household electricity demand revisited respond to price changes this paper develops a model for evaluating the effects of alternative tariff designs on electricity use the model concurrently addresses several interrelated difficulties posed by nonlinear pricing heterogeneity in consumer price sensitivity and consumption aggregation over appliances and time we estimate the model using extensive data for a representative sample of 1300 california households the results imply a strikingly skewed distribution of household electricity price elasticities in the population with a small fraction of households accounting for most aggregate demand response we then estimate the aggregate and distributional consequences of recent tariff structure changes recent efforts to restructure electricity markets have renewed interest in electricity demand and pricing this interest reflects a broad desire to improve the efficiency of electricity markets and policy makers concerns over the impact of price changes on consumers how new pricing mechanisms would affect households consumption and expenditures is a matter of considerable uncertainty however this uncertainty has provoked controversy and debate in the regulatory policy arena hampering market reforms using econometric methods to assess the effects of electricity price changes presents several challenges these include the nonlinear structure of tariff schedules aggregation of metered consumption behaviour over time and appliances and the interdependence of energy use with longer term household decisions over appliance ownership and dwelling characteristics the first two issues introduce complex simultaneity problems between marginal prices and consumption the third issue imposes high data requirements information on household specific appliance holdings and residence features and creates heterogeneity in consumption responses related to the characteristics of these durable goods when the researcher s objective is to develop a model for simulating the effects of prospective tariff changes ignoring these issues will provide an incomplete assessment of demand responses and potentially misleading predictions of a new tariff s consumption and revenue consequences in this paper we estimate a model of household electricity demand that can be used

on the price of recreation goods as a determinant of male labor supply we examine whether and how variations in the price of recreation goods influence men s allocation of market work for the united states individual level data are combined with metropolitan area level price indices to estimate the male elasticity of intertemporal substitution of market work with respect to the price of recreation goods which is found around 0 16 and statistically significant the allocation of market work in response to changes in the price of recreation goods would create movements in the output of an economy moreover it could contribute toward explaining the emerging differences in work and leisure between the united states and europe

parameter estimates comparison of earnings functions in the psid and cps data 1976 2007 comparing earnings equations in the panel study of income dynamics psid and the current population survey we find that the psid considerably underestimates the returns to education during the 1992 2007 period non random selection in the psid sample appears to be the reason

electricity shortages and firm productivity evidence from china s industrial firms unreliable inputs to production particularly those that are difficult to store can significantly limit firms productivity leading them to react in a number of ways this paper uses a panel of 23 000 energy intensive chinese firms from 1999 to 2004 to examine how firms responded to severe power shortages in the early 2000s our results suggest that in response to electricity scarcity chinese firms re optimize among inputs to production by substituting materials for energy both electric and non electric sources a shift from make to buy of intermediate inputs to production while outsourcing can be costly chinese firms were able to avoid substantial productivity losses by doing so as a result of the increase in electricity scarcity from 1999 onward we find that unit production costs increased by eight percent

long term gains from electrification in rural india the authors know surprisingly little about the long run impacts of household electrification this paper studies the impacts on consumption in rural india over a seventeen year period allowing for both internal and external villagelevel effects under our identifying assumptions electrification brought significant consumption gains for households who acquired electricity for their own use we also find evidence of a dynamic effect of village connectivity for households without electricity themselves this is suggestive of an external effect which also comes with a shift in consumption spending suggestive of status concerns among those still without electricity labor earnings were an important channel of impact this was mainly through extra work by men there was no effect on average wage rates

multi factor performance measure model with an application to fortune 500 companies abstract the paper develops tools for reconciling diverse measures which characterize the financial performance of the fortune 500 companies the technology of data envelopment analysis dea is employed to determine a multi factor financial performance model which inherently recognizes tradeoffs among various financial measures this study offers an alternative perspective and characterization on the performance of the fortune 500 companies it is shown that the top ranked companies by revenue do not necessarily have top ranked performance viewed as being multidimensional only about 3 companies were operating on the best practice frontier substantial technical and scale inefficiencies are found decreasing returns to scale drs are uncovered among the relatively large revenue top ranked companies the study of congestion shows that a reduction in current levels of employees assets and equity may actually increase revenue and profit levels factor specific measures within the framework of multidimensional measure are developed to further study the performance of companies and industries the performance of best practice frontier companies is analyzed by constructing reference share measures which indicate the role each frontier company plays in evaluating non frontier companies finally the reliability of the best practice frontier is examined

energy transition poverty and inequality in vietnam this paper investigates energy transition energy poverty and energy inequality in vietnam employing a longitudinal dataset of a nationally representative household survey we use the data on residential energy expenditure of more than 9 000 households over the period 2004 2016 we find a transition from traditional energy to modern energy but this transition varies across regions between ethnic and welfare groups and between rural and urban population the poor and ethnic minority households still rely heavily on traditional energy sources such as coal and biomass to meet their energy demands electricity poverty has decreased but energy cost poverty has increased in addition energy inequality tends to decrease at a more significant rate than income and consumption inequalities we propose a national program for energy poverty alleviation be established to devise policies to lower households energy costs further assistance to the poor and ethnic minority households is also recommended so that they can afford a higher level of electricity consumption

efficiency analysis for exogenously fixed inputs and outputs we evaluate by means of mathematical programming formulations the relative technical and scale efficiencies of decision making units dmus when some of the inputs or outputs are exogenously fixed and beyond the discretionary control of dmu managers this approach further develops the work on efficiency evaluation and on estimation of efficient production frontiers known as data envelopment analysis dea we also employ the model to provide efficient input and output targets for dmu managers in a way that specifically accounts for the fixed nature of some of the inputs or outputs we illustrate the approach using real data for a network of fast food restaurants

a study of the relationship between competitiveness and technological innovation capability based on dea models researchers and managers have been searching for appropriate methods to explore the relationship between technological innovation capability and competitiveness in recent years this study attempts to find a systematic quantitative methodology to tackle this problem in a recent survey covering 182 industrial innovative firms in china the traditional data envelopment analysis dea model was employed to analyze the data collected the research results show that only 16 of the enterprises operate on the best practice frontier and there are some inconsistencies between organizational innovation capability and competitiveness in many enterprises decreasing returns to scale were found among about 70 of the inefficient enterprises and increasing returns to scale were found among the remaining 30 of the inefficient enterprises thus the internal innovation harmonizing process in these enterprises is considerably inefficient based on the restricted ranges of the input output factors a multi objective dea projection model has also been developed in this study to provide a benchmark for auditing competitiveness research results further indicate that there is still much room for enterprises to improve competitiveness in situations of confining score ranges of technological innovation capability and competitiveness

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

microfinance and poverty evidence using panel data from bangladesh micro finance supports mainly informal activities that often have low market demand it may be thus hypothesized that the aggregate poverty impact of micro finance in an economy with low economic growth is modest or nonexistent the observed borrower level poverty impact is then a result of income redistribution or short run income generation the author addresses these questions using household level panel data from bangladesh the findings confirm that micro finance benefits the poorest and has sustained impact in reducing poverty among program participants it also has positive spillover impact reducing poverty at the village level but the effect is more pronounced in reducing extreme rather than moderate poverty

what mean impacts miss distributional effects of welfare reform experiments labor supply theory predicts systematic heterogeneity in the impact of recent welfare reforms on earnings transfers and income yet most welfare reform research focuses on mean impacts we investigate the importance of heterogeneity using random assignment data from connecticut s jobs first waiver which features key elements of post 1996 welfare programs estimated quantile treatment effects exhibit the substantial heterogeneity predicted by labor supply theory thus mean impacts miss a great deal looking separately at samples of dropouts and other women does not improve the performance of mean impacts we conclude that welfare reform s effects are likely both more varied and more extensive than has been recognized

decomposing technical efficiency and scale elasticity in two stage network dea abstract the constant returns to scale assumption maintained by neoclassical theorists for justifying the black box structure of production technology in long run does not necessarily allow one to infer that there are no scale benefits available in its sub technologies most of real life production technologies are multi stage in nature and the sources of increasing returns lie in the sub technologies it is therefore imperative to estimate the scale economies of a firm not only for the network technology but also for the sub technologies to accomplish this two approaches are suggested in this contribution based on the premise concerning whether a network technology construct considers allocative inefficiency the first approach which is ours makes use of a single network technology for two interdependent sub technologies the second approach which is due to kao and hwang 2011 however assumes complete allocative efficiency by considering two independent sub technology frontiers one for each sub technology the distinction between these two approaches is important from a policy point of view since the network efficiencies revealed from these two approaches have distinctive causative factors that do not permit them to be used interchangeably

does electricity reliability matter evidence from rural viet nam abstract using a three round panel dataset of more than 3 000 households the paper estimates the impacts of electricity reliability improvement on the welfare and economic decisions of rural vietnamese households the number of days without power outages in communes per annum is used to proxy for electricity reliability we employ a fixed effect regression with an instrumental variable to deal with the endogeneity issue led by the simultaneous causal relationship between the reliability of electricity and household outcomes along with the unobservable variables we use the similar electricity quality variable but measured in other communes within the same province as an instrumental variable results from this model show that an improvement in electricity reliability plays an important role in enhancing incomes durable consumption access to credit and land investment decisions of rural households

how to achieve full electrification lessons from latin america electricity coverage in latin america has increased substantially in recent decades rising from 50 of the population in 1970 to more than 95 in 2015 growth however slowed in the 1990s as many countries experienced difficulties in extending their networks further in particular to serve those living in isolated and rural areas in spite of this the process of electrification was not interrupted and at the beginning of the 2010s decade most countries in the region were able to provide access to electricity to almost all of their populations in this paper we examine the main strategies used in latin america to increase coverage and argue that only a combination of policy efforts has made it possible to achieve the current situation we also examine the remaining obstacles at policy and institutional levels to achieving full coverage

demand for piped and non piped water supply services evidence from southwest sri lanka in many countries water supply is a service that is seriously underpriced especially for residential consumers this has led to a call for setting cost recovery policies to ensure that the tariffs charged for water supply cover the full cost of service provision identification of factors driving piped and non piped water demand is a necessary prerequisite for predicting how consumers will react to such price increases using cross sectional data of 1 800 households from southwest sri lanka we estimate water demand functions for piped and non piped households using appropriate econometric techniques the marginal price elasticity is estimated at 0 15 for households exclusively relying on piped water and at 0 37 for households using piped water but supplementing their supply with other water sources the time cost elasticity for households relying on non piped water only is estimated at 0 06 on average but varying across sources for both piped and non piped households we find evidence of substitutability between water from different sources we discuss the implications of these results in terms of pricing policy

decomposing trends in income volatility the wild ride at the top and bottom we use 2 year panels from the current population survey to provide a detailed accounting of family income volatility from 1980 to 2009 volatility doubled overall and the increase was most pronounced among the top 1 of the income distribution but in any given year the level of volatility among the bottom 10 exceeds that of the top the increased volatility comes from higher instability of head and spouse earnings other nonlabor income and from reduced covariance between these income sources with the tax system this suggests that current tax policy is less effective in mitigating income shocks than previous decades jel j31 i30

the dynamics of health in the british household panel survey this paper considers the dynamics of a categorical indicator of self assessed health using eight waves 1991 1998 of the british household panel survey bhps our analysis has three focal points the relative contributions of state dependence and heterogeneity in explaining the dynamics of health the existence and consequences of health related sample attrition and the investigation of the effects of measures of socioeconomic status with a particular focus on educational attainment and income to investigate these issues we use dynamic panel ordered probit models there is clear evidence of health related attrition in the data but this does not distort the estimates of state dependence and of the socioeconomic gradient in health the models show strong positive state dependence and heterogeneity accounts for around 30 of the unexplained variation in health copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

the importance of sample attrition in life cycle labor supply estimation we examine the importance of possible nonrandom attrition to an econometric model of life cycle labor supply using both a wald test comparing attriters to nonattriters and variable addition tests based on formal models of attrition estimates using the panel study of income dynamics show that nonrandom attrition is of little concern when estimating prime age male labor supply because the effect of attrition is absorbed into fixed effects in labor supply the wage measure and instrument set have much larger effects on the estimated labor supply function of prime age men than how one adjusts for panel attrition

the impact of piped water provision on infant mortality in brazil a quantile panel data approach abstract we examine the impact of piped water on the under 1 infant mortality rate imr in brazil using a recently developed econometric procedure for the estimation of quantile treatment effects with panel data the provision of piped water in brazil is highly correlated with other observable and unobservable determinants of imr the latter leading to an important source of bias instruments for piped water provision are not readily available and fixed effects to control for time invariant correlated unobservables are invalid in the simple quantile regression framework using the quantile panel data procedure in chen and khan chen s khan s semiparametric estimation of non stationary censored panel model data models with time varying factor econometric theory 2007 forthcoming our estimates indicate that the provision of piped water reduces infant mortality by significantly more at the higher conditional quantiles of the imr distribution than at the lower conditional quantiles except for cases of extreme underdevelopment these results imply that targeting piped water intervention toward areas in the upper quantiles of the conditional imr distribution when accompanied by other basic public health inputs can achieve significantly greater reductions in infant mortality

financial sustainability and poverty outreach within a network of village banks in cameroon a multi dea approach abstract microfinance institutions face a double bottom line they perform financial tasks by giving microcredits to their customers and support projects aiming at reducing poverty in doing so they have to be financially self sufficient and to target poor people excluded from the traditional financial systems however a trade off may exist between financial sustainability and poverty outreach for these institutions by using a multi dea approach this paper shows that even if a trade off exists for 15 of the mc 2 mutuelles communautaires de croissance in cameroon there is no trade off for 46 of them in order to increase without trade off financial and social performance of inefficient mc 2 a benchmarking approach combing dea and performance indicators has been developed dea is used for identifying best practices and setting benchmarking goals performance indicators are used for characterizing areas needing improvements and following the evolution of mc 2 toward their goals i e for implementing benchmarking complementarity of both approaches provides a tool box for improving financial and social efficiency and reducing the trade off between financial sustainability and poverty outreach of microfinance institutions

prices infrastructure household characteristics and child height household survey data from brazil matched with information collected at the municipio county level are used to examine the relation between parental characteristics primarily education community infrastructure and services and child height data are drawn from 2 sources informacoes basicas municipais 1974 is a periodic survey of 4000 municipios on infrastructure health and education services estudo nacional da despesa familiar 1974 75 is a household survey covering 37000 children under age 8 on income expenditure anthropometry and socio demographic characteristics local food price indices were derived from these data child height is significantly affected by local infrastructure particularly modern sewerage and piped water in urban areas and electricity in rural settings these effects are stronger for children over 2 those of better educated mothers and those in households spending more higher prices for dairy products and sugar are linked to lower urban child height and higher fish prices to lower rural child height significantly for children of illiterate mothers higher prices for meat and rice are associated with taller height possible because men usually eat these foods mothers with elementary schooling can counteract the effects of food prices on child height number of teachers is positively related to height in rural children numbers of nurses and of hospital beds is associated with shorter children suggesting that large hospitals locate in poor urban areas this study has succeeded in identifying some public investments that affect child health

the value of a statistical life evidence from panel data abstract we address long standing concerns in the literature on compensating wage differentials the econometric properties of the estimated value of statistical life vsl and the wide range of such estimates we confront prominent econometric issues using panel data a more accurate fatality risk measure and systematic application of panel data estimators controlling for measurement error endogeneity latent individual heterogeneity possibly correlated with regressors state dependence and sample composition yields vsl estimates of 4 million to 10 million the comparatively narrow range clarifies the cost effectiveness of regulatory decisions most important econometrically is controlling for latent heterogeneity less important is how one does it

ranking efficient decision making units in data envelopment analysis based on reference frontier share abstract data envelopment analysis dea is a powerful technique for performance evaluation of decision making units dmus ranking efficient dmus based on a rational analysis is an issue that yet needs further research the impact of each efficient dmu in evaluation of inefficient dmus can be considered as additional information to discriminating among efficient dmus the concept of reference frontier share is introduced in which the share of each efficient dmu in construction of the reference frontier for evaluating inefficient dmus is considered for this purpose a model for measuring the reference frontier share of each efficient dmu associated with each inefficient one is proposed and then a total measure is provided based on which the ranking is made the new approach has the capability for ranking extreme and non extreme efficient dmus further it has no problem in dealing with negative data these facts are verified by theorems discussions and numerical examples

identifying the elasticity of taxable income we use matched panels from the current population survey along with a grouping instrumental variables estimator to provide new estimates of the elasticity of taxable income our identification strategy exploits the fact that federal and state tax reforms over the past three decades have differentially affected cohorts across states and over time we find that the elasticity is in the range of 0 4 0 55 the implication of our new estimates for tax policy is that the revenue maximising tax rate is nearly 30 percentage points lower than that obtained when we use the typical identification strategy in the literature

combined social networks and data envelopment analysis for ranking abstract in this work we propose a method for ranking efficient decision making units dmus that uses measures of dominance derived from social network analysis in combination with data envelopment analysis dea for this purpose a directed and weighted graph is constructed in which the nodes represent the system s dmus and the edges represent the relationships between them the objective is to identify and rank the most important nodes by taking into account the influence or dominance relations between the dmus the method uses a weighted hits algorithm to identify the hubs and the authorities in the network by assigning to each dmu two numbers the authority weight and the hub weight additionally this method allows for the identification of dmus whose exclusion from the dea analysis does not modify the efficiency values obtained for the remaining dmus

making the most out of programme evaluations and social experiments accounting for heterogeneity in programme impacts the conventional approach to social programme evaluation focuses on estimating mean impacts of programmes yet many interesting questions regarding the political economy of programmes the distribution of programme benefits and the option values conferred on programme participants require knowledge of the distribution of impacts or features of it this paper presents evidence that heterogeneity in response to programmes is empirically important and that classical probability inequalities are not very informative in producing estimates or bounds on the distribution of programme impacts we explore two methods for supplementing the information in these inequalities based on assumptions about participant decision making processes and about the strength in dependence between outcomes in the participation and non participation states dependence is produced as a consequence of rational choice by participants we test for stochastic rationality among programme participants and present and implement methods for estimating the option values of social programmes

household level effects of electricity on income abstract this paper studies the effect of electricity on income using the nepal living standards survey iii nlssiii carried out in the years 2010 11 to account for endogeneity issues we use a two stage probit least squares 2spls model we find that causality runs both ways that is income explains whether a household is connected to electricity but also a household being connected to electricity has a very large and significant effect on income

driving for fun comparing the effect of fuel prices on weekday and weekend fuel consumption abstract focusing on individual motorists in car owning households in germany this paper investigates the determinants of automobile travel with the specific aim of quantifying the effects of fuel prices and person level attributes on travel conducted over a five day week and weekend our analysis is predicated on the notion that car use is an individual decision albeit one that is dependent on intra household allocation processes thereby building on a growing body of literature that has identified the importance of socioeconomic factors such as employment status gender and the presence of children in determining both access to and use of the car to capture this two stage decision process we employ the two part model which consists of probit and ols estimators and derive elasticity estimates that incorporate both the discrete and continuous choices pertaining to car use with fuel price elasticity estimates ranging between 0 45 and 0 50 our results suggest raising prices via fuel taxes to be a promising energy conservation and climate protection measure

consumer preferences and willingness to pay for compact fluorescent lighting policy implications for energy efficiency promotion in saint lucia this article examines consumer willingness to pay for energy saving compact fluorescent light bulbs using the results of a stated preferences study conducted in the caribbean island nation of saint lucia geographic location low income status and age are found to affect willingness to pay for compact fluorescent lighting while higher income status and other demographic variables appear to have minimal or no significant impacts energy efficiency knowledge is associated with increased willingness to pay for energy efficient bulbs and with increased use of compact fluorescent lighting contrary to theoretical expectations past purchase of compact fluorescent bulbs is found to have no impact on self reported willingness to pay we hypothesize that this null result is due to the recent emergence of low cost low quality compact fluorescent bulbs in the saint lucian lighting market which may be negatively influencing consumers preferences and expectations regarding energy efficient lighting findings support the argument that government sponsored education and subsidy programs will likely result in increased use of energy saving technologies in saint lucia but such behavioral changes may not be sustained in the long run unless low quality bulbs the lemons of the compact fluorescent lighting market can be clearly identified by consumers

estimating welfare aspects of changes in energy prices from preference heterogeneity abstract the european union s energy and climate policy package is expected to cause an increase in end user prices of electricity and fuels this paper assesses the distributional effects of these price increases in cyprus by specifying and estimating a consumer demand system with price heterogeneity between households this novel method allows obtaining robust parameter estimates even when household expenditure surveys are limited as is the case in many european countries the empirical analysis is conducted both conditional on energy related household characteristics and unconditionally we then use the estimated demand system to conduct welfare analysis we find that the rise in energy prices results in welfare losses of eur 101 per household in 2009 prices in year 2020 or a nationwide welfare loss of more than eur 2009 33 million price increases will be regressive and will affect small and urban households more strongly than the rest of the population furthermore we find that the largest proportion of welfare loss is due to loss of household s income purchasing power caused by higher energy prices while the changes in relative prices induce deadweight loss which is a small part of welfare loss because of the limited substitutability of energy with other goods

missing carbon reductions exploring rebound and backfire effects in uk households households are expected to play a pivotal role in reducing the uk s greenhouse gas ghg emissions and the uk government is encouraging specific household actions to help meet its targets however due to the rebound effect only a portion of the ghg emission reductions estimated by simple engineering calculations are generally achieved in practice for example replacing short car journeys by walking or cycling reduces consumption of motor fuels but this frees up money that may be spent on for example purchasing extra clothes or flying on vacation alternatively the money may be put into savings since all of these options lead to ghg emissions total ghg savings may be less than anticipated indeed in some instances emissions may increase a phenomenon known as backfire we estimate that the rebound effect for a combination of three abatement actions by uk households is approximately 34 targeting re spending on goods and services with a low ghg intensity reduces this to a minimum of around 12 while re spending on goods and services with a high ghg intensity leads to backfire our study highlights the importance of shifting consumption to lower ghg intensive categories and investing in low carbon investments

economic efficiency of greek retail smes in a period of high fluctuations in economic activity a dea approach this study aims to analyse the economic efficiency of greek small and medium retail enterprises before and after the crisis that started in 2008 based on the accounting equation we use data envelopment analysis dea to estimate variable returns of scale efficiency scores and to conclude on specific characteristics that efficient companies have for example on capital structure our results from the dea application show a high degree of inefficiency we found that smes on the islands are more efficient than those on the mainland and that smes in the cities are the least efficient size seems to be important more so on the islands and on the mainland than in the cities we conclude that companies should act more conservatively in terms of operating cost when the first signs of a recession appear in addition during a recession period companies that have evidences that their operations will continue positively should strengthen their operations by raising more own capital finally our study clarifies

heterogeneity in the rebound effect further evidence for germany rebound effects measure the behaviorally induced offset in the reduction of energy consumption following efficiency improvements using both panel estimation and quantile regression methods on household travel diary data collected in germany between 1997 and 2009 this study investigates the heterogeneity of the rebound effect in private transport with the average rebound effect being in the range of 57 to 62 our results are in line with a recent german study by frondel peters and vance 2008 but are substantially larger than those obtained from other studies furthermore our quantile regression results indicate that the magnitude of estimated fuel price elasticities from which rebound effects can be derived depends inversely on the household s driving intensity households with low vehicle mileage exhibit fuel price elasticities and hence rebound effects that are significantly larger than those for households with high vehicle mileage

welfare impacts of rural electrification a panel data analysis from vietnam abstract most past studies on the development impact of rural electrification have relied on cross sectional surveys comparing households with and without electricity this study tests the validity of the perceived correlation between welfare outcomes and rural electrification and quantifies electricity s benefits on the basis of sound econometric techniques that control for endogeneity bias the study used panel surveys conducted in rural vietnam in 2002 and 2005 covering some 1 120 households in 41 communes by 2005 all surveyed communes had connected to the grid and four fifths of their households had a connection the econometric estimations suggest grid electrification s positive effects on both household income and expenditure and education we find differential returns to electricity for commune and household level connection the former generates externality benefiting the poor more than the rich farm more than nonfarm income and girls over boys for schooling outcome conversely the latter

identifying a sustained pathway to multidimensional poverty reduction evidence from two chinese provinces poor rural households in developing countries often endure many faceted burdens including monetary poverty nutrition deficiency and energy shortage due to reliance on limited local natural resourc

estimating demand under block rates electricity and water many empirical studies of the demand for electricity under declining block tariffs have been conducted but few have produced results consistent with traditional demand theory nordin bell j economics 7 719 21 1976 explains this in part by pointing out that most of those studies failed to take into account the income effects caused by intramarginal price differences the authors show here that nordin s suggestion involves the inappropriate use of ordinal level statistics ols they propose a method by which consistent estimates of the demand parameters can be obtained when a household s rule for selecting a block can be estimated 19 references 1 figure

socio economic development and electricity access in developing economies a long run model averaging approach abstract access to electricity continues to be a popular subject in empirical studies however the choice of key factors related to electricity access in the literature to date has been ad hoc due to the lack of a theoretical framework this paper adopts a bayesian model averaging bma approach to selects important factors related to electricity access from 26 socioeconomic indicators using a sample of 48 developing countries and reveal their long term relationship with electricity access the bma approach allows us to identify the optimal empirical model when a theoretical foundation is not available moreover it allows us to address the relative importance of variables using posterior inclusion probabilities and thus has clear policy relevance our results show that access to finance education economic development infrastructure and industrialisation are positively related to electricity access in the long run although the long run relationship does not indicate causality it shows that to maintain this relationship policy adjustments against any deviations from the relationship are needed our study suggests that electrification needs not only economic educational and infrastructural development but also private sector participation governments commitment and political will and integration with poverty reduction and other development schemes

energy saving effects of progressive pricing and free cfl bulb distribution program evidence from ethiopia in africa about 70 percent of the total population still lives without electricity significant resources are needed to meet the gap demand side management is crucial to curb the increasing deman

impact of improved water services in informal neighbourhoods in ouagadougou abstractthis article examines the impact of a project to improve water services in underserved neighbourhoods in ouagadougou on household water access conditions we used the propensity score matching method to analyse data from a survey carried out in 2011 and found that the improvement project cut the cost of water neighbourhood wide by 94 cfa francs per cubic meter reduced the portion of this expense by 1 of the average household budget and cut the daily time to collect water by 10 13 min the results that we obtained through the propensity score matching method differ from those obtained by simply comparing the averages of the neighbourhoods participating in the project to those that did not participate this indicates that the propensity score matching method of impact evaluation is valuable in supplying decision makers with nonbiased estimates of the link between ease of access to water and poverty reduction

intertemporal substitution in labor supply evidence from micro data the sensitivity of the supply of labor to intertemporal variation in the wage is an important issue in macroeconomics the analysis of social security and pensions and the study of life cycle patterns of work this paper explores two approaches to the measurement of intertemporal substitution that have appeared in the literature the first approach is to use consumption to control for wealth and unobserved expectations about future wages in the labor supply equation the second approach is to estimate a first difference equation for hours in which labor supply from the previous period serves as a control for wealth and wage expectations the results indicate that intertemporal substitution elasticity for married men is positive but small

deriving the dea frontier for two stage processes data envelopment analysis dea is a method for measuring the efficiency of peer decision making units dmus recently dea has been extended to examine the efficiency of two stage processes where all the outputs from the first stage are intermediate measures that make up the inputs to the second stage the resulting two stage dea model provides not only an overall efficiency score for the entire process but as well yields an efficiency score for each of the individual stages due to the existence of intermediate measures the usual procedure of adjusting the inputs or outputs by the efficiency scores as in the standard dea approach does not necessarily yield a frontier projection the current paper develops an approach for determining the frontier points for inefficient dmus within the framework of two stage dea

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

assessing the comparative spatial disadvantage csd of regions in the european union using non radial data envelopment analysis methods abstract in this paper we propose non radial data envelopment analysis models for assessing the comparative spatial disadvantage csd of the level ii regions of the european union eu csd is considered as a relatively new element of spatial efficiency which seeks to enhance the spectrum of the current methods used for assessing spatial inequality and dispersion the paper also proposes a goal programming formulation for assessing production function coefficients of the social cohesion among the regions of the eu assuming elimination of the levels of comparative disadvantage

the panel study of income dynamics after fourteen years an evaluation this article considers the representativeness of the panel study of income dynamics psid over its 14 year history from 1968 to 1981 given the dynamics of entry and exit from the panel by 1981 40 of the original members had left the sample and were replaced by new entrants who joined either existing households or new households being formed by members of the original sample we consider the distribution of demographic characteristics and earnings equations over time and we compare the psid with the current population survey cps by either approach we find little evidence that the psid has become unrepresentative

the effects of rural electrification on employment new evidence from south africa this paper estimates the impact of electrification on employment growth by analyzing south africa s mass roll out of electricity to rural households using several new data sources and two different identification strategies an instrumental variables strategy and a fixed effects approach i find that electrification significantly raises female employment within five years this new infrastructure appears to increase hours of work for men and women while reducing female wages and increasing male earnings several pieces of evidence suggest that household electrification raises employment by releasing women from home production and enabling microenterprises migration behavior may also be affected jel h54 l94

estimating labor supply with panel data abstract we investigated the robustness of linear labor supply functions incorporating income taxes using recently developed techniques for estimating simultaneous equations with latent heterogeneity using panel data our results suggest an econometric model acknowledging the intertemporal progressive taxation of labor and non labor income

instrumental variables approach to rural water service demand interest in empirical studies of the demand for goods sold through discrete pricing structures has grown since nordin suggested a modification of taylor s demand model 24 29 the bulk of early empirical research centered on residential electricity demand however econometric studies of water demand have proliferated in recent years some articles have been concerned in part with the proper theoretical specification of demand equations incorporating block rate pricing schedules taylor specified price as being composed of the marginal price associated with the block in which consumption occurs and an average price 29 nordin modified taylor s specification by demonstrating utility maximizing consumers with perfect information respond to marginal price along with a lump sum income effect associated with intramarginal prices and price schedule breakpoints 24 there is a potential problem in the estimation of demand for goods sold through block rate pricing schemes because of the possibility of correlation between price variables and the error structure 29 there are then two issues associated with the study of demand for goods sold under discrete pricing mechanisms the first issue is whether if consumers are aware of block pricing structures and respond to marginal price and the lump sum income change or rate premium or are aware of only total spending and total consumption and respond to an average price 11 5 9 26 the second issue is the choice of estimating technique 4 14 20 31 25 these two issues are not unrelated since empirical validation of consumer behavior

the value of free water analyzing south africa s free basic water policy this paper analyzes south africa s free basic water policy under which households receive a free water allowance equal to the world health organization s recommended minimum of 6 kiloliters per month i structurally estimate residential water demand evaluate the welfare eects of free water and provide optimal price schedules derived from a social planner s problem i use a unique dataset of monthly metered billing data for 60 000 households for 2002 2008 from a particularly disadvantaged suburb of pretoria the dataset contains rich price variation across 18 dierent nonlinear tarischedules and includes a policy experiment which removed the free allowance i nd that without government subsidy the mean monthly consumption would decrease from 12 6 to 5 6 kiloliters which is below the clean water consumption recommended by the who however it is possible to reallocate the current subsidy to form an optimal tari without a free allowance which would increase welfare while leaving the water provider s revenue unchanged this optimal tariwould also reduce the number of households consuming below the who recommended level

the rebound effect some empirical evidence from india abstract the present paper looks at the effect of technical efficiency gains on energy use in three sectors in india at varying levels of aggregation high positive rebound implies that efficient technology unless supplemented by appropriate pricing policy will not be successful in containing demand however the main purpose of the paper is to focus on the unique mechanism of rebound that may occur in developing countries with unmet demand

fertility and rural electrification in bangladesh we use a household level panel dataset from bangladesh to examine the household level relationship between fertility and the access to electricity we find that the household s access to electricity reduces the change in the number of children by about 0 1 to 0 25 children in a period of five years in most estimates this finding also applies to retrospective panel data and is robust to the choice of covariates and estimation methods our finding passes falsication test and corroborates with the predictions of our theoretical model on the households time use and consumption pattern

the indian auto component industry estimation of operational efficiency and its determinants using dea in this paper the performance analysis of the indian auto component industry is carried out from the perspectives of an original equipment manufacturer and a component supplier various efficiency measures are estimated using data envelopment analysis with publicly available financial data on a representative sample of 50 firms the first stage analysis reveals various operational inefficiencies in the auto component industry which are subsequently decomposed into technical input mix and scale efficiencies the study finds evidence that a majority of the inefficient firms are operating in the diminishing returns to scale region and demonstrates potential savings through benchmark input targets a second stage analysis aimed at exploring root causes of inefficiencies finds that substitution of labour for capital could be causing a variety of inefficiencies including the input mix inefficiency in the indian component industry the empirical results also suggest that unlike the global auto supply chain higher average inventories are required for higher operational efficiencies in the indian context contrary to the popular expectations the technology licensing does not show significant influence on efficiency at least in the short term whereas efficient working capital management does result in higher operational efficiencies the study also unearths the need to reform labour laws which are significantly contributing to various inefficiencies in the indian component industry

the comparative productivity efficiency for global telecoms abstract this paper reconciles diverse efficiency measures to characterize the productivity efficiency of 39 forbes 2000 ranked leading global telecom operators productivity efficiency ratings should be considered as a key element for achieving greater business performance and better market position this study applies the data envelopment analysis dea approach with the classical radial measure a p efficiency measure and efficiency achievement measure respectively combining multiple outputs and inputs to measure the magnitude of performance differences between leading telecom carriers empirical results indicate that top ranked forbes telecom operators are not the same as those having top ranked ccr efficiency measures the results show that about 20 5 of forbes 2000 telecom operators are operating on the best practice frontier for ccr efficiency measure while only 7 7 match the efficiency achievement measure criteria this study also shows that asia pacific telecom operators have better productivity efficiency than those in europe and america but the differences are not significant another interesting find is that the state owned telcos as a group show a relatively higher scoring than the privatized telcos as a group because they maintain full service fixed line mobile and internet operations as compared to maintaining fixed only or mobile only operations except china but the differences are not significant it has been concluded that competition in the global telecom market will continue to be tied to the enhanced productivity efficiency

labour supply in a two period model the effect of a nonlinear progressive income tax earlier studies of labour supply in a life cycle context have typically either neglected taxes completely or represented the income tax by a linear function the present paper studies how the qualitative conclusions of a traditional life cycle model of labour supply are changed when a nonlinear tax is introduced into the model it is shown that the comparative statics results and the characterization of the consumption and labour supply paths depend critically on whether capital and labour income are taxed jointly or separately and on the progressivity nonlinearity of the income tax few of the results valid for a linear income tax carry over to the nonlinear case

labor supply and marital separation panel data are used to estimate the effect of marital separation on labor supply female labor supply increases substantially and male labor supply declines marginally lending support to the theory of specialization within the household the most interesting finding is that women began to increase their labor supply well before the actualsplit occurs suggesting either that shocks to labor supply change divorce probabilities or that women with a higher likelihood of divorcework more this argument is pursued by constructing and estimating a simultaneous model of labor supply and divorce risk copyright 1986 by american economic association

comparing contingent valuation and averting expenditure estimates of the costs of irregular water supply abstract we compare two methods contingent valuation and averting expenditures to measure the demand for improved water reliability in urban jordan traditionally averting expenditures a revealed preference measure have been considered a lower bound for demand relative to contingent valuation a stated preference measure estimates we develop a theoretical model to show that this relationship critically depends on household perceptions in our setting this insight is important because households appear to have relatively low confidence in both the reliability and quality of existing water supplies even though water quality tests suggest that utility water is safe to drink from a microbial perspective averting expenditures which reach 4 of monthly expenditures on average include substantial purchases of non network water sourced from water shops or tankers as well as costs in terms of water collection time storage and in home treatment in contrast the contingent valuation responses while correlated with coping costs reveal low willingness to pay for increases in water reliability from the utility network we attribute this departure from the traditional relationship between averting expenditures and contingent valuation to the lack of household confidence in the quality of utility provided water our study thus adds to previous evidence in the literature which points to the importance of consumer perceptions in determining demand for environmental improvements

rural electrification gender and the labor market a cross country study of india and south africa abstract this cross country study estimates the effect of household electrification on labor market outcomes for rural individuals in india and south africa two developing countries that have implemented large scale rural electrification schemes in recent decades two identification strategies are used propensity score matching and panel fixed effects estimation we focus on three indicators of labor market success employment earnings and hours worked we find that electrification raises the annual incomes earned by those who work in paid employment for both men and women in both countries for india both genders work fewer hours suggesting that electricity raises productivity for south africa where the labor market has less absorptive capacity there is no employment benefit of electrification but women who work benefit the most from the productivity gains of electrification they have greater increases in earnings than men our findings suggest that the benefits of electrification do not accrue universally but rather depend on gender roles supporting policies and the labor absorptive capacity of the economy

efficiency and productivity of the food and beverage listed firms in the pre recession and recessionary periods in greece this study uses data envelopment analysis to examine the liquidity and sales efficiency of the food and beverage listed firms in athens exchange in the period 2006 2012 the liquidity efficiency of the firms is higher than the sales efficiency but the results indicate that there are not statistical significant differences in the rankings estimated by the two models in each period the malmquist productivity index reveals that over the period of the study firms have experienced an annual average increase in productivity of 0 5 a slight progress on examining the components of this productivity change it becomes evident that firms have experienced an annual average of 2 increase in technology combined with a decrease in technical efficiency of 1 5 the results indicate that 52 4 of the firms experienced productivity gains in the examined period and this was mainly the result of technological gain rather than efficiency improvement more than 90 of the firms in the sample shift the efficiency fron

distributional impacts of the self sufficiency project a large literature has been concerned with the impacts of recent welfare reforms on income earnings transfers and labor force attachment while one strand of this literature relies on observational studies conducted with large survey sample data sets a second makes use of data generated by experimental evaluations of changes to means tested programs much of the overall literature has focused on mean impacts in this paper we use random assignment experimental data from canada s self sufficiency project ssp to look at impacts of this unique reform on the distributions of income earnings and transfers ssp offered members of the treatment group a generous subsidy for working full time quantile treatment effect qte estimates show there was considerable heterogeneity in the impacts of ssp on the distributions of earnings transfers and total income this heterogeneity would be missed by looking only at average treatment effects moreover these heterogeneous impacts are consistent with the predictions of labor supply theory during the period when the subsidy is available the ssp impact on the earnings distribution is zero for the bottom half of the distribution the quantiles of the ssp earnings distribution are higher for much of the upper third of the distribution except at the very top where the quantiles of the earnings distribution are the same under either program or possibly lower under ssp further during the period when ssp receipt was possible the impacts on the quantiles of the distributions of transfer payments income assistance plus the subsidy and total income earnings plus transfers are also different at different points of the distribution in particular positive impacts on the quantiles of the transfer distribution are concentrated at the lower end of the transfer distribution while positive impacts on the quantiles of the income distribution are concentrated in the upper end of the income distribution impacts of ssp on these distributions were essentially zero after the subsidy was no longer available

what determines access to piped water in rural areas evidence from small scale supply systems in rural brazil summary this paper investigates whether small scale water supply systems implemented and operated by water user associations increase access to piped water supply in rural brazil by more than systems by local governments starting from 15 to 16 in the year 2000 access rates in rural areas with water user associations increased to 33 4 in 2010 in areas with local government supply systems access rates only increased to 24 9 based on data from brazilian census and the national water and sanitation survey the empirical analysis in this paper shows that the observed difference is effectively due to project type choice additionally it points toward higher accountability as a potential reason for better results of community based projects in municipalities where social groups requested a new system before the local government started implementation and therefore public awareness for the project was higher the increase in access rates is comparable to the increase in municipalities with water user association projects the same is true if local media is present or political competition in local elections is higher as the effect of project type on access rates might be confounded by simultaneous drivers of project type choice and access rates the quantitative analysis is based on a difference in difference estimator in combination with kernel matching to overcome the endogeneity of project type the treatment effect revealed by this analysis is robust to various specification changes and the robustness checks show no structural differences between treatment and control groups that could bias the results the calculation of matching weights for the kernel matching is informed by semi structured interviews with academics and sector experts in brazil explaining the determinants of project choice the interviews highlight the political economy behind infrastructure expansion in rural brazil

an integrated performance evaluation of financial holding companies in taiwan abstract there has been a worldwide trend for financial institutions to become larger in scale and more diversified in scope with taiwan being no exception fourteen financial holding companies fhcs have each begun to function as a management umbrella in taiwan by investing in different types of financial services such as banking insurance and securities this paper focuses on this local financing issue from an integrated methodological perspective by model innovations proposed in several earlier studies for example the efficiency of profitability and marketability are combined to evaluate the fhcs performance to conduct a valid and reliable evaluation process while applying the fhc s case in taiwan we integrate the slacks based measure sbm and slacks based measure of super efficiency super sbm models in order to directly handle the slacks and identify the best performers a new scheme that deals with the negative output data in the sbm super sbm is also introduced inter temporal efficiency change which is decomposed into catch up and frontier shift effects is analyzed by means of the sbm based malmquist index a decision making matrix is also presented to help the fhcs managerial authorities position themselves in the industry the above techniques show with a high degree of consistency that large sized fhcs perform better than small sized ones

evaluating the effects of optimally distributed public programs child health and family planning interventions this paper develops and tests an optimizing model determining the distribution of family planning and health subsidies across heterogeneous households and assesses the biases in cross area estimates of the health effects of such subsidies due to public resource optimization the model incorporates both health externalities and the endogenous response of the size of the recipient population to program subsidies longitudinal data describing child health and publicly provided family planning and health programs in 20 barrios in laguna province in the philippines are used to estimate the effects of such programs on child health and the relationships between the distribution of the programs and preprogram health levels the impact of a program on a particular childs health status is viewed as dependent upon the childs length of exposure to the program a basic feature of the model is the presence of health externalities which is shown to be sufficient along with plausible features of household behavior to make selective subsidization of fertility control either alone or in combination with health investment subsidies pareto efficient the model suggests that subsidization of fertility control is likely to be pareto efficient in the presence of health or human capital externalities when human capital and family size are gross substitutes and or when any per child human capital subsidies may substitute for direct subsidies to health investment and an equalizing distribution of the subsidies the highest family planning subsidies to the lowest health recipient households is efficient when both health and family planning subsidies are used fertility control subsidies minimize the subsidy burden for donors and are highest when total subsidy expenditures per child are greatest