engel functions panel data and latent variables a system of consumer expenditure functions is estimated from norwegian household budget data specific features of the approach are i panel data from individual households are used which offer far richer opportunities for identification estimation and testing than cross section data ii measurement errors are carefully modelled total consumption expenditure is modelled as a latent variable purchase expenditures on different goods and two income measures are used as indicators of this basic latent variable the usual assumption of no measurement error in total expenditure is clearly rejected iii the distribution of latent total expenditure across households and its evolution over time is estimated and important properties tested iv the distribution of individual differences in preferences represented by individual time invariant latent variables are modelled estimated and tested v we test the hypothesis that preferences are uncorrelated with total consumption expenditure which is basic to virtually all cross section studies of consumer demand functions

an engineering economic approach to transmission planning under market and regulatory uncertainties wecc case study we propose a stochastic programming based tool to support adaptive transmission planning under market and regulatory uncertainties we model investments in two stages differentiating between commitments that must be made now and corrective actions that can be undertaken as new information becomes available the objective is to minimize expected transmission and generation costs over the time horizon nonlinear constraints resulting from kirchhoff s voltage law are included we apply the tool to a 240 bus representation of the western electricity coordinating council and model uncertainty using three scenarios with distinct renewable electricity mandates emissions policies and fossil fuel prices we conclude that the cost of ignoring uncertainty the cost of using naive deterministic planning methods relative to explicitly modeling uncertainty is of the same order of magnitude as the cost of first stage transmission investments furthermore we conclude that heuristic rules for constructing transmission plans based on scenario planning can be as suboptimal as deterministic plans

electricity transmission arrangements in great britain time for change in great britain gb and across europe significant investment in electricity transmission is expected over the coming years as decarbonisation and market integration efforts are intensified however there is also significant uncertainty with the amount location and timing of new generation connection which in turn will drive the transmission investment needs given the absence of efficient market design we identify three key areas of concern with the current transmission investment arrangements i a mis aligned incentives framework for transmission investment and operation ii lack of coordination of investment and operation and iii conflicts of interest we then propose three options for future evolution of transmission regimes which cover the full spectrum of institutional arrangements with respect to transmission planning and delivery i e how and who plans owns builds and operates the transmission system for each option we present key characteristics evolution of the current regimes the ability of the option to address the concerns and key strengths and weaknesses overall we conclude in the case of gb this conclusion could be extended to other european countries that the most appropriate option would be that of an independent system operator iso who would be responsible for planning and operating the transmission system

impact of household consumption on co2 emissions danish household consumption increased by 58 over the period 1966 1992 while co2 emissions only increased by 7 using decomposition analysis we investigated the global co2 impact of danish household consumption from 1966 to 1992 our conclusion is that overall growth in private consumption but not changes in the composition of consumption is the key to understanding the increase in co2 emissions however the effect of growth in private consumption has been partly offset by substantial energy conservation in the energy supply and manufacturing sectors

the economics of planning electricity transmission to accommodate renewables using two stage optimisation to evaluate flexibility and the cost of disregarding uncertainty abstract aggressive development of renewable electricity sources will require significant expansions in transmission infrastructure we present a stochastic two stage optimisation model that captures the multistage nature of transmission planning under uncertainty and use it to evaluate interregional grid reinforcements in great britain gb in our model a proactive transmission planner makes investment decisions in two time periods each time followed by a market response uncertainty is represented by economic technology and regulatory scenarios and first stage investments must be made before it is known which scenario will occur the model allows us to identify expected cost minimising first stage investments as well as estimate the value of information the cost of ignoring uncertainty and the value of flexibility our results show that ignoring risk in planning transmission for renewables has quantifiable economic consequences and that considering uncertainty can yield decisions that have lower expected costs than traditional deterministic planning methods in the gb case the value of information and cost of disregarding uncertainty in transmission planning were of the same order of magnitude approximately 100 m in present worth terms further the best plan under a risk neutral decision criterion can differ from the best under risk aversion finally a traditional sensitivity analysis based robustness analysis also yields different results than the stochastic model although the former s expected cost is not much higher

a bilevel approach to transmission expansion planning within a market environment we present a bilevel model for transmission expansion planning within a market environment where producers and consumers trade freely electric energy through a pool the target of the transmission planner modeled through the upper level problem is to minimize network investment cost while facilitating energy trading this upper level problem is constrained by a collection of lower level market clearing problems representing pool trading and whose individual objective functions correspond to social welfare using the duality theory the proposed bilevel model is recast as a mixed integer linear programming problem which is solvable using branch and cut solvers detailed results from an illustrative example and a case study are presented and discussed finally some relevant conclusions are drawn

institutionalisation of sustainable consumption patterns based on shared use the product service system pss concept has been proposed as a way of dealing with unsustainable patterns of consumption in the business to consumer b2c domain existing alternatives to traditional consumption based on ownership such as car sharing communal washing centres and tool sharing schemes indicate that more sustainable patterns of consumption may be found for other household functions however the low profile of these examples in society and on the market calls for a query into factors that may facilitate or hinder broader acceptance of more sustainable alternatives in this study the aforementioned examples are analysed from institutional and product service system perspectives and it is suggested that the embodiment of alternative consumption patterns into every day routines depends on institutional arrangements regulatory and normative on how the product service systems are designed and applied in practice and oil the socio cultural background of the society the systems are implemented in c 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved less

energy requirements of sydney households supporting the lifestyles of the populations of modern cities requires vast quantities of natural resources and leads to environmental stresses such as air and water pollution research into the metabolism of cities therefore aims at understanding the physical flows into within and out of cities with a view to reducing the use of resources and the environmental impacts one important physical indicator is energy use most studies on cities only consider direct or end user energy consumption since the function of cities is to serve the lives of their residents indirect energy use in cities or energy embodied in the consumption of goods and services by its residents can be regarded as being as important as direct energy use however physical models of cities are extremely complex and have difficulty in dealing with boundary issues and hence the indirect resource requirements in this paper we use input output analysis and detailed household expenditure data to yield comprehensive energy use breakdowns for the 14 statistical subdivisions of sydney multivariate regression and structural path analysis spa are used to interpret the results clear correlations can be drawn between energy use and income household size age and degree of urbanity the structural path analysis is used to demonstrate how significant differences in lifestyles between inner and outer areas of sydney leads to different energy use characteristics this final consumption based approach to analysing the energy requirements for households has important implications for measures aimed at reducing energy use which tend to only consider direct energy use d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

oil and revolutionary governments fuel for international conflict oil exporting states or petrostates engage in militarized interstate disputes mids at a much higher rate on average than nonpetrostates why is this so further what explains the variation among the petrostates in adopting aggressive foreign policies and engaging in mids on that basis this article develops a theory that proposes that revolutionary petrostates have a higher propensity to launch mids than comparable nonpetrostates this theory is tested with statistical analysis using a new quantitative data set that identifies revolutionary governments in the period 1945 2001 the results show that petro revolutionary governments constitute a special threat to international peace and security this evidence of resource backed aggression challenges the conventional view of petrostates as the targets of international competition for resources

aid effectiveness and the politics of personalism this article examines how political institutions that provide an incentive to cultivate a personal vote condition the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth in developing country democracies politicians in aid recipient countries with high levels of personalism are more likely to pursue corruption and target government spending to narrow constituencies because personalism affects these outcomes it provides incentives to use foreign aid for politically motivated spending at the expense of investing foreign aid in growth promoting public goods using panel data from 61 aid recipient democracies from 1961 to 2001 the author finds that aid increases growth in democracies with less personalist institutions but decreases growth in countries with high personalism the author also shows that personalism conditions the relationship between aid and the composition of government spending aid increases spending on public goods relative to narrow particularistic goods in countries with low person

the role of social processes for sustainable consumption abstract rethinking the role consumption plays in individual well being and societal development is key for addressing pressing environmental problems we perceive the need to envision consumption as a social activity which requires the active engagement of consumers in order to better enhance their quality of life the paper focuses on the framework of product service systems one particular programme for more sustainable consumption after reviewing the potential benefits and limitations of this programme we explore the opportunities to learn from participatory and community based strategies like lets

food and life cycle energy inputs consequences of diet and ways to increase efficiency food consumption is one of the most polluting everyday activities when impacts during product life cycles are considered greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector are substantial and need to be lowered to stabilise climate change here we present an inventory of life cycle energy inputs for 150 food items available in sweden and discuss how energy efficient meals and diets can be composed energy inputs in food life cycles vary from 2 to 220 mj per kg due to a multitude of factors related to animal or vegetable origin degree of processing choice of processing and preparation technology and transportation distance daily total life cycle energy inputs for diets with a similar dietary energy consumed by one person can vary by a factor of four from 13 to 51 mj current swedish food consumption patterns result in life cycle energy inputs ranging from 6900 to 21 000 mj per person and year choice of ingredients and gender differences in food consumption patterns explain the differences up to a third of the total energy inputs is related to snacks sweets and drinks items with little nutritional value it is possible to compose a diet compatible with goals for energy efficiency and equal global partition of energy resources however such a diet is far from the swedish average and not in line with current trends

robust optimization for transmission expansion planning minimax cost vs minimax regret due to the long planning horizon transmission expansion planning is typically subjected to a lot of uncertainties including load growth renewable energy penetration policy changes etc in addition deregulation of the power industry and pressure from climate change introduced new sources of uncertainties on the generation side of the system generation expansion and retirement become highly uncertain as well some of the uncertainties do not have probability distributions making it difficult to use stochastic programming techniques like robust optimization that do not require a probability distribution became desirable to address these challenges we study two optimization criteria for the transmission expansion planning problem under the robust optimization paradigm where the maximum cost and maximum regret of the expansion plan over all uncertainties are minimized respectively with these models our objective is to make planning decisions that are robust against all scenarios we use a two layer algorithm to solve the resulting tri level optimization problems then in our case studies we compare the performance of the minimax cost approach and the minimax regret approach under different characterizations of uncertainties

buying war not peace the influence of corruption on the risk of ethnic war this article presents robust findings for the positive effect of corruption on the risk of ethnic civil war using binary time series cross section data that cover 87 to 121 countries per year between 1984 and 2007 following a grievance based explanation of violent intrastate conflict we argue that corruption increases the risk of large scale ethnic violence as it creates distortions in the political decision making process which lead to a deepening of political and economic inequalities between different ethnic groups the positive effect of corruption on the risk of ethnic civil war is robust to various model specifications including the interaction between corruption and natural resource wealth

coordination and uncertainty in strategic network investment case on the north seas grid abstract the notion of developing a transnational offshore grid in the north sea has attracted considerable attention in the past years due to its potential for substantial capital savings and increased scope for cross border trade sparking a european wide policy debate on incentivizing integrated transmission solutions however one important aspect that has so far received limited attention is that benefits will largely depend on the eventual deployment pattern of electricity infrastructure which is currently characterized by severe locational sizing and timing uncertainty given the lack of coordination between generation and network developments across europe there is a real risk for over investment or a premature lock in to options that exhibit limited adaptability in the near future important choices that have to be made concerning the network topology and amount of investment in this paper we identify the optimal in terms of reduced cost network investment including topology in the north seas countries under four deployment scenarios and five distinct policy choices differing in the level of offshore coordination and international market integration by drawing comparisons between the study results we quantify the net benefit of enabling different types of coordination under each scenario furthermore we showcase a novel min max regret optimization model and identify minimum regret first stage commitments which could be deployed in the near future in order to enhance strategic optionality increase adaptability to different future conditions and hence reduce any potential sub optimality of the initial network design in view of the above we put forward specific policy recommendations regarding the adoption of a flexible anticipatory expansion framework for the identification of attractive investment opportunities under uncertainty

legislative institutions and corruption in developing country democracies this article extends the research on institutional sources of corruption by investigating whether legislative institutions play a significant role in driving corruption in developing country democracies the author argues that when legislative rules a give parties control over agenda setting and b allow parties to strip legislators who vote against the party line of their legislative mandates parties can exercise valuable influence over the legislative policy process which allows them to engage in practices leading to higher corruption the author derives two testable hypotheses linking higher party influence over agenda setting and voting in the legislature to higher corruption and test them by using a new data set on legislative rules for 64 developing country democracies from 1984 to 2004 the empirical results corroborate the hypotheses and remain robust when controlling for alternative explanations employing different estimation techniques and using different measures of corruption

does risk aversion affect transmission and generation planning a western north america case study abstract we investigate the effects of risk aversion on optimal transmission and generation expansion planning in a competitive and complete market to do so we formulate a stochastic model that minimizes a weighted average of expected transmission and generation costs and their conditional value at risk cvar we show that the solution of this optimization problem is equivalent to the solution of a perfectly competitive risk averse stackelberg equilibrium in which a risk averse transmission planner maximizes welfare after which risk averse generators maximize profits this model is then applied to a 240 bus representation of the western electricity coordinating council in which we examine the impact of risk aversion on levels and spatial patterns of generation and transmission investment although the impact of risk aversion remains small at an aggregate level state level impacts on generation and transmission investment can be significant which emphasizes the importance of explicit consideration of risk aversion in planning models

power system expansion planning under uncertainty a methodology is described for expansion planning of power systems under uncertainty in factors such as demand growth fuel cost delay in project completion and financial constraints the approach draws upon three classes of techniques decomposition and stochastic optimization provide the basic framework and allow an implicit representation of alternative investment strategies decision analysis is used to represent the dynamic aspects of decision making as uncertainties are resolved over time and hedging objectives from tradeoff analysis help select flexible and resilient expansion strategies case studies within the brazilian system are presented and discussed

contracting strategies for renewable generators a hybrid stochastic and robust optimization approach we present a new methodology to support an energy trading company etc to devise contracting strategies under an optimal risk averse renewable portfolio the uncertainty in the generation of renewable energy sources is accounted for by exogenously simulated scenarios as is customary in stochastic programming however we recognize that spot prices largely depend on unpredictable market conditions making it difficult to capture its underlying stochastic process which challenges the use of fundamental approaches for forecasting under such framework industry practices make use of stress tests to validate portfolios we then adapt the robust optimization approach to perform an endogenous stress test for the spot prices as a function of the buy and sell portfolio of contracts and renewable energy generation scenarios the optimal contracting strategy is built through a bilevel optimization model that uses a hybrid approach mixing stochastic and robust optimization the proposed model is flexible to represent the traditional stochastic programming approach and to express the etc s uncertainty aversion in the case where the price distribution cannot be precisely estimated the effectiveness of the model is illustrated with examples from the brazilian market where the proposed approach is contrasted to its stochastic counterpart and both are benchmarked against observed market variables

the environmental effect of car free housing a case in vienna abstract a case control study of the car free model housing project in vienna was conducted to evaluate whether people living in this settlement have more sustainable lifestyles than people living in comparable buildings in vienna another aim was to identify the lifestyle characteristics and household activities which significantly influence the environmental impact of the residents of the car free housing project and a control group the control group referred to as the reference settlement was chosen from a nearby building complex with similar characteristics but without the car free feature household consumption patterns were estimated based on interviews in combination with data from the austrian consumer expenditure survey and the national accounts the evaluation of household environmental impacts uses emissions estimates from the austrian national accounting matrices including environmental accounts and data from life cycle assessments households from the car free settlement have substantially lower environmental impacts in the categories of ground transportation and energy use their co 2 emissions of these two categories are less than 50 of those living in the reference settlement the households in the car free settlement have somewhat higher emissions in the categories air transport nutrition and other consumption reflecting the higher income per capita as a result the co 2 emissions are only slightly lower than in the reference settlement but the emissions intensity is 20 lower both household groups have significantly lower environmental impacts than the austrian average reflecting less car use and cleaner heating energy in vienna

from ownership to service use lifestyle the potential of car sharing abstract the shift from ownership to service use often promoted in concepts of sustainability has recently become available in private vehicle mobility currently 38 000 people in a number of european cities are participating this example is used here to analyze the characteristics of people sharing one material product as well as to investigate which services they actually render different views on the latter imply different evaluations of the size of the market potential and different conclusions on the effectiveness of various policy instruments when service use is a separate lifestyle policy instruments have to ultimately foster it directly rather than changing economic costs at the margin only

valuation of flexible transmission investment options under uncertainty significant uncertainty surrounds the future development of electricity systems primarily in terms of size location and type of new renewable generation to be connected in this paper we assess the potential for flexible network technologies such as phase shifting transformers and non network solutions such as energy storage and demand side management to constitute valuable interim measures within a long term planning strategy the benefit of such flexible assets lies not only in the transmission services provided but also in the way they can facilitate and de risk subsequent decisions by deferring commitment to capital intensive projects until more information on generation development becomes available a novel stochastic formulation for transmission expansion planning is presented that includes consideration of investment in these flexible solutions the proposed framework is demonstrated with a case study on the ieee rts where flexible technologies are shown to constitute valuable investment options when facing uncertainties in future renewable generation development