that is under wide scrutiny this paper aims to provide new estimates of households willingness to pay to reduce electricity outages for ghana and contributes to the debate on the validity of contingent valuation results for energy reliability our results suggest that households are willing to pay ghs 67 17 per month for reliable electricity supply equivalent to 7 of respondents income the results of tests for hypothetical bias wtp wta disparity and income effects suggest that the contingent valuation estimates from this study are robust and can support decision makers in prioritizing energy policies and investments

egyptian consumers willingness to pay for carbon labeled products a contingent valuation analysis of socio economic factors abstract carbon emissions from products contribute to anthropogenic climate change because of the growing concern over the environmental impact of production and consumption of consumer goods carbon footprint information started to appear on labels of several products in this paper we use both parametric and non parametric econometric models in order to estimate egyptian consumers willingness to pay wtp for carbon labeled products contingent valuation methods based on log logistic log normal and weibull regression models revealed that consumers in egypt are willing to pay a price premium of approximately 75 egyptian pounds ep for carbon labeled products based on the single bound dichotomous choice sbdc model and up to 90 ep based on the double bound dichotomous choice dbdc model from a socio economic perspective results have also revealed that income age gender and educational level have a significant influence on the respondent s wtp implications of this study highlight the fact that understanding consumers preferences for eco friendly products may play an important role in formulating environmental policy changes to face complex problems as diverse as environmental pollution or global climate change

estimation using contingent valuation data from a dichotomous choice with follow up questionnaire reply abstract our original article proposed that the two yes no willingness to pay wtp responses produced by this survey format should be viewed as a pair of jointly distributed correlated discrete random variables the comparison model the conventional approach to estimation using these types of data contained a programming error correction alters the results from the comparison model but our original claim that estimation by conventional methods can produce misleading inferences if ours is the appropriate specification still stands this is especially true if negative wtp is precluded when e wtp is calculated

the learning curve and the yield factor the case of korea s semiconductor industry this article attempts to find out how the korean economy has grown so rapidly in a short time span of less than 30 years for that purpose it focuses on the development of the korean semiconductor industry more specifically the memory chip segment of the industry as a case in point to test the hypothesis that the learning curve effects have been significant in the memory chip industry yield factor the ratio of sellable chips to total chips in a wafer in semiconductor production is used as a measure of the learning progression that is by tracing how the yield factor for each generation of memory chips has increased one is able to see how well the korean chip makers have exploited the learning effects this article improves the learning by doing modelling by introducing a richer set of yield data and the unit of analysis employed throughout the article is at the firm level which is not common in the literature dealing with east asian development as well as the economics of technology thus enha

evaluating the public perceptions of nuclear power in china evidence from a contingent valuation survey national natural science foundation of china 71303199 71373218 ministry of education foundation of china 13yjc790123 11jbgp006 13jzd010 fundamental research funds for the central universities 201122g008 2014221001 national social science foundation of china 13zd167

does international diversification work better for real estate than for stocks and bonds international diversification is now an established fact for stock and bond portfolios for real estate shares however this acceptance has so far not been the case this study is an investigation of the effectiveness of international real estate diversification relative to international diversification of stock and bond portfolios tests of international correlation matrixes of real estate returns common stock returns and bond returns indicate significantly lower correlations between national real estate returns than between common stock or bond returns the implication is that international diversification reduces the risk of a real estate portfolio more than that of common stock and bond portfolios

the yield factor and the learning curve in semiconductor production the role of the yield factor and the learning curve is estimated at the firm level the estimated learning curves for the different generations of semiconductor memory chips are clustered around the 72 per cent type the results are consistent with the persistence of leadership hypothesis an incumbent firm has an advantage over a new entrant in adopting a new technology because it can move quicker down the learning curve

the competitiveness of the uk aerospace industry porter s five competitive forces model provides an analytical framework for assessing the uk aerospace industry s competitiveness in this article various statistical indicators are used to measure competitiveness based on published data at the industry and firm level supplemented with information from company interviews the indicators include productivity output firm size development time scales labour hoarding exports and profitability the empirical results of this article suggest that over the period 1980 to 2000 the uk aerospace industry improved its competitiveness compared with the usa and the eu

electricity planning and implementation in sub saharan africa a systematic review abstract universal electricity access is an important development objective and the focus of a number of key global un initiatives while robust electricity planning is widely believed to be a prerequisite for effective electrification to date no comprehensive overview of electricity planning research has been undertaken on sub saharan africa the world region with the lowest access rates this paper reviews quantitative and qualitative electricity planning and related implementation research considering each of the 49 sub saharan african countries the four regional power pools and the sub continent as a whole applying a broad understanding of electricity planning and a practical limit of 20 reviewed articles per country and region 306 relevant peer reviewed journal articles are included in this review a general classification scheme is introduced that classifies the planning literature along the addressed value chain depth number of different analysed criteria and number of evaluated decision alternatives the literature is found to be strongly clustered in a few countries with less than 5 identified relevant articles in 36 of the 49 countries the total amount of articles per year is clearly increasing over time addressing technology choice operation distribution and implementation analyses although including different high level criteria in analysing electricity systems is common the literature is only starting to use formalised multi criteria decision making mcdm tools the review indicates that 63 of relevant articles favour renewable energy technologies for their given problems frequently mentioned success factors for electrification in sub saharan africa include adequate policy design sufficient finance and favourable political conditions while considerable regional and methodological literature gaps are apparent the literature in this review identifies a rich and fruitful ground for future research to fill these gaps

optimal temporal product introduction strategies under valuation changes and learning consider a firm facing two consumer segments with differing valuations for quality the demand is stationary and known and consumers make repeat purchase over two time periods however once a premium product is introduced the valuations of the consumers change in the next period the firm derives a cost savings due to learning effect in the second period the magnitude of which depends on the sales volume in the first period under such a situation should a firm introduce a premium product before a basic product or the vice versa should it introduce two products simultaneously when should a firm expand or consolidate its product line what is the optimal product introduction strategy for a firm using a two period stylized model we seek to answer these questions we characterize the optimal product introduction strategy for the firm we describe three easily calculable parameters that govern the optimal choice of the firm the conditions under which a firm should expand or consolidate its product line are discussed we study the effects of cost savings and customer valuation changes we show that the dominated product strategies in absence of these effects can be a part of an optimal product strategy of a firm under valuation changes and cost savings the managerial implications of the model are discussed

the economics of predation what drives pricing when there is learning by doing predatory pricing a deliberate strategy of pricing aggressively in order to eliminate competitors is one of the more contentious areas of antitrust policy and its existence and efficacy are widely debated the purpose of this paper is to formally characterize predatory pricing in a modern industry dynamics framework that endogenizes competitive advantage and industry structure our framework encompasses important phenomena such as learning by doing network effects switching costs dynamic demand and certain types of adjustment costs due to its prominent role in legal cases involving alleged predation we examine learning by doing in more detail we first show that predation like behavior arises routinely in our learning by doing model equilibria involving predation like behavior typically coexist with equilibria involving much less aggressive pricing to disentangle predatory pricing from mere competition for efficiency on a learning curve we next decompose the equilibrium pricing condition and develop alternative characterizations of a firm s predatory pricing incentives we finally measure the impact of these incentives on industry structure conduct and performance we show that forcing a firm to ignore the predatory incentives in setting its price can have a large impact and that this impact stems from eliminating equilibria with predation like behavior along with the predation like behavior however a fair amount of competition for the market is eliminated

analyzing public preferences and increasing acceptability for the renewable portfolio standard in korea abstract in order to respond to the challenge of climate change similar to other countries korea has announced various policies to vitalize the development and uptake of renewable energy the renewable portfolio standard rps is the most striking example of a policy in this area this study employs a conjoint survey and bayesian mixed logit model to analyze consumer preferences for specific attributes of the rps policy it analyzes households marginal willingness to pay mwtp for the rps with specific attributes and simulates the degree of household acceptability of the policy through a scenario analysis comparison between costs and benefits of implementing the policy is also attempted by analyzing the households mwtp with the actual transition expense of rps implementation incurred by electricity supply companies the simulation results provide implications for improving rps policy implementation households consider the creation of new jobs as the most important policy attribute followed by increase in electricity prices damage to forests reduction in co 2 emissions and length of power outages moreover the korean household is willing to accept an increase of up to 1 39 in its electricity prices relative to 2012 and the median mwtp of each household for rps implementation is krw 734 99 month usd 0 67 month

testing for the presence of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors in energy system dynamics an analysis via the learning curve approach the purpose of this paper is to explain the sources of energy system lock in it presents a comparative analysis of the respective contributions of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors i e learning by doing learning by searching and returns to scale effects in explaining the technological change dynamics in the energy system the paper is technically based on a critical analysis of the learning curve approach econometric estimation of learning and scale effects inherent to seven energy technologies were performed by the use of several learning curve specifications these specifications permit to deal with some crucial issues related to the learning curve estimation which are associated with the problem of omitted variable bias the endogeneity effects and the choice of learning indicators results show that dynamic economies from learning effects coupled with static economies from scale effects are responsible for the lock in phenomena of the energy system they also show that the magnitude of such effects is correlated with the technology life cycle maturity in particular results point out that 1 the emerging technologies exhibit low learning rates associated with diseconomies of scale which are argued to be symptomatic of the outset of the deployment of new technologies characterized by diffusion barriers and high level of uncertainty 2 the evolving technologies present rather high learning rates meaning that they respond quickly to capacity expansion and r d activities development 3 conventional mature technologies display low learning rates but increasing returns to scale implying that they are characterized by a limited additional diffusion prospects

the korean public s willingness to pay for expanding the use of solid refuse fuel abstract solid refuse fuel srf a solid fuel that is produced from non hazardous combustible waste can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions compared with fossil fuels the korean government plans to enhance the ratio of combustible waste converted into srf from 16 in 2014 to 100 in 2020 by increasing the number of facilities that make and use srf this paper attempts to investigate empirically the korean public s willingness to pay wtp for expanding the use of srf the wtp data were obtained from a one and one half bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey of 1000 households because a considerable number of respondents 62 6 gave a zero wtp response we applied a spike model to treat the wtp data with zero observations the spike model fitted the data well considering that all the coefficient estimates are statistically significant at the 1 level the yearly mean wtp was computed as krw 2479 usd 2 17 per household for the next 10 years which is also statistically meaningful at the 1 level expanding the value to the national population gives us krw 46 4 billion usd 40 5 million per year the present value of the total public wtp amounts to krw 369 0 billion usd 322 3 million using a social discount rate of 5 5 we can conclude that korean households are ready to shoulder some of the financial burden to expand the use of srf

commercial real estate prices and stock market returns an international analysis the movement toward globalization of institutional investments requires an understanding of the historical relationship between international commercial real estate price changes and stock returns previous studies have focused on the time series of stock and real estate returns using data from a single country by necessity these studies examined returns and price changes over short intervals creating a bias when property values are smoothed from year to year this study examines the relation between stock returns and changes in property values and rents based on data from 17 countries although we find no relation between real estate values and rents and stock returns in the united states we find significant relations in a number of other countries when the data are pooled the relation between stock returns and both value changes and changes in rental rates is very strong

household willingness to pay for green electricity in urban and peri urban tigray northern ethiopia determinants and welfare effects abstract this paper set out to estimate household willingness to pay for green electric services and welfare gains attributed to such schemes for this purpose contingent valuation survey was conducted on 300 urban and peri urban households in northern ethiopia a bivariate probit model was used to elicit willingness to pay and analyze determinants of household willingness to pay on the other hand welfare gains were analyzed using consumer and producer surpluses the mean willingness to pay was estimated to be birr 12 5 0 66 usd per month per household for five years on top of monthly electricity bill among others income played positive role on willingness to pay while difference in willingness to pay behavior was observed between male and female headed households in addition distance to wood and charcoal alternative energy markets played encouraging role for willingness to pay results from the welfare analysis show that there is significant societal gain to be made both in terms of surplus for households and producers government if the previously untapped green electricity service was implemented the revenue producer surplus for the state would be instrumental in contributing to the state s endeavor to generate a much needed capital for investment in and expansion of renewable energy

forecasting the semiconductor industry cycles by bootstrap prediction intervals in recent years there has been a recognition that point forecasts of the semiconductor industry sales may often be of limited value there is substantial interest for a policy maker or an individual investor in knowing the degree of uncertainty that attaches to the point forecast before deciding whether to increase production of semiconductors or purchase a particular share from the semiconductor stock market in this article i first obtain the bootstrap prediction intervals of the global semiconductor industry cycles by a vector autoregressive var model using monthly us data consisting of four macroeconomic and seven industry level variables with 92 observations the 24 step ahead out of sample forecasts from various var setups are used for comparison the empirical result shows that the proposed 11 variable var model with the appropriate lag length captures the cyclical behaviour of the industry and outperforms other var models in terms of both point forecast and prediction interval

learning by doing organizational forgetting and industry dynamics learning by doing and organizational forgetting have been shown to be important in a variety of industrial settings this paper provides a general model of dynamic competition that accounts for these economic fundamentals and shows how they shape industry structure and dynamics previously obtained results regarding the dominance properties of flrms pricing behavior no longer hold in this more general setting we show that forgetting does not simply negate learning rather learning and forgetting are distinct economic forces in particular a model with learning and forgetting can give rise to aggressive pricing behavior market dominance and multiple equilibria whereas a model with learning alone cannot

managing learning resources for consecutive product generations abstract in this paper we study how a firm should allocate its learning resources when it is concurrently producing two consecutive generations of one product we define learning resources as scarce firm specific resources that a firm allocates towards the improvement of the cost quality or timeliness of its existing products and processes we use empirically tested models for demand substitution and learning curves to formulate this problem and we present our results as propositions with regard to the optimal time at which a firm should direct all its learning resources to the newer product generation depending on the substitution rate of the two product generations the learning rate and the level of cross learning results indicate that learning resources should be managed through a firm wide coordination process that will spread rather than concentrate learning resources not in static but in a dynamic way to ensure continued high returns from these learning resources

on the sources of technological change assessing the evidence this paper uses a selective review of the economic literature on technological change to support four points that are important for interpreting and incorporating technological change into formal models of energy and the environment the review 1 supports the notion that no single source dominates the process of technological change it supports roles for rd 3 indicates that these spillovers are often indirect requiring own industry activities to utilize and 4 indicates that simple experience curve calibrations often used in formal models likely include a range of sources of technological change in addition to learning by doing some of which might not be induced by the sorts of policies typically considered in the climate context

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

persistence of leadership in product innovation in a firm model of vertical product differentiation three distinct patterns of market shares emerge as an equilibrium outcome reflecting three distinct strategies in respect of timing of the introduction of new products the main novelty relative to the existing literature on vertical product differentiation lies in the incorporation of learning by doing this assumption generates stability of market share patterns over a sequence of product innovations copyright 1992 by blackwell publishing ltd

entry and learning this paper shows the difficulties associated with discerning the impact of learning and pressures of competitive entry on the price and cost of production in commodity markets it shows that the patterns of price and cost movements over time will be dramatically affected by the entry of new competitors if firms possess u shaped average cost curves entry alone can generate price and cost declines which look like learning induced reductions alternatively cost increases may occur even when learning is quite strong this research has dramatic managerial and empirical implications managers operating in highly competitive environments subject to rapid entry must put more emphasis on the role of their own day to day decisions in affecting cost the fact that costs have declined may have nothing to do with learning but may be driven by their reactions to competitive pressures investigators empirically estimating learning curves must also be cognizant of the role entry plays in affecting cost simple compa

using conjoint analysis to quantify public preferences over the environmental impacts of wind farms an example from spain this paper focuses on the effect on people s utility of the potential environmental impacts of wind farm developments we report on research designed to provide insight into their preferences and we show how two alternative choice modelling techniques can be used to estimate them our results show that significant social costs in the form of environmental impacts can be associated with wind farm developments as relative environmental values are revealed by these methods it would be possible to develop wind farms in such a way that minimises the total social costs of the investment and which maximises its net benefits

serial correlation and the fixed effects model this paper generalizes the durbin watson type statistics to test the ols residuals from the fixed effects model for serial independence also generalized are the tests proposed by sargan and bhargava for the hypothesis that the residuals form a random walk a method for efficient estimation of the parameters is also developed finally an earnings function is estimated using the michigan survey of income dynamics in order to illustrate the uses of the tests and the estimation procedures developed in this paper

land and stock prices in japan in late 1991 the total land value in japan was estimated at nearly 20 trillion this was more than 20 percent of the world s wealth or to put it in some other contexts about double the world s equity markets or half again as large as the world s bond markets japanese land was then valued at about five times that of the united states the land under the emperor s palace which is about three quarters of a square mile was estimated to be worth about the same as all the land in california or in canada real estate assets of japanese corporations grew by 2 8 trillion from 1986 to 1988 an increase in valuation roughly equal to the size of the japanese gross national product an equally dramatic rise in stock prices accompanied the rise in land prices at its peak in december 1989 the japanese stock market had a value of about 4 trillion which was about 44 percent of the world s equity market capitalization to put that figure in perspective the value of the equity on all the stock exchanges in the united states in august 1992 was less than 5 trillion but then from its peak in december 1989 to august 1992 the japanese stock market fell by over 60 percent various indices of speculative land values fell a similar amount meanwhile other land prices industrial commercial residential as measured by various indices fell 15 20 percent this paper discusses the rise of japanese stock and land prices in the past four decades and their dramatic decline in the early 1990s to what extent can

the learning curve in the production of semiconductor memory chips the relevance of the learning curve in the production of semiconductor memory chips is examined it is shown that the learning curve differs across quite similar products such as distinct types of memory chips on the other hand the learning curve does not show significant variation over successive generations of the same type of memory chip it is then shown thatthe interpretation given to the heterogeneity of learning by the effects across chip types and especially the importance of economies of scale is consistent with some stylized facts from the industry

testing dynamic oligopolistic interaction evidence from the semiconductor industry abstract the objective of this paper is to test whether firms in the dynamic random access memory dram industry take the intertemporal strategic effect of their contemporaneous output decision on their rivals future output decision into account or whether they precommit themselves to a production plan learning by doing and spillovers are present in this industry and introduce an intertemporal component to firms strategies a simplified version of jarmin s rand j econ 250 1994 441 dynamic oligopolistic model is applied to firm level data demand and pricing relations for five dram generations are estimated the empirical results show that firms behave strategically and price cost margins are likely overestimated in a precommitment specification

willingness to pay for renewable energy evidence from a contingent valuation survey in kenya a modern form of energy in particular electricity for household use is an important vehicle in alleviating poverty in developing countries however access and costs of connecting to this service for most poor in these countries is inconceivable policies promoting electricity connection in rural areas are known to be beneficial in improving the socio economic and health well being for households this paper examines willingness to pay wtp for rural electrification connection in kisumu district kenya using the contingent valuation method cvm a nonparametric and a parametric model are employed to estimate wtp values for two electricity products grid electricity ge and photovoltaic pv electricity the results indicate that respondents are willing to pay more for ge services than pv and households favoured monthly connection payments over a lump sum amount some of the policies suggested in this paper include subsidizing the connection costs for both sources of electricity adjusting the payment periods and restructuring the market ownership of providing rural electricity services

response bias in a conjoint analysis of power outages abstract a methodology is proposed for estimating status quo effects resistance to change and loss aversion willingness to pay is less than willingness to accept from consumer survey data conjoint data on israeli households attitudes to electricity outages reveal that both of these effects are pronounced and that they depend on the interviewees characteristics ordered conditional logit estimation indicates that while the estimates are rank sensitive the suggested methodology continues to be applicable finally the conjoint estimates are compared with those obtained by applying the method of contingent valuation

using contingent behavior analysis to measure benefits from rural electrification in developing countries an example from rwanda hundreds of millions of people in sub saharan africa do not have access to electricity and will not receive it from national grids in the next few decades electricity makes up an important component of rural development and so increasing access can have positive socioeconomic benefits in this study we use contingent behavior analysis to quantify the potential benefits of electricity in rural rwandan villages which currently do not have electricity the proposed method allows for calculation of net benefits as well as electricity bills we find that even relatively poor isolated households would pay for electricity though amounts vary across households and this affects the financial viability of electrification common uses for electricity include lighting battery charging and agricultural processing despite heterogeneity opportunities exist to improve rural economic welfare through increased electricity access

renewable based distributed generation in uganda resource potential and status of exploitation abstract uganda is gifted by nature with abundant energy resources mainly renewables which can potentially provide the country with sufficient capacity to meet future growth in energy demand surprisingly uganda has one of the lowest electricity penetration levels with only 9 12 of the total population having electricity access 2 3 of them living in rural communities there is multitude of challenges facing the energy sector of uganda forcing energy demand to always exceed the supply for decades hydropower has been and is still the base electricity supply of the country with a supplement of limited biomass diesel based thermal and solar electricity the objective of this paper is to review the potential and progress of renewable based distributed generation in uganda the potential of the country s natural renewable resources and existing distributed generation is described and existing government policies are assessed the challenges facing the energy sector and the suggested remedies are discussed various distributed generation systems that could be incorporated into the energy system of the country to improve renewable energy re utilization and possibly contribute to the electricity needs of the population are also proposed and discussed exploitation of abundant re resources through distributed energy generation around the region will not only improve the electricity needs of the country but also increase the economic welfare of the growing population

incorporating experience curves in appliance standards analysis the technical analyses in support of u s energy conservation standards for residential appliances and commercial equipment have typically assumed that manufacturing costs and retail prices remain constant during the projected 30 year analysis period there is however considerable evidence that this assumption does not reflect real market prices costs and prices generally fall in relation to cumulative production a phenomenon known as experience and modeled by a fairly robust empirical experience curve using price data from the bureau of labor statistics and shipment data obtained as part of the standards analysis process we present u s experience curves for room air conditioners clothes dryers central air conditioners furnaces and refrigerators and freezers these allow us to develop more representative appliance price projections than the assumption based approach of constant prices these experience curves were incorporated into recent energy conservation standards for these products the impact on the national modeling can be significant often increasing the net present value of potential standard levels in the analysis in some cases a previously cost negative potential standard level demonstrates a benefit when incorporating experience these results imply that past energy conservation standards analyses may have undervalued the economic benefits of potential standard levels

the learning curve and pricing in the chemical processing industries data on 37 chemical products are used to test a number of hypotheses about the learning curve and industrial price behavior the results document a strong and consistent learning effect learning is found to be a function of cumulated industry output and cumulated investment rather than calendar time standard economies of scale appear significant but small in magnitude relative to the learning effect variations in the slope of the learning curve are linked to differences in r d expenditures and capital intensity market concentration is found to be a strong influence on price flexibility and the timing of learningrelated price changes

renewable electricity as a differentiated good the case of the republic of korea this paper examines the willingness for korean consumers to pay a premium for renewable electricity under a differentiated good framework by applying the contingent valuation method korean consumers have been required to pay for their use of renewable electricity as of 2012 first we find that korean consumers recognise renewable electricity as a differentiated good from traditional electricity generated from fossil fuels or nuclear energy the mean willingness to pay to use renewable electricity is usd 1 26 per month second we confirm the existence of perfect substitution relationships among variant renewable technologies which suggests that korean consumers do not perceive them as differentiated goods one reason for this perception is that korean consumers are more inclined to favour economic feasibility over sustainability or the availability of the resource stock when choosing between renewable technology types in sum we can say that korean consumers recognise renewable electricity as a differentiated good but that they do not differentiate between variant renewable technologies thus the imposition of the cost of renewable electricity on consumers in the form of increased electricity charges would be acceptable to consumers as long as any price rise properly reflects their preferences

explaining experience curves for new energy technologies a case study of liquefied natural gas many new energy technologies seem to experience a fall in unit price as they mature in this paper we study the unit price of liquefying natural gas in order to make it transportable by ship to gas power installations all over the world our point of departure is the experience curve approach however unlike many other studies of new energy technologies we also seek to account for autonomous technological change scale effects and the effects of upstream competition among technology suppliers to our surprise we find that upstream competition is by far the most important factor contributing to the fall in unit price with respect to the natural gas business this may have implications for the future development in prices as the effect of increased upstream competition is temporary and likely to weaken a lot sooner than effects from learning and technological change another more general policy implication is that while promoting new energy technologies governments must not forget to pay attention to competition policy

willingness to pay for green power in an unreliable electricity sector part 1 the case of the lebanese residential sector abstract a willingness to pay wtp analysis for renewable based electricity is undertaken for the lebanese residential sector a survey of 600 samples was conducted based on a stratified random sampling method in which energy use and expenditures socioeconomic and demographic characteristics were collected four scenarios for wtp for green power were designed to best reflect the possibilities of integrating renewable energy re sources in lebanon s unreliable electricity sector 1 local system covering partial electricity needs 2 local system covering entire electricity needs 3 utility provided green power covering partial electricity needs and 4 utility provided green power covering entire electricity needs the results based on a tobit model highlight the importance of re options that displace completely the diesel generator sets i e options 2 and 4 other parameters such as ownership of the home age perception of trust in government institutions and awareness of re were also found significant in influencing wtp

modeling the choice to switch from fuelwood to electricity implications for giant panda habitat conservation despite its status as a nature reserve wolong nature reserve china has experienced continued loss of giant panda habitat due to human activities such as fuelwood collection electricity though available throughout wolong has not replaced fuelwood as an energy source we used stated preference data obtained from in person interviews to estimate a random utility model of the choice of adopting electricity for cooking and heating willingness to switch to electricity was explained by demographic and electricity factors price voltage and outage frequency in addition to price nonprice factors such as voltage and outage frequency significantly affect the demand thus lowering electricity prices and increasing electricity quality would encourage local residents to switch from fuelwood to electricity and should be considered in the mix of policies to promote conservation of panda habitat 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the economic value of south korea s renewable energy policies rps rfs and rho a contingent valuation study abstract amid growing environmental awareness the diffusion of renewable energy has attracted greater attention from both the public and policymakers to respond to global environmental concerns the korean government implemented a renewable portfolio standard rps in the electric power sector in 2012 it plans to introduce a renewable fuel standard rfs and a renewable heat obligation rho in the transportation and heating sectors in 2015 and 2016 respectively as such this study applies the contingent valuation method to elicit the willingness of korean households to pay more for their energy bills in order to support enforcement of these three policies the analysis considers the economic values of each individual policy as well as the aggregate value at the national level respondents mean willingness to pay for rps rfs and rho are estimated as 3287 5 4432 9 and 3971 1 korean won per month respectively these are equivalent to 5 8 1 5 and 2 0 respectively of current average monthly electricity transportation and heating expenses although all three policies appear highly feasible a cautious approach is necessary given the large proportion of respondents with zero willingness to pay furthermore although the level of willingness to pay for renewable electricity in korea has increased in recent years it remains low when compared to other leading countries such as japan

social acceptance of renewable energy sources a review of contingent valuation applications abstract this paper presents a literature review addressing the public acceptance of renewable energy as a replacement for fossil fuels in electricity production this review was motivated by the global tendency for a substitution of conventional fuels by renewable energy sources res during the global financial crisis it studies research on the preferences and attitudes of local communities towards investments in renewable energy projects and their perception of the use of new energy technologies in their daily lives through various case studies worldwide an effort is made to identify the parameters that influence consumers energy behaviour together with their interest or lack thereof in the environmental impact of using fossil fuels to produce energy and their willingness to reduce it applications of contingent valuation are examined which are employed to analyse public attitudes towards the use of res for electricity production willingness to pay is observed to be correlated to socioeconomic characteristics including education interest in environmental issues and knowledge of res finally the profile of a typical green energy consumer and appropriate policy paths for the penetration of res into the energy market are outlined

modifying customer expectations of price decreases for a durable product we study the introductory signalling strategy for a durable product that faces optimistic expectations among customers about price declines over time the firm introducing the product knows that experiential learning is low for the product however customers being uncertain about the extent of experiential learning assign a nonzero probability that the firm s new product will enjoy a high cost reduction with cumulative experience the optimistic expectations of customers reduce their willingness to pay a high price at the product s introduction while predisposing them to buying later the challenge facing the low experience firm is to choose an introductory strategy that will credibly convey the low experience curve effect to customers we use the sequential equilibrium concept in a game theoretic framework to identify the firm s signalling strategy we identify the unique separating equilibrium of the game after refining the set of separating equilibria we demonstrate that a high introductory price credibly signals the low experiential learning to customers we also show that signalling causes an artificial learning curve effect

households willingness to pay for reliable electricity services in ghana abstract access to reliable electricity is important in increasing the living standards of households and promoting sustainable development however ghanaian households have had to grapple with frequent power outages and poor quality electricity services in recent times this study examines the factors influencing households willingness to pay for reliable electricity services in ghana using data collected from 950 households in the cape coast metropolitan area and the tobit regression technique it was revealed that monthly income prior notice on power outages business ownership separate meter ownership household size and education significantly affect willingness to pay for reliable electricity services on the average households were prepared to pay 44 percent gh 6 80 us 3 42 more relative to the mean monthly electricity bill in the sample to improve electricity services it is envisaged that the findings would be used by policy makers and utility companies to make electricity generation and distribution more sustainable and efficient

determinants of the price premium for green energy evidence from an oecd cross section using data from a survey of households in 11 oecd countries this paper investigates the determinants of preferences for a completely green residential electricity system three important questions are addressed i how much are households willing to pay to use only renewable energy ii does willingness to pay wtp vary significantly across household groups and countries and iii what drives the decision to enter the hypothetical market for green energy and given entry what drives the level of wtp the analysis here differs from previous studies on green energy in two ways first data and analyses are comparable across countries and second a comprehensive attempt is made to understand 0 wtp and to accommodate using a censored quantile regression cqr framework unobserved heterogeneity the survey data indicate a low wtp at 11 12 of current electric bill this study also addresses a key question how important is income for understanding wtp relative to more attitudinal determinants the effect of income overall appears ambiguous with tobit like models indicating that income is not significant while the cqr indicates that income exerts a significant effect near the center of the distribution of wtp across all frameworks used a key determinant of wtp appears to be environmental attitudes particularly membership in an environmental organization

investment and financing decisions with learning curve technology abstract the learning curve has a significant impact on production cost hence corporate profit in a number of industries while the learning curve is well recognized in the economics literature and its effect on operating costs and production decisions widely studied its effect on corporate investment has been largely unexplored to our knowledge there is one paper that examines this issue but it is limited to unlevered firms we therefore examine a levered firm s optimal investment and financing choices when using learning curve technology the main findings are as follows the effect of leverage on the investment decision depends on the level of debt using the optimal debt level will result in earlier and larger investment thus leverage has a positive effect on investment overall and the difference between levered and unlevered firm is an increasing function of learning speed the optimal leverage ratio without a borrowing constraint is an increasing function of learning speed with a borrowing constraint the investment decision is similar to the unconstrained borrowing case but the leverage ratio is initially increasing and subsequently decreasing in learning speed moreover it is a decreasing function over a wider range for a more stringent borrowing constraint for decreasing returns to scale technology and for a less volatile product market

investigating the semiconductor industry cycles the aim of this article is to investigate the links between semiconductor sales and various macroeconomic financial industrial variables including inventories equipment orders or semiconductor sector stock index statistical properties of these variables are studied both short run and long run interactions are analysed on the short run our results indicate that relationships often imply feedbacks through the implementation of cointegration analysis we separately identify both sales value and investments in the semiconductor market an impulse response analysis confirms the relevance of our choice of data and stability tests demonstrate that the parameters remain constant during the entire sample the vector error correction models vecms offer a representation respecting cycle theories and market actor analyses