pro environmental households and energy efficiency in spain the residential building sector is a major driver of current and future energy consumption and associated emissions which can be potentially mitigated through significant energy efficiency ee improvements in both emerging and developed countries yet there are several persistent barriers that hinder the attainment of ee improvements in this area using data from a 2008 national representative survey of spanish households this paper is interested in the determinants of ee related decisions in particular a discrete choice model empirically analyzes whether pro environmental households are more likely to invest in ee and to adopt daily energy saving habits we show that households with eco friendly behaviors are more likely to investment in well differentiated ee measures as well as to steer daily habits towards energy savings however no effects are found for households with environmental attitudes based on stated willingness to pay to protect the environment in addition to this households belonging to higher income groups and education levels are more likely to invest in ee but not to adopt energy saving habits while households with older members are less likely to invest in ee and show fewer eco friendly habits

household preferences of hybrid home heating systems a choice experiment application abstract the residential heating sector presents considerable energy savings potential as numerous heating solutions for reducing electricity consumption and utilizing renewable energy sources are available in the market the aim of this paper is to examine determinants of household heating system choices and to use this information for policy planning purposes this paper investigates residential homeowner attitudes regarding innovative hybrid home heating systems hhhs with choice experiment heating system scenarios are designed to represent the most relevant primary and supplementary heating alternatives currently available in finland the choice sets include six main heating alternatives district heat solid wood wood pellet electric storage heating ground heat pump and exhaust air heat pump that are described by five attributes supplementary heating systems investment costs operating costs comfort of use and environmental friendliness the results imply that hhhss generally appear to be accepted among households however several factors affect perceptions of these technologies the results reveal differing household attitudes toward the main heating alternatives and show that such views are affected by socio demographic characteristics age living environment education etc the results suggest that households view supplementary heating systems especially solar based favorably the other attributes studied also play a significant role in decision making

the sraffian methodenstreit and the revolution in economic theory here i address several questions raised by ajit sinha s book a revolution in economic theory the economics of piero sraffa i focus on the contribution brought by the book and the way in which it is positioned against other contributions especially in what concerns the methodology presupposed in sraffa s contribution within what can be termed a sraffian methodenstreit given the role of theory and history in the controversies surrounding sraffian analysis in so doing i address the geometrical approach advanced by sraffa which is emphasised by sinha in his critique of interpretations of sraffa drawing on the notion of equilibrium i also address the connections between sraffa and ludwig wittgenstein which are discussed by sinha taking into special consideration what wittgenstein saw as sraffa s ethnological or anthropological approach and its implications for the use of sraffa s methodology in economics

china s transition to green energy systems the economics of home solar water heaters and their popularization in dezhou city abstract studying the popularization of solar water heaters swhs is significant for understanding china s transition to green energy systems using dezhou as a case study this paper presents new angles on analyzing swh deployment in china by addressing both the economic potential and the institutional dimensions at the local level using estimates from the demand side of hot water for a typical three person household in dezhou the paper evaluates the economic potential of a swh in saving electricity and reducing carbon dioxide emissions then expanding the analysis beyond economics we take an institutionalist approach to study the institutional factors that contribute to dezhou s success in swh adoptions by examining the five main actors in dezhou s energy regime we find that dezhou s swh deployment is driven by an urge to develop businesses and the local economy and its success results from at least five unique factors including the development of swh industrial clusters in dezhou big manufacturers market leadership in swh innovations a tight private enterprise local government relation geographic location within the swh industrial belt and the adaptive attitude of dezhou s households towards natural resource scarcity

price discrimination through offers to match price in this paper a firm discriminates between two classes of customer who have a different cost of information by coupling a list price with an offer to match the pr ice of any other shop if the list price elsewhere is lower the firm will be successful in discrimination the list price of each firm is increasing in the number of sellers and the total sales are decreasi ng in the number of sellers furthermore if sellers coordinate they discriminate more efficaciously and increase their profits by increa sing their total sales copyright 1987 by the university of chicago

payback period for residential solar water heaters in taiwan abstract taiwan is a leaf shaped island straddling the tropic of cancer with abundant and reliable supply of solar energy under the individual circumstances solar radiation ambient temperature and hot water consumption pattern solar heating could be economically competitive with conventional heating fuels electricity natural gas or liquefied petroleum gas in this context the market of residential solar water heaters swhs in taiwan has been highly developed with subsidy programs offered by the government of taiwan so far next the economic viability of residential swhs is determined by the life cycle savings this study develops a procedure for estimating the payback period of residential swhs in terms of operation cost and effective energy savings over conventional heating fuels a case study in southern taiwan indicates that the increase in daily load volume per area of solar collector installed has a beneficial effect an end user should determine the economically optimal solar collector area of an swh according to the hot water consumption pattern of each household payback period is shorter when the substituted conventional fuel is electricity with the subsidy program an swh is in a favorable situation when compared with an electrical water heater findings of the present study would assist partially system design of residential swhs and help accrue more monetary benefit to the end users

an experimental examination of competitor based price matching guarantees we use experimental methods to demonstrate the anti competitive potential of price matching guarantees in both symmetric and asymmetric cost duopolies our findings establish that when costs are symmetric price matching guarantees significantly increase market prices in markets with cost asymmetries guaranteed prices remain high relative to prices without the use of guarantees but the overall ability of price guarantees to act as a collusion facilitating device becomes contingent on the relative cost difference lesser use of guarantees combined with lower average prices and slower convergence to the collusive level suggest that the mere presence of cost asymmetries may curtail collusive behavior

is there an energy efficiency gap many analysts have argued that energy efficiency investments offer an enormous win win opportunity to both reduce negative externalities and save money this overview paper presents a simple model of investment in energy using capital stock with two types of market failures first uninternalized externalities from energy consumption and second forces such as imperfect information that cause consumers and firms not to exploit privately profitable energy efficiency investments the model clarifies that only if the second type of market failure cannot be addressed directly through mechanisms such as information provision energy efficiency subsidies and standards may be merited this chapter therefore reviews the empirical work on the magnitude of profitable unexploited energy efficiency investments a literature which frequently does not meet modern standards for credibly estimating the net present value of energy cost savings and often leaves other benefits and costs unmeasured these problems notwithstanding recent empirical work in a variety of contexts implies that on average the magnitude of profitable unexploited investment opportunities is much smaller than engineering accounting studies suggest finally there is tremendous opportunity and need for policy relevant research that utilizes randomized controlled trials and quasi experimental techniques to estimate the returns to energy efficiency investments and the welfare effects of energy efficiency programs

green transition of energy systems in rural china national survey evidence of households discrete choices on water heaters abstract energy systems in rural china are experiencing a transition from traditional fossil fuels to renewables this paper aims to investigate the potential factors that influence the choices of rural residents regarding water heaters with a focus on the low carbon transition to solar water heating systems to this end a face to face questionnaire survey is undertaken with 3404 rural households randomly selected among 12 representative provinces a comprehensive set of discrete choice modelling approaches were used the empirical results show that 1 sociodemographic variables have significant effects on residents first stage choice of a water heater to buy or not to buy but few effects on the second stage decision to choose electric lpg or solar water heaters which type to buy 2 information spillover is important to facilitate the usage of water heaters particularly of solar products 3 the electricity price which is regulated at a very low rate has no apparent effect on the choice of solar water heaters 4 government subsidy has a significant effect in the first stage but no differentiated effect on the decision choice in the second stage policy and managerial implications are presented to speed up the ongoing low carbon transition of energy systems in china

on the competitive effects of price matching policies abstract this paper challenges the conventional wisdom that price matching policies lead to supracompetitive prices by reducing firms incentives to undercut rivals i argue that price matching and price beating policies are more appropriately viewed as a means of price discrimination and develop a model that demonstrates their use as such analysis of this model shows that in contrast to the results of the existing literature price matching and price beating may raise or lower equilibrium prices relative to the equilibrium in which firms may not adopt such policies

willingness to pay for renewable energy primary and discretionary choice of british households for micro generation technologies this paper documents the policy context of renewable energy production in the european union the research adopts a choice experiment approach to investigate households wtp for these renewable energy technologies in the uk the micro generation technologies comprise solar photovoltaic micro wind solar thermal heat pumps and biomass boilers and pellet stoves the study compares the results from conditional and mixed logit models which estimate the distribution of utility coefficients and then derives wtp values as a ratio of the attribute coefficient to the price coefficient with a model in which the wtp distribution is estimated directly from utility in the money space the results suggest that whilst renewable energy adoption is significantly valued by households this value is not sufficiently large for the vast majority of households to cover the higher capital costs of micro generation energy technologies

local market of solar water heaters in taiwan review and perspectives for promotion of solar water heaters in taiwan incentive programs were first initiated from 1986 to 1991 and re initiated from 2000 to the present the subsidies create an economic incentive for the end users and have been rather instrumental at the initial stage of each program but lost their significance thereafter to analyze the behavior of the major actors in the local market two questionnaires were developed one was addressed to sales and distribution agents while the other one consisted of person to person interviews with household owners the market driven mechanism is a multi parametric phenomenon other than the capital cost and energy price cost to benefit architectural type of buildings or degree of urbanization and household composition play the major roles in market diffusion

price matching guarantees are price matching guarantees anticompetitive we examine the incentives for price matching guarantees in markets where information about prices is costly the conventional explanation of price matching as facilitating cartel pricing finds some theoretical support but our model provides an additional explanation a price matching guarantee may be a credible and easily understood means of communicating to uninformed consumers that a firm is low priced the credibility of the signal is assured by the behavior of informed consumers we contrast the testable implications of our model with those arising from two theories of price matching as anticompetitive and show that available evidence supports the signalling theory

motivational factors influencing the homeowners decisions between residential heating systems an empirical analysis for germany heating demand accounts for a large fraction of the overall energy demand of private households in germany a better understanding of the adoption and diffusion of energy efficient and renewables based residential heating systems rhs is of high policy relevance particularly against the background of climate change security of energy supply and increasing energy prices in this paper we explore the multi dimensionality of the homeowners motivation to decide between competing rhs a questionnaire survey n 2440 conducted in 2010 among homeowners who had recently installed a rhs provides the empirical foundation principal component analysis shows that 25 items capturing different adoption motivations can be grouped around six dimensions 1 cost aspects 2 general attitude towards the rhs 3 government grant 4 reactions to external threats i e environmental or energy supply security considerations 5 comfort considerations and 6 influence of peers moreover a cluster analysis with the identified motivational factors as segmentation variables reveals three adopter types 1 the convenience oriented 2 the consequences aware and 3 the multilaterally motivated rhs adopter finally we show that the influence of the motivational factors on the adoption decision also differs by certain characteristics of the homeowner and features of the home

real wages in the business cycle and the theory of income distribution an unresolved conflict between theory and facts in mainstream macroeconomics the focus of this article is the recurring tension between mainstream macroeconomics and observed facts in connection with the difficult task of providing explanations of the business cycle consistent both with the traditional theory of income distribution and with the empirical evidence concerning the co movements of real wages and employment over the cycle the attempts to reconcile facts and theory have led to the continuous introduction of specific and arguably ad hoc hypotheses in contrast with the search for greater theoretical rigour claimed by the various streams of macroeconomic modelling subsequent to the neo classical synthesis in addition the specific assumptions introduced in the models or their implications are in turn often contradicted or at best not confirmed by subsequent empirical research it is suggested in the conclusions that the difficulty of keeping together in a simple and consistent framework theory and facts reflects the flawed theoretical foundations of mainstream theory

price match announcements in a consumer search duopoly using a model of sequential search we show that announcements to price match raise prices by altering consumer search behavior first price matching diminishes firms incentives to lower prices to attract consumers who have no search costs second for consumers with positive search costs price matching lowers the marginal benefit of search inducing them to accept higher prices finally price matching can lead to asymmetric equilibria where one firm runs fewer sales and both firms tend to offer smaller discounts than in a symmetric equilibrium price increases grow in the proportion of consumers who invoke price matching guarantees and in the level of equilibrium asymmetry

on the incidence and variety of low price guarantees abstract this paper provides evidence of the incidence and variety of low price guarantees promises to match or beat a rival s price using data obtained from newspaper advertisements in 37 metropolitan areas in the united states we have a total of 515 low price guarantees in our sample we document their features and we infer firms motives and effects from these features the evidence suggests that the majority of low price guarantees are not consistent with their use as a facilitating device because they tend to apply only to rival firms advertised prices or they are associated with high hassle costs the evidence also suggests that price beating and price matching guarantees differ significantly in their features the former are associated with higher hassle costs apply disproportionately to rival firms advertised prices and are more likely to allow postsale search than are price matching guarantees

listen to sraffa s silences a new interpretation of sraffa s production of commodities this paper argues that the received interpretation of sraffa s prices as classical natural prices that would prevail when the system is at the centre of gravitation cannot be retained it offers an alternative interpretation in which sraffa s prices are completely independent of demand considerations or the condition of equilibrium of demand and supply the requirement of the uniform rate of profits in sraffa s price equations is argued to be a logical consequence of the assumption that wages are uniform and fixed from outside the system the paper provides evidence from sraffa s published and unpublished writings to buttress its new interpretation it also provides answers to the major criticisms and questions raised against the new interpretation copyright oxford university press

determinants of households space heating type a discrete choice analysis for german households abstract considering the increasing attention on efficient use of energy it becomes vitally important to understand the energy related behavior of households this article presents empirical evidence on the determinants of the space heating technology applied by a household three sets of variables are examined as potential influences building socio economic and regional characteristics to highlight both the differences and similarities the results are obtained from a sample of house owners and from a sample including all households the influence of socio economic factors is similar across these groups income is found to exert only a minor impact on the system choice dwelling features are significant in determining the heating type particularly in the sample including all households regional effects are important clear differences prevail between east and west germany

oligopolistic pricing with sequential consumer search n identical stores compete by choosing prices for a homogeneous good with constant marginal costs consumers search sequentially with perfect recall for the lowest price one class of consumers called shoppers have zero search costs while all other consumers have a positive search cost c there is a unique symmetric nash equilibrium price distribution with the property that it changes smoothly from marginal cost pricing when all consumers are shoppers and or c 0 and monopoly pricing when no consumers are shoppers remarkably as the number of stores increases the nash equilibrium becomes more monopolistic copyright 1989 by american economic association

review of renewable energy investment and financing in china status mode issues and countermeasures abstract with the support of national policies china s renewable energy generation industry has experienced a rapid development period and entered the world forefront level especially in the aspects of installed capacity and speed of newly installed capacity however with the rapid development of renewable energy the power generation industry is facing more and more challenges particularly in investment and financing as for wind power industry there are also some problems such as single financing channels blindness of projects investment and so on which will result in financing difficulties for some advanced projects in addition the problems for the investment of photovoltaic pv power generation leads to vicious competition and a tumble in international market thus the overcapacity of china s entire pv industry emerges generally speaking the renewable energy industry is facing a seemingly contradictory predicament of funding deficiencies and blind investment which is derived from the government centered renewable energy investment and financing this government centered mode has promoted the development of renewable energy industry in the early stage but it cannot be adapted to the requirements of sustainable development in view of these the problems of renewable energy investment and financing are deeply studied in this paper this paper proceeds as follows firstly the overview of the development of china s renewable energy industry is briefly introduced secondly the status quo of china s renewable energy investment and financing is explored in detail based on overview of the following five perspectives investment situation investment and financing bodies investment and financing means sources of funding and financing channels secondly the patterns and characteristics of renewable energy financing are summarized and a comparative analysis of wind power and photovoltaic power generation financing means is carried out finally renewable energy investment and financing issues are discussed and further feasible proposals are put forward in all this paper is of great significance in the sustainable and healthy development of china s renewable energy

identifying electricity saving potential in rural china empirical evidence from a household survey in recent years there has been a fast growing body of literature examining energy saving potential in relation to electricity however empirical studies focusing on non western nations are limited to fill this gap this study intends to examine the electricity saving potential of rural households in china using a unique data set from the china residential electricity consumption survey crecs in collaboration with the china general social survey cgss conducted nationwide at the household level in rural china we use a stochastic frontier model which allows us to decompose residential electricity consumption into the minimum necessary amount of consumption based on physical characteristics e g house size house age number of televisions or refrigerators and estimate the consumption slack i e the amount of electricity consumption that could be saved which depends on various factors we find that rural households in china are generally efficient in electricity saving and the saving potential is affected by fast information feedback and social demographic characteristics instead of by the averaged electricity price or energy efficiency labelling signals in addition we find no evidence of regional heterogeneity on electricity saving potential for rural households policy implications are derived

piero sraffa and the true object of economics the role of the unpublished manuscripts this special issue is concerned with the work of piero sraffa and with recent developments in its interpretation occasioned by the opening of the sraffa archives in late 1993 1 it brings together some of the contributions to a workshop on this theme that was sponsored by the cambridge journal of economics and held in july 2010 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of piero sraffa s major work production of commodities by means of commodities pcmc the original workshop on new perspectives on the work of piero sraffa was aimed at sraffa scholars who had taken the opportunity to engage with materials in the sraffa archives and who were interested in exploring their potential for revisiting and placing pcmc in the wider context of ongoing debates on economic philosophy economic theory and economic policy as is usually the case not all presentations made at the workshop were advanced for consideration in this special issue nor could all invitees attend heinz kurz as chief editor of the sraffa archives agreed to present his view on the relevance of the sraffa archives to research on sraffa and to comment on contributions at the workshop as well as on their final versions submitted for publication in this special issue kurz s contribution to this special issue was thus written in the short time available between the receipt of final versions and publication deadlines we are indebted to him for his cooperation in the preparation of this special issue we are especially grateful for his patience in the time taken to bring this project to publication this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

non reservation price equilibrium and search without priors we analyse a model of oligopolistic competition in which consumers search without priors consumers do not have prior beliefs about the distribution of prices charged by firms and thus try to use a robust search procedure we show that the optimal stopping rule is stochastic and that for any distribution of search costs there is a unique market equilibrium which is characterised by price dispersion although listed prices approach the monopoly price as the number of firms increases the effective price paid by consumers does not depend on the number of firms

effective price matching a comment abstract corts economic lett 47 1995 417 showed that when allowing for price beating policies in addition to price matching policies the competitive outcome prevails in lieu of monopoly pricing i show by expanding the strategy set further to include effective price strategies the possibility of monopoly pricing is restored

consumer choice on ecologically efficient water heaters marketing strategy and policy implications in japan abstract this study examines how consumers select ecologically efficient water heaters in japan energy conservation in household water heating is increasingly important for reducing an amount of co 2 emission because the share of water heating in household energy consumption is approximately 30 recently japanese households have widely used ecologically efficient electric heat pump water heaters eco cute or gas fired water heaters eco jozu the total number of such efficient water heaters sold in japan was more than 2 5 million at the end of 2008 this study investigates various factors and impacts of marketing strategy for promoting the appliances in japan we apply mixed and nested logit models to a disaggregated choice data on water heaters from 2004 to 2008 this study considers retail energy prices a government financial support and marketing activities as important factors for appliance selection in addition we consider consumers housing attributes such as floor space and age of building this empirical study finds two business implications one of the two implications is that an increase in an energy price may enhance a choice probability of eco cute and eco jozu because a price increase invites consumer s consciousness on energy conservation so that a cost reduction on energy consumption becomes essential in a use of the efficient appliances the other implication is that marketing activities especially by recommendations from sales representatives and or housing suppliers are important for consumer behaviors the other important findings are discussed in this study this business experience in japan is useful to the other countries where ecologically efficient water heaters are not popular at the current moment

sraffa s system equal rate of profits and the notion of center of gravitation abstract this paper argues that the condition of uniform rate of profits in sraffa s system is not based on his implicit assumption that the system is at the equilibrium or the center of gravitation it is rather a logical requirement of a reproducing system of basic goods as long as prices are not imposed from outside the system this condition holds irrespective of supplies being equal to their respective effectual demands it conjectures that sraffa could have arrived at this conclusion through his analysis of the standard system on the basis of this result a critique of the received interpretation led by garegnani of sraffa s prices is developed

on the use of low price guarantees to discourage price cutting abstract this paper formulates a novel test to assess whether and to what extent firms might be using low price guarantees to discourage their rivals from cutting prices the test is based on a comparison of paired observations of advertised prices that are set by competing firms at the same point in time on similar items where one price is set by a firm that has a low price guarantee and the other by a firm that does not have a low price guarantee using data on retail tire prices we find that the majority of paired observations involving firms that have price matching guarantees are consistent with what one would expect if firms were using them to discourage price cutting whereas the majority of paired observations involving firms that have price beating guarantees are not this suggests that price matching and price beating guarantees may be serving different purposes the evidence also suggests that guarantees that apply to advertised prices only may be serving different purposes than guarantees that apply to both advertised and selling prices

subsidy programs on diffusion of solar water heaters taiwan s experience abstract financial incentives are essentially one of the key factors influencing diffusion of solar water heaters in many countries two subsidy programs were initiated by the government of taiwan in 1986 1986 1991 and 2000 2000 present respectively those long term national programs are considered to be the driving force on local market expansion in 2008 the regional subsidy programs for solar water heaters were announced by kaohsiung city and kiemen county which resulted in the growth in sales a revised subsidy was also initiated by the government of taiwan in 2009 the subsidy is 50 more however the tremendous enlargement of market size with a high level ratio of subsidy over total installation cost might result in a negative impact on a sustainable swh industry and long term development of the local market which is associated with system design and post installation service this paper aims to address the relative efficiency and pitfalls of those national and regional programs

interpreting the capitalist order before and after the marginalist revolution in this article i compare the approaches to process and order of classical political economy and marginalist economics taking into account the implicit ontological commitments of each perspective in their explanation of capitalism i draw on the social ontology developed by tony lawson especially the notion of social positioning the classical political economists studied the capitalist economy as a process of reproduction and distribution of the economic surplus where socio economic order depends on the division of society into social classes after the marginal revolution the classical approach is definitely abandoned in a context where the analysis of human institutions in terms of social positions is progressively replaced by methodological individualism this leads to a conception where the notion of socio economic order is interpreted always in terms of market exchange between individuals and in many cases replaced with a concern with the stability of an equilibrium situation

price matching guarantees as a direct signal of low prices if consumers believe that stores offering price matching guarantees pmgs charge low prices high search cost consumers will purchase from pmg stores this leads pmg stores demand to be less pric

on the robustness of the argument that price matching is anti competitive abstract the existing literature suggests that price matching leads to monopoly prices i show that this argument relies on an arbitrary and unrealistic restriction of the firms strategies in particular if firms may adopt price beating policies the competitive outcome prevails

price matching guarantees and consumer search abstract this paper examines the effect of price matching guarantees pmgs on market outcomes in a sequential search model pmgs are simultaneously chosen with prices and some consumers shoppers know the firms decisions before buying while others non shoppers enter a shop before observing the price and whether or not the firm has a pmg in such an environment pmgs increase the value of buying the good and therefore increase consumers reservation prices this increase is so large that even after accounting for the possible execution of pmgs firms profits are larger in an equilibrium where pmgs are offered than in an equilibrium without pmgs we also consider the incentives of firms to choose pmgs and show that an equilibrium where all firms offer pmgs does not exist because of a free riding problem

truly costly sequential search and oligopolistic pricing we modify the paper of stahl 1989 stahl d o 1989 oligopolistic pricing with sequential consumer search american economic review 79 700 12 by relaxing the assumption that consumers obtain the first price quotation for free when all price quotations are costly to obtain the unique symmetric equilibrium need not involve full consumer participation the region of parameters for which non shoppers do not fully participate in the market becomes larger as the number of shoppers decreases and or the number of firms increases the comparative statics properties of this new type of equilibrium are interesting in particular expected price increases as search cost decreases and is constant in the number of shoppers and in the number of firms welfare falls as firms enter the market we show that monopoly pricing never obtains with truly costly search d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

sraffa leontief lange the political economy of input output economics abstract the fields of political economy and input output economics are commonly unrelated due to the discrepancy between the qualitative and quantitative analysis in economic science with the aim to overcome this separation this paper relates the basic model of production of commodities by means of commodities to the paradigm of planning as the substitute for the market by sketching the logical historical development of input output economics the model of sraffa the leontief matrices and the political economy of marxist tradition represented by oskar lange are strongly associated so that the typical qualitative concepts of planning law of value and historical development of the capitalist system can be connected to the quantitative framework of matrix programming and mathematical formalization

a basis for sraffian ecological economics a comment on martins ecosystems strong sustainability and the classical circular economy martins 2016 recently emphasized the role that classical economics can play in building sustainability economics in this respect he uses sraffa s theory of value and sen and nussbaum s capability theory to support his argument my comment focuses on the part of his article concerning sraffa s theory and aims to refine some of martins claims in order to avoid misunderstandings about the possibilities offered by sraffa s theory

on the present state of the capital controversy the post war capital controversy seems to have had two distinguishable stages thanks to the unambiguous phenomena of reswitching and reverse capital deepening the first stage was conclusive in discarding from pure theory the traditional versions of neoclassical theory that relied on the notion of capital as a single quantity subsequently however when the implications of those phenomena took centre stage in the controversy together with the reformulations of the theory which intended to do away with the quantity of capital several misunderstandings prevented i shall contend decisive progress in the analysis and we entered an inconclusive phase of the discussion

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

the neo ricardians focuses on the neoclassical theory of economics in great britain calculation for the standard commodity assumptions of piedro sraffa on the cycle of production functions of the rate of return ebsco

the power industry reform in china 2015 policies evaluations and solutions abstract more than a decade ago in china s electric power industry the investment for generation side and power grids was inadequate and the gap between power supply and demand kept enlarging in order to relief the problems above power industry reform has been carried out in 2002 under the guidance of no 5 document by the central government the reform in 2002 has made a series of achievements including the enhancement of operation efficiency of power industry and the fulfillment of power demand all over the country during the past decade as the rapid development of the society and economy the external environment of china s power industry has changed greatly however the pricing and planning mechanism of china s power industry still operates following the requirements of no 5 document this has led to a number of problems including twisted pricing mechanism irrational power system planning inefficient utilization of renewable energy and so on these problems have not only hindered the development of power industry in china for quite a long time but also brought negative influence on the business operation of upstream and downstream industries therefore chinese government has issued no 9 document in 2015 and launched a new round of power industry reform policies were carried out to form new pricing mechanism new policies about renewable energy generation and power system planning process to solve the problems mentioned above this paper has reviewed the history of reform in 2002 and summarized the existing problems of china s power industry besides the main policies of no 9 document were deeply analyzed and their significance as well as backwards were illustrated at last solutions were proposed accordingly and these solutions have considerable theoretical and practical significance to china s electric power industry reform in the future

research note consumer heterogeneity and competitive price matching guarantees price matching guarantees are widely used in consumer and industrial markets previous studies argue that they are a marketing tactic that facilitates implicit price collusion this is because once a store adopts this marketing tactic its rivals can no longer steal its customers by undercutting its price and hence they have little incentive to initiate price cuts while a store with price matching guarantees has no fear of losing customers to rivals price cuts it has every incentive to raise its own price to charge a higher price to its loyal consumers a growing body of legal literature uses this argument today to justify calls for antitrust actions against stores employing this marketing tactic however this theoretical conclusion baffles practitioners and industry experts in practice sellers typically embrace this marketing tactic in response to heavier competition and a growing bargain consciousness among shoppers the introduction of price matching guarantees by a store is frequently interpreted by industry observers as the initiation of a price war rather than a signal of price collusion this assertion is supported in many instances by the fact that stores that introduce price matching guarantees also roll back their prices and typically suffer subsequent loss of profits most ironically the favorite examples used by researchers to illustrate how price matching guarantees can enforce price collusion crazy eddie and nobody beats the wiz have subsequently either gone bankrupt or filed for federal bankruptcy protection in this study we show that price matching guarantees can indeed facilitate competition the expected prices and profits can be strictly lower when all stores adopt price matching guarantees than when they are not allowed to this is because the adoption of price matching guarantees generates not only a competition dampening effect which has been recognized in the literature but also a competition enhancing effect this latter effect comes from the fact that price matching guarantees encourage price search by those consumers who prefer to shop at a particular store but are mindful of saving opportunities these consumers will have incentives to obtain the rival store s price when their favorite store offers price matching guarantees to avail themselves of the lowest possible price at their favorite store as a result price matching guarantees reduce the number of purchases at the store from those consumers who would have paid the full price and thus prompt a store to price more aggressively to bid for more incremental sales this competition enhancing effect can more than offset the competition dampening effect in markets where consumers differ in their price search costs and store loyalty thus our study casts doubt on the advisability of blanket prohibition on price matching guarantees our argument relies only on consumer segmentation and on the phenomenon of periodic sales both of which are common in retail markets we arrive at our conclusion by incorporating bargain shoppers and opportunistic loyals into the standard sales promotion models in contrast the past literature on price matching guarantees ignores the ubiquitous phenomenon of sales in retail markets and overlooks those consumers who prefer to shop at a particular store but are alert to saving opportunities as a result it is troubled by two awkward conclusions on the one hand price matching guarantees simply remove rivals incentives to undercut in price and hence also their incentives to run sales this implies that the adoption of price matching guarantees in a market will eliminate the phenomenon of sales which is obviously counterfactual on the other hand in equilibrium no consumer actually invokes price matching guarantees as each player has incentives to close any price gap in the market this is obviously false based on our casual observations and our conversations with store managers theoretical research on the subject thus far has been overwhelmingly one sided and empirical or experimental studies are conspicuously lacking we hope that our conclusion will spark further research in both directions a healthy debate will broaden our perspective on an issue of great importance in formulating public policies and in managerial decision making

the influence of rebate programs on the demand for water heaters the case of new south wales this paper examines the role of australian hot water system rebate programs in shifting the existing stock of electric water heaters toward more climate friendly versions using two unique data sets from new south wales homeowners the first data set is based on a survey of households who recently purchased a water heater before and after the rebate programs were in place the other is based on a set of stated preference questions asked of households soon to face a replacement decision while the former allows us to look at recent responses the latter enables us to forecast future demand we find that the programs significantly increase shares of solar heat pump systems the programs however appear less effective in reducing the stock of electric heaters for households with access to natural gas this pattern is consistent in both datasets results from the discrete choice experiments suggest considerable heterogeneity with respect to household preferences toward different types of water heaters and the discount rates they hold the effective cost of reducing carbon emissions via incentives for water heater replacement is considered from the counterfactual perspective of no government incentives