a review of policy analysis purpose and capabilities of electricity system models abstract the aim of this study is to investigate the ability of electricity system models to provide scenario based insights for policy purposes a framework is built from a review of existing studies of model characteristics and their linkages to model scenario types which are linked to the purpose of policy problem analyses the framework can be used as a tool to structure the examination of electricity system models and guide electricity system model selection and enhancement in light of policy problem driven analyses an illustration of the framework is presented by a review of german electricity model scenario studies the review shows that current models are used for the policy purpose of indicator assessment and instrument comparison by quantification of indicators such as monetary or pollution impacts however they are not suitable to provide the means for option reduction problem exploration and political or societal paradigm change exploration as the endogenous model structure for these is missing a particular lack of endogenous treatment was found for renewable technology capacity change and policies learning and productivity growth based technological change socio political technical interactions and limited demonstrated use of uncertainty treatment techniques

modeling technology adoptions for sustainable development under increasing returns uncertainty and heterogeneous agents abstract this paper presents a stylized model of technology adoptions for sustainable development under the three potentially most important stylized facts increasing returns to adoption uncertainty and heterogeneous agents following diverse technology development and adoption strategies the stylized model deals with three technologies and two heterogeneous agents a risk taking one and a risk averse one interactions between the two agents include trade in resources and goods and technological spillover free riding and technology trade with the two heterogeneous agents we run optimizations to minimize their aggregated costs in order to find out what rational behaviors are under different assumptions if the two agents are somehow cooperative by considering uncertain carbon taxes the model also addresses environmental issues as potential driving forces for technology adoptions

optimizing systematic technology adoption with heterogeneous agents the traditional operational optimization models of systematic technology adoption commonly assume the existence of a global social planner and ignore the existence of heterogeneous decision makers who interact with each other this paper develops a stylized or conceptual optimization model of systematic technology adoption with heterogeneous agents i e decision makers and uncertain technological learning each agent attempts to identify optimal solutions to adopting technologies for a portion of the entire system the agents in the model have different foresight and different risk attitudes and interact with one another in terms of technological spillover this paper first illustrates that although a well recalibrated representative model can perform well enough when the interest is placed on aggregate variables it could react to a policy a carbon tax in this paper differently from the multi agent model then this paper explores how the agents heterogeneities and interactions affect the optimal solutions of systematic technology adoption the main findings of the study are that 1 the existence of multiple agents implies a slower adoption of advanced technologies in the entire system than assuming the existence of a global social planner 2 with homogeneous agents technological spillover tends to enhance the lock in effect on previous technologies and 3 with heterogeneous agents even a small technological spillover rate can significantly accelerate the adoption of the advanced technology

foreign aid an instrument for fighting communism abstract in this paper we test the argument that the sizeable reduction in aggregate aid levels in the 1990s was due to the end of the cold war we test two different models using a dynamic econometric specification on a panel of 17 donor countries spanning the years 1970 97 we find aid to be positively related to military expenditures in the former eastern bloc during the cold war but not in the 1990s suggesting that the reductions in aid disbursements are driven by the disappearance of an important motive for aid we also study the effect on aid allocation but here we do not find any robust effects of the end of the cold war

measuring market integration foreign exchange arbitrage and the gold standard 1879 1913 a major question in the literature on the classical gold standard concerns the efficiency of international arbitrage authors have examined efficiency by looking at the spread of the gold points gold point violations or the flow of gold or by tests of various asset market criteria including speculative efficiency and interest arbitrage these studies have suffered from many limitations both methodological and empirical we offer a new methodology for measuring market integration based on nonlinear theoretical models and threshold autoregressions we also compile a new high frequency series of continuous daily data from 1879 to 1913 we can derive reasonable econometric estimates of the implied gold points and price dynamics the changes in these measures over time provide an insight into the evolution of market integration

determinants of the levels and distribution of pl 480 food aid 1955 1979 abstract this paper reports the results of statistical tests of hypotheses related to a number of debates surrounding the determinants of the levels and distribution of us food aid the statistical results supported the following hypotheses 1 pl 480 food aid is influenced by the need of the recipient country 2 pl 480 food aid is tied to political and military concerns of the us 3 pl 480 food aid is influenced by the political party occupying the white house 4 pl 480 food aid and us commercial sales of agricultural commodities are substitutes and 5 pl 480 food aid is inversely related to a recipient s foreign exchange holdings

the domestic determinants of us food aid policy abstract this study presents empirical analysis of us food aid flows as evidence of the strong and stable relationship between commodity producer interests and policy makers during a 35 yr period whereas most foreign aid research centers on the distribution of aid among recipient countries this study focuses on the determinants of the supply of food aid made available by the donor country i conduct time series regression analysis of total us food aid shipments as well as separate analyses of two key commodities wheat and rice several key findings emerge 1 there is a consistent relationship between commodity producer interests and us food aid policy 2 there is a strong relationship between commodity stocks and food aid shipments especially during the years when stocks were the greatest 3 us food aid policy making is highly incremental these findings taken together with the lack of a strong relationship between grain production in poor countries and us food aid shipments belie official rhetoric emphasizing the growing humanitarian objectives of the program over time in the case of rice i find a strong relationship between aid flows and us involvement in the vietnam war

liquidity and contagion the crisis of 1763 the financial crisis that swept across northern europe in 1763 bears a strong resemblance to more recent episodes of financial distress the combination of the specific contractual arrangements at the time interlocking credit relationships and the high leverage of market participants triggered distress sales of assets leading into a severe liquidity crisis hence the crisis is an early instance of contagion on the asset side of the balance sheet we highlight the salient features of the 1763 crisis and propose a stylized model of the events whilst the financial institutions have changed fundamentally in the intervening two hundred or so years the underlying problems appear to be universal

towards a low carbon economy coping with technological bifurcations with a carbon tax abstract technological learning is understood as an endogenous mechanism for the diffusion of advanced clean energy technologies technological learning is quite uncertain previous research showed that an optimization model with uncertain technological learning could generate technological bifurcations various local optimal solutions of technology development strategies with very similar total costs but different environmental impacts with a simplified energy system optimization model this paper explores technological bifurcations and the effect of a carbon tax on the development and diffusion of new energy technologies with a three stage analysis the main findings of this paper are 1 that technological learning instead of its uncertainty is an essential mechanism for technological bifurcations and 2 a carbon tax can reduce carbon emission but not necessarily technological bifurcations an implication from these findings is that with a carbon tax there still could be potential for other policy interventions to reduce carbon emissions without much additional cost

modelling s p 100 volatility the information content of stock returns abstract theoretical models that relate volatility to the quantity of information are extended to a multi asset setting and it is deduced that stock returns may or may not have incremental information when modelling index volatility depending on the sources of information that move stock prices the first empirical study that can help resolve this theoretical uncertainty is presented a detailed analysis of the daily volatility of the s p 100 index from 1984 to 1998 shows there is some incremental volatility information in the returns from the 100 shares that define the index this evidence is obtained from arch models that incorporate leverage effects dummy variables for the 1987 crash and aggregate measures of stock return volatility significant differences between estimated volatilities are found for various stock measures and sub periods

financial and legal constraints to growth does firm size matter using a unique firm level survey database covering 54 countries we investigate the effect of financial legal and corruption problems on firms growth rates whether these factors constrain growth depends on firm size it is consistently the smallest firms that are most constrained financial and institutional development weakens the constraining effects of financial legal and corruption obstacles and it is again the small firms that benefit the most there is only a weak relation between firms perception of the quality of the courts in their country and firm growth we also provide evidence that the corruption of bank officials constrains firm growth

how effectively does multilateral food aid respond to fluctuating needs abstract this paper tests the targeting efficacy of multilateral food aid at the level of nation states exploring whether it stabilizes food availability in recipient economies flows most to those with the greatest need or both we find that unlike bilateral flows from the united states under pl 480 multilateral food aid distribution by the world food programme flows countercyclically thereby stabilizing food availability in recipient economies wfp flows also exhibit significant progressivity at the regional level helping to resolve international inequalities in food availability per capita

bank competition and access to finance international evidence using a unique database for 74 countries and for firms of small medium and large size we assess the effect of banking market structure on the access of firms to bank finance we find that bank concentration increases obstacles to obtaining finance but only in countries with low levels of economic and institutional development a larger share of foreign owned banks and an efficient credit registry dampen the effect of concentration on financing obstacles while the effect is exacerbated by more restrictions on banks activities more government interference in the banking sector and a larger share of government owned banks

domestic monetary transfers and the inland bill of exchange markets in spain 1775 1885 abstract this article studies the monetary transfers system that was created by the short term inland bill of exchange markets for decades this system was the most practical way of channeling the growing volume of transfers which were taking place as a consequence of the growth of the spanish economy this analysis argues that between 1775 and 1885 the markets involved in this activity became progressively more efficient due largely to the multilateralization of the payment system this situation lasted longer in spain than in the rest of europe since spanish banking was initially slower to develop using univariate and multivariate garch models it was possible to conclude that the inland bill of exchange markets constituted an essential monetary instrument and one that faithfully reflects the integration of monetary markets in spain

foreign aid fertility and human capital accumulation this paper analyses the effect of foreign aid on population growth and human capital accumulation consistent with empirical evidence from sub saharan africa the model shows that foreign aid can work against its stated goal of alleviating poverty and promoting growth humanitarian aid fosters population growth and adversely affects the recipients incentive to invest in human capital the analysis suggests that foreign aid may lock a recipient economy in a low equilibrium trap

cointegration and unit roots this paper provides an updated survey of a burgeoning literature on testing estimation and model specification in the presence of integrated variables integrated variables are a specific class of non stationary variables which seem to characterise faithfully the properties of many macroeconomic time series the analysis of cointegration develops out of the existence of unit roots and offers a generic route to test the validity of the equilibrium predictions of economic theories special emphasis is put on the empirical researcher s point of view

the macroeconomic impact of development aid a critical survey the early literature explained aid s macroeconomic impact in the context of the dual gap model showing a clear link between aid and growth many now believe that the empirical evidence shows there to be no such relationship this paper critically reviews the different theoretical perspectives the dual gap model the savings debate recipient fiscal response and aid as dutch disease and the empirical debates on aid savings and growth the basis for denying a relationship between aid and growth is shown to be weak though more recent areas of research offer promising directions for future work

arch models properties estimation and testing abstract the aim of this survey paper is to provide an account of some of the important developments in the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity arch model since its inception in a seminal paper by engle 1982 this model takes account of many observed properties of asset prices and therefore various interpretations can be attributed to it we start with the basic arch models and discuss their different interpretations arch models have been generalized in different directions to accommodate more and more features of the real world we provide a comprehensive treatment of many of the extensions of the original arch model next we discuss estimation and testing for arch models and note that these models lead to some interesting and unique problems there have been numerous applications and we mention some of these as we present different models the paper includes a glossary of the acronyms for the models we describe

adoption of an emerging infrastructure with uncertain technological learning and spatial reconfiguration abstract this paper develops a stylized or conceptual system optimization model to analyze the adoption of an emerging infrastructure associated with uncertain technological learning and spatial reconfigurations the model first assumes that the emerging infrastructure will be implemented for the entire system when it is adopted with the model this paper explores 1 how the emerging infrastructure s initial investment cost technological learning and its uncertainty market size and efficiency influence the adoption of the emerging infrastructure and 2 how the efficiency and investment cost of the associated technology which will be located in a different place with the adoption of the emerging infrastructure influence the adoption of the emerging infrastructure then this paper extends the model and explores whether it is a better solution to implement the emerging infrastructure for part of the distance from resource site to demand site if its efficiency is a function of the implemented distance with optimizations under three types of efficiency dynamics this paper finds that whether the emerging infrastructure should be implemented partly or entirely is not determined by the value of its efficiency but by the dynamics of its efficiency

emission path planning based on dynamic abatement cost curve abstract global climate change is one of the most serious environmental problems that has attracted an unprecedented global attention the scientific community has recognized that human activity is mostly responsible for global climate warming therefore states participating in the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc have initiated a series of negotiations on how to develop their own emission reduction targets however the realization of these targets is at the expense of economic development to a great extent therefore an abatement plan is necessary to decide how and when to implement emission reduction targets a marginal abatement cost curve macc often used as an important quantitative tool to estimate abatement burden or evaluate abatement performance should be considered carefully in this paper we enrich the traditional macc by introducing the concept of an immediate unit marginal abatement cost to describe its intrinsic incremental abatement difficulty this cost is proved to be agreed with the actual situation in many ways and is therefore very suitable for practical use two factor learning curve are considered in the model which can go some way in improving the performance of the revised macc using a parameterization method the original problem can be converted into a tractable nonlinear programming problem we use an algorithm to search for the approximate global optimal solution the effectiveness and the efficiency of the algorithm are discussed respectively in the results we find that the abatement path distinguishes largely under different abatement targets some plausible reasons and policy advices are given

banking currency stock market and debt crises in spain 1850 1995 abstractwhat type of crisis is generated when debt increases we extend the literature by framework by introducing currency and stock market crises in the analysis we apply our proposal to the case of spain since this is a country that has experienced a very important amount of financial crises from the nineteenth century onwards we find the same results as the previous literature for the determinants of banking and debt crises but substituting external and public debt with perpetual debt and where perpetual debt has a less important role than crises in the private sector moreover we find evidence in favour of the hypothesis that currency crises depend strongly and positively on financial centre crises and negatively and mildly on perpetual debt we justify the negative relalionship due to an inflation tax we also find evidence in favour of the hypothesis that stock market crises depend only positively and strongly on financial centre crises

monetary transmission mechanisms in spain the effect of monetization financial deregulation and the ems the paper presents a cointegrated var analysis of monetary transmission mechanisms and changes in them after spain joined the ems in 1989 analyses of long run price homogeneity within the i 2 model turned out to be crucial for understanding the joint behavior of money income and prices the empirical findings point to real monetization effects in the pre ems period and the crucial role of shocks to nominal interest rates in particular to the long term bond rate in addition the paper provides further insights on the macroeconomic effects of joining the ems and financial deregulation the increased economic integration within the eu is shown to have fundamentally changed the dynamics of the conventional is lm transmission mechanism and led to decreased effectiveness of monetary policy

additionality or diversion food aid to eastern europe and the former soviet republics and the implications for developing countries abstract substantial flows of assistance to eastern europe and the former soviet republics fsrs since 1989 have coincided with stagnating flows of official development assistance to developing countries raising concerns about the possible diversion of resources to the former from the latter these concerns are examined empirically for food aid which formed an important component of initial assistance to the region of eastern europe and the fsr using a supply based predictor model measuring diversion in terms of the difference between actual and forecast levels of food aid flows the model indicates that european union eu food aid including commission and member state actions largely involved additional resources there was however progressively greater diversion of us food aid from developing countries the findings are supported by a qualitative examination of the budgetary practices of the us administration and the european commission the two largest providers in financing their food aid to eastern europe and the fsr globally the combination of statistical and budgetary evidence suggests that between 10 12 million tons of cereals food aid or about 20 of shipments was diverted from developing countries to the region between 1989 1990 and 1993 1994

does food aid stabilize food availability this paper explores the empirical relationship between u s food aid flows per capita and nonconcessional food availability per capita in pl 480 recipient economies the evidence suggests pl 480 while modestly progressive in its distribution is if anything procyclical in recipient economies food aid fails to stabilize food availability both increased domestic food production i e agricultural development and commercial trade appear more effective than food aid in advancing food security objectives through the stabilization of food availability per capita in low income economies this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

humanitarian aid fertility and economic growth this paper examines the effect of humanitarian aid on fertility and economic growth in an overlapping generations model where health status in adulthood depends on health in childhood adult agents allocate their time to work leisure and childrearing activities humanitarian aid influences the probability of survival to adulthood health in childhood and the time that adults allocate to childrearing giving rise to an ambiguous effect on both fertility and growth an empirical investigation for the period 1973 2007 suggests that humanitarian aid has on average a zero effect on the rates of fertility and of per capita output growth

models of technology diffusion abstract the literature on new technology diffusion is vast and it spills over many conventional disciplinary boundaries this paper surveys the literature by focusing on alternative explanations of the dominant stylized fact that the usage of new technologies over time typically follows an s curve the most commonly found model which is used to account for this model is the so called epidemic model which builds on the premise that what limits the speed of usage is the lack of information available about the new technology how to use it and what it does the leading alternate model is often called the probit model which follows from the premise that different firms with different goals and abilities are likely to want to adopt the new technology at different times in this model diffusion occurs as firms of different types gradually adopt it there are actually many ways to generate an s curve and the third class of models which we examine are models of density dependence popularized by population ecologists in these models the twin forces of legitimation and competition help to establish new technologies and then ultimately limit their take up finally we look at models in which the initial choice between different variants of the new technology affect the subsequent diffusion speed of the chosen technology such models often rely on information cascades which drive herd like adoption behaviour when a particular variant is finally selected

business cycle fluctuations large macroeconomic shocks and development aid abstract we examine the cyclical properties of development aid using bilateral data for 22 donors and 113 recipients during 1970 2005 we find that bilateral aid flows are on average procyclical with respect to the business cycle in both donor and recipient countries while aid outlays contract sharply during severe downturns in donor countries they rise steeply when aid receiving countries experience large adverse shocks our findings suggest that development aid may play an important cushioning role in developing countries but only during times of severe macroeconomic stress our results are robust to alternate definitions of aid flows specifications and estimation techniques

global horse trading imf loans for votes in the united nations security council we investigate whether temporary members of the united nations security council receive favorable treatment from the international monetary fund imf using panel data for 197 countries over the period from 1951 to 2004 our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary security council membership and participation in imf programs even after accounting for economic political and country specific factors there is also evidence that security council membership reduces the number of conditions included in imf programs imf loans seem to be a mechanism by which the major shareholders of the fund can win favor with voting members of the security council

technology adoption with limited foresight and uncertain technological learning most previous optimization models on technology adoption assume perfect foresight over the long term in reality decision makers do not have perfect foresight and the endogenous driving force of technology adoption is uncertain with a stylized optimization model this paper explores the adoption of a new technology its associated cost dynamics and technological bifurcations with limited foresight and uncertain technological learning the study shows that when modeling with limited foresight and technological learning 1 the longer the length of the decision period the earlier the adoption of a new technology and the value of a foresight can be amplified with a high learning rate however when the decision period is beyond a certain length further extending its length has little influence on adopting the new technology 2 with limited foresight decisions aiming at minimizing the total cost of each decision period will commonly result in a non optimal solution from the perspective of the entire decision horizon and 3 the range of technological bifurcation is much larger than that with perfect foresight but uncertainty in technological learning tends to reduce the range by removing the early adoption paths of a new technology

us food aid and civil conflict we study the effect of us food aid on conflict in recipient countries our analysis exploits time variation in food aid shipments due to changes in us wheat production and cross sectional variation in a country s tendency to receive any us food aid according to our estimates an increase in us food aid increases the incidence and duration of civil conflicts but has no robust effect on interstate conflicts or the onset of civil conflicts we also provide suggestive evidence that the effects are most pronounced in countries with a recent history of civil conflict jel d74 f35 o17 o19 q11 q18 we are unable to determine whether our aid helps or hinders one or more parties to the conflict it is clear that the losses particularly looted assets constitutes a serious barrier to the efficient and effective provision of assistance and can contribute to the war economy this raises a serious challenge for the humanitarian community can humanitarians be accused of fueling or prolonging the conflict in these two countries medecins sans frontieres amsterdam 1

more dollars than sense refining our knowledge of development finance using aiddata summary in this introductory essay to the special issue we introduce a new dataset of foreign assistance aiddata that covers more bilateral and multilateral donors and more types of aid than existing datasets while also improving project level information about the purposes and activities funded by aid we utilize that data to provide a brief overview of important trends in foreign aid contributors to this special issue draw on aiddata as well as other sources to analyze aid transparency new donors not previously described or analyzed aid allocation and aid effectiveness our recurring theme in this introductory essay is that aiddata and these initial academic projects refine rather than revolutionize our understanding of aid the database has added significant numbers of new projects dollar amounts donors and details about those projects though there is much more yet to add we worry that aid debates have been driven by too little information and that many claims are based on limited or very poor evidence rectifying these problems will not be instantaneous refining knowledge takes a lot of time and hard work the common feature of the papers in this special issue is their careful attention to nuance and detail in spite of what some recent authors have claimed aid is neither a simple solution nor a sufficient cause of most problems in developing countries its motivations distribution and effects are complex and shifting capturing this complexity requires detailed data careful thought and sophisticated methods that allow scholars to make conditional causal and descriptive inferences 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

foreign aid and domestic politics voting in congress and the allocation of usaid contracts across congressional districts this paper investigates the relationship between congressional support for foreign aid and the distribution of united states agency for international development usaid contract spending across congressional districts within the united states the extent to which such a relationship matters has become increasingly important in recent years as the end of the cold war and the advent of the republican controlled congress have eroded the traditional base of support for foreign aid we develop a model to illustrate how the distribution of contract spending could be used to increase support for foreign aid but at the expense of development impact in effect trading quality for quantity data on domestic foreign aid contract spending and votes in the 104th congress house of representatives allow us to test whether the geographic distribution of usaid contract spending within the united states is consistent with a systematic attempt to build support for foreign aid in congress econometric results provide little evidence of such attempts apparently because voting on this issue is insensitive to the distribution of contract spending