the renewables portfolio standard in texas an early assessment texas has rapidly emerged as one of the leading wind power markets in the united states this development can be largely traced to a well designed and carefully implemented renewables portfolio standard rps the rps is a new policy mechanism that has received increasing attention as an attractive approach to support renewable power generation though replacing existing renewable energy policies with an as of yet untested approach in the rps is risky early experience from texas suggests that an rps can effectively spur renewables development and encourage competition among renewable energy producers initial rps targets in texas were well exceeded by the end of 2001 with 915 mw of wind installed in that year alone rps compliance costs appear negligible with new wind projects reportedly contracted for well under 3 us cent k wh in part as a result of a 1 7 us cent kwh production tax credit an outstanding wind resource and an rps that is sizable enough to drive project economies of scale obliged retail suppliers have been willing to enter into long term contracts with renewable generators reducing important risks for both the developer and the retail supplier finally the country s first comprehensive renewable energy certificate program has been put into place to monitor and track rps compliance c 2002 published by elsevier science ltd less

the effects of prior beliefs and learning on consumers acceptance of genetically modified foods abstract new food products using genetically modified crops appeared in u s supermarkets starting in 1996 and consumers perceived some risks this paper examines the role of consumers prior beliefs about genetic modification and of diverse new information on their willingness to pay for foods that might be genetically modified we use data from economics experiments and show that participants who had informed prior beliefs discounted gm labeled food products more highly than those who had uninformed prior beliefs uninformed participants were especially susceptible to information from interested and third parties in contrast informed participants were generally not affected significantly by new information

from demonstration to deployment an economic analysis of support policies for carbon capture and storage abstract this paper argues that an integrated policy architecture consisting of multiple policy phases and economic instruments is needed to support the development of carbon capture and storage ccs from its present demonstration phase to full scale deployment building on an analysis of the different types of policy instruments to correct market failures specific to ccs in its various stages of development we suggest a way to combine these into an integrated policy architecture this policy architecture adapts to the need of a maturing technology meets the requirement of policymakers to maintain flexibility to respond to changing circumstances while providing investors with the policy certainty that is needed to encourage private sector investment this combination of flexibility and predictability is achieved through the use of policy gateways which explicitly define rules and criteria for when and how policy settings will change our findings extend to bioenergy based ccs applications beccs which could potentially achieve negative emissions we argue that within a framework of correcting the carbon externality the added environmental benefits of beccs should be reflected in an extra incentive

inflation and currency reform expectations of currency reform are explicitly incorporated into a rational expectations version of the cagan model of money market equilibrium where expectations about the timing of reform are lerived from a simple government rule for choosing when to reform the currency the model is estimated for three of the episodes of hyperinflation that cagan investigated and the results support the hypothesis that expectations of reform were responsible for the apparent instability of the demand for money during the final months of these hyperinflations

renewables portfolio standard a means for trade with electricity from renewable energy sources abstract this paper discusses the main support mechanisms for enhancing the deployment of renewable energies re implemented in different industrialised countries the focus is on the electricity sector where deregulation and liberalisation has led to market opening and introduction of competition in the formerly strongly regulated power market under open market conditions price regulation mechanisms in favour of renewable energies which were used by many governments to support renewables tend to be considered as being inappropriate because they lead to distortions in competition and are difficult to abolish once market participants got used to them therefore the idea of creating a demand for re instead of supporting supply is gradually spreading this paper concentrates on the renewables portfolio standard rps which is a considerably new instrument that is aimed on the demand side and has only recently entered discussion it is based on legislatively mandating a percentage share of electricity generated from renewables and proved with certificates before this new means is discussed in more detail a short overview of the existing supply side mechanism is given to point out the different approach in addition examples of some countries already having some experience with the rps are given to show the present status of implementation derived from these theoretical considerations and practical experiences the paper discusses possible impacts on market participants they depend strongly on the outline of the rps and the organisation of the electricity sector adopted as a conclusion the introduction of an rps cannot alone solve the problem of enhancing the use of re however the advantages are a higher degree of competition among generators or developers of re technology more freedom of choice concerning the options for meeting the requirement and perhaps less government expenditures also experiences with national certificate trading within the rps system could ease the way for international or at least european trading systems like the emissions trading as proposed in the kyoto protocol

food beliefs and food supply chains the impact of religion and religiosity in israel abstract this paper demonstrates that religion and religiosity affect norms which affect food consumption patterns and production heterogeneity and asymmetric information lead to multiple certification channels as well as multiple supply chains major supply chains may address multiple constituencies that are secular or less religious technological change affects norms and thus the food system we obtain these results by analyzing the food systems for meat products in israel where there are three religions jews muslims and christians and people assign themselves three levels of religiosity secular conservative and orthodox israel has multiple kosher and halal certifiers and several specialized supermarket chains for orthodox groups its main supermarket chains serve secular and some conservative segments the immigration of secular jews from russia led to the proliferation of non kosher supply chains and products and increased consumption of pork new technologies and higher incomes led to emergence of fast food chains serving orthodox jews that had previously tended to eat at home

distance decay in the willingness to pay for wine disentangling local and organic attributes this paper investigates how the residents of a french wine producing region value the attributes of wine we elicit the willingness to pay wtp for organic non organic and local non local wines with increasing levels of information on the impact of agricultural practices at both global and local scales the analysis shows that there is a significant organic premium associated with both local and non local wines this organic premium significantly increases with information and significantly decreases with the distance between the consumer s home and the vineyard based on the econometric predictions of the wtp we show that a per unit tax on non organic wines or a standard imposing organic practices increases welfare through the internalization of the attributes revealed by the experiment

global bifurcations credit rationing and recurrent hyperinflations abstract this paper proposes an alternative explanation to recurrent hyperinflations other than bounded rationality by explicitly considering the global dynamics of an economy with credit market frictions in this paper we show that hyperinflations are self generated and are manifestations of the underlying global dynamic properties of an economy with perfect foresight rational agents that face credit rationing moreover we find that economies that are more credit constrained are more likely to experience recurrent hyperinflations

effects and value of verifiable information in a controversial market evidence from lab auctions of genetically modified food food products containing genetically modified gm ingredients have entered the market over the past decade the biotech industry and environmental groups have disseminated conflicting private information about gm foods this paper develops a unique methodology for valuing independent third party information in such a setting and applies this method to consumers willingness to pay for food products that might be gm data are collected from real consumers in an auction market setting with randomized information and labeling treatments the average value of third party information per lab participant is small but the public good value across u s consumers is shown to be quite large jel c91 d12 d82

green electricity market development lessons from europe and the us this study compares the development and implementation of green electricity policies in germany the netherlands sweden and the united states a set of countries applying a range of policy instruments to encourage electricity from renewable energy sources a general tendency is identified that policies shift emphasis from r d stimulation towards dissemination and market application of renewable energy technologies we argue that in light of the long term nature of policy goals on energy security mitigation of climate change and environmental protection the applied range of policy instruments may be lacking in providing incentives for the long term development of new technologies clarifying policy objectives would allow careful selection of policy instruments including support for r d improved capacity building for policy implementation is also important

health information and diet choices results from a cheese experiment abstract this study reports results from a choice experiment on semi hard cheese from norway about half of the 408 participants were exposed to diet related health information before performing either a choice or a ranking task while a control group did not receive such information the effects of health information on marginal willingness to pay for low saturated fat low fat and organic cheese are analyzed using rank ordered mixed logit models cheese preferences are clearly affected by exposure to health information on average the health information group is willing to pay a price premium of 27 2 nok 24 5 per kg for low saturated fat cheese and 14 4 nok 13 0 per kg for low fat cheese this is respectively 1 73 and 2 89 times more than corresponding price premiums in the control group non college medium high income age 50 70 and female participants are more clearly affected by health information than college low income age 30 49 and male participants subjective statements on diet health knowledge and awareness are used to discuss these findings our results suggest that provision of health information is likely to reduce educational differences in diet health knowledge and thus dietary behavior low income participants seem to be constrained by high food prices but not by lack of knowledge or awareness finally due to lack of diet health awareness reaching out to young people and particularly males through health information policies seems difficult

assets general equilibrium and the neutrality of money when government liabilities including money are held in private portfolios only as stores of value and do not provide additional services such as liquidity real variables are not affected by changes in the money supply due to the government s trading in real assets open market operations this neutrality of monetary policy fails if the government either trades in nominal assets or it distributes subsidies and levies taxes the ability of monetary policy to affect real variables is an important issue and has been the subject of numerous theoretical and empirical studies the most useful theoretical framework within which to address the problem is a model of asset markets where the demand for money or other government liabilities is determined by rational portfolio choice tobin 1958 these assets may of course provide additional services such as transactions and liquidity we assume here however that these services do not exist the standard argument for the effectiveness of monetary policy goes as follows changes in the supply of money affect the price level and hence the distribution of returns to money as an asset as individuals realign their portfolios and prices adjust to maintain market clearing the equilibrium holdings of physical assets change in this case money is not neutral we shall argue however that as long as changes in the supply of money are effected through the government s trading in real assets this argument is in general not valid it is well known that the effectiveness of monetary policy depends on the method of injection of new money into the economy two procedures are used by the government to effect changes in the supply of money it either trades in assets nominal or real open market operations or it distributes subsidies and levies taxes we show here that open market operations in real assets capital or indexed bonds have no effects on real variables in a general equilibrium model with market clearing the argument which can also be applied to the management of the public debt is presented in a most general framework in the next section it does not depend on the existence of a complete system of contingent securities or on an operative bequest motive furthermore it is compatible with incomplete and differential information the result is similar to the modigliani miller theorem in corporate finance that an argument along these lines can be employed to demonstrate the irrelevance of open

insider power unemployment dynamics and multiple inflation equilibria this paper incorporates employment dynamics due to insider power into the barro gordon theory of inflation unlike in the static barro gordon case and even though our infinitehorizon model is linear quadratic there can be two markov perfect equilibria so that the same unemployment may correspond to either low or high inflation both equilibrium inflation rates measured per unit of the gap between the insiders and government s employment targets are higher than the corresponding rate in the static case the low inflation equilibrium has intuitive comparative statics properties in that inflation is increasing in insider power and the discount factor but the high inflation equilibrium behaves in the opposite way the highinflation equilibrium can be eliminated by a future precommitment to a fixed inflation regime e g erm but only if this precommitment can be made with certainty contrary to the static model inflation may be lower when the union puts a positive weight on a wage target than when it cares only about employment even when this wage target is consistent with a lower employment level than the employment target

seigniorage and the welfare cost of inflation abstract this paper empirically investigates the restrictions embodied in a sidrauski type model for the cross relations between consumption money holdings inflation and assets returns using quarterly data for the high inflation economy in israel 1970 1988 using a set of the estimated parameters it is shown that the model s implications for seigniorage are quite different than those from a cagan type model that is while the model is able to account for the observed stability of the seigniorage gnp ratio a cagan type model predicts a laffer curve for seigniorage the estimates also imply sizeable welfare costs of inflation

is the choice of renewable portfolio standards random this study investigated factors influencing the adoption or intention to adopt renewable portfolio standards rps by individual states in the united states u s theory of adoption of innovation was applied as a conceptual framework a logistic model was used to achieve the task gross state product gsp growth rate of population grp political party dominancy education level natural resources expenditure and share of coal in electricity generation were used as explanatory variables results indicated that the model predicts the dependent variable state s choice of adopting or not adopting rps 82 times correctly out of 100 results also suggested that education followed by political party dominancy gsp and grp are shown to have large impacts on the probability of rps adoption

how do consumers in developed countries value the environment and workers social rights in developing countries this paper uses a lab experiment to investigate developed countries consumer valuations of characteristics linked to the environment and workers social rights in developing countries it focuses on seafood products and distinguishes between regular environmentally friendly and fair trade varieties consumer valuations are elicited with a multiple price list results show that environmental and social labels have similar effects on participant willingness to pay when they are first presented using welfare variation coming from the labels we also show that the absence of negative information linked to the regular variety may lead to an underestimation of the value of information associated with the label

the renewable portfolio standard design considerations and an implementation survey renewables have social and environmental bene ts compared to conventional electricity sources but are rarely competitive on a strict nancial cost basis this is because conventional sources are sometimes subsidized their full pollution costs are ignored and renewables involve newer higher cost technologies whose relative costs will fall with commercialization governments use several mechanisms to support renewables including direct nancial support grants loans indirect support r d demonstrations reform of nancial costs of conventional sources subsidy removal pollution taxes and the renewable portfolio standard rps the rps requires a minimum share of electricity from renewable energy sources its use is spreading because it maintains an incentive for renewable producers to reduce costs links the regulated market outcome to an environmental target and reduces government involvement although it is too early to evaluate fully its e ectiveness the survey for this study explored implementation issues in three european countries nine us states and australia and found the following the rps target is usually set to have environmental bene ts without causing signi cant price increases cost caps are sometimes used most jurisdictions limit eligibility to gridconnected domestic renewables the rps is usually applied to producers rather than consumers and to energy output not capacity flexibility mechanisms are desired but a challenge to implement administration in the us and australia is by government with delegation to independent utility regulators while in europe it is more the responsibility of government everywhere the rps is applied alongside other mechanisms of renewables support 2001 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

universal health insurance in the clinton plan coverage as a tax financed public good the financing arrangements embodied in the clinton health reform plan involve some important differences in the way in which public goods are usually financed the subsidies to small low wage firms mandated to provide benefits distort markets in both labor and products and offer incentives for the creation of small firms in addition the financing scheme implicitly envisions a head tax on families at modest income levels but offers a possible rationale for it nevertheless the main reason for many of the financing features appears to be an attempt to hold down the apparent budgetary cost of universal coverage

estimating the public value of conflicting information the case of genetically modified foods environmental groups have be food products other than those that norcome the chief antagonists toward agricultural bio mally carry allergens see friends of the technology innovations they demonstrate and dis earth 2001 greenpeace international 2001 seminate private information with the objective of through press releases web sites and pro changing the behavior of consumers and productests environmental ers we use experimental auctions with adult u s groups have been succonsumers and show that this information reduces cessful at publicizing their negative views significantly the demand for genetically modified on gm foods and affecting consumers and gm food products and that it has significant producer s behavior 2 public good value an average of 3 cents per prod environmental groups share the costs uct purchased or roughly 2 billion annually we of producing negative gm information 3 also show that the dissemination of independent third party information about agricultural biotech their members benefit collectively from nology dissipatesmost of the public good value of reductions in demand for gm products negative gm product information

do institutions really matter taxation in industrialized democracies new institutionalism has emerged as one of the most prominent research agendas in the field of comparative politics political economy and public policy this article examines the role of institutional variation in political economic regimes in shaping tax burdens in industrialized democracies an institutionalist model for tax policy variation is tested across the organization for economic cooperation and development oecd democracies countries are conceptualized and statistically modeled in terms of majoritarian shifting coalition and dominant coalition governments regression analysis and cluster analysis are used to statistically model crossnational tax burdens relative to the strength of labor organization and party dominance in parliament this study finds that political and economic institutions are important in explaining tax policy variation specifying the structure of political and economic institutions helps to explain the size of the state in modern capitalist democracies this article specifies and demonstrates which institutions matter and how much they matter

alarmist decisions with divergent risk information receipt of multiple sources of risk information ideally should foster sounder decisions under uncertainty this paper s original survey results for environmental risks suggest that the learning process is reasonable in many respects bur it does not accord with a rational bayesian learning model divergent risk assessments from different sources produce extreme violations of rationality as there is inordinate weight on the high risk assessment this alarmist reaction holds for both government and industry information sources this phenomenon may account for the commonly observed phenomenon of public overreaction to highly publicised risks

comparing open ended choice experiments and experimental auctions an application to golden rice we use two experimental valuation methods to estimate consumer demand for genetically modified golden rice the first is an open ended choice experiment oece where participants name the quantities of golden rice and conventional rice demanded at each of several price combinations one of which will be randomly chosen as binding this allows us to estimate market demand by aggregating demand across participants this estimate of market demand also allows us to estimate own price elasticity and consumer surplus for golden rice comparing willingness to pay wtp estimates from the oece with those from a uniform price auction we find that oece wtp estimates exhibit less affiliation across rounds and the effects of positive and negative information under the oece are more consistent with prior expectations and existing studies we also find that while auction wtp estimates more than double across five rounds oece wtp estimates are stable across rounds and are always roughly equal to those from the final auction round

the economic value to smokers of graphic warning labels on cigarettes evidence from combining market and experimental auction data abstract many countries now require prominent pictorial health warning labels hwls on the front and back of cigarette packages in the us pictorial hwls have been adopted but tobacco industry litigation has delayed their implementation this intervention could have value to smokers if it increases their information and changes their smoking behavior in this paper we estimate the value of two different health warning labels for cigarette packages relative to the current us labeling policy our methodology does not depend on the personal values of policy makers or other individuals as the value of information estimates we derive are based solely on smokers own consumption choices not any public health or other effects we introduce an approach to valuing information with a surplus measure that couples willingness to pay from non hypothetical experimental auctions with time series revealed preference demand estimates we find that a pictorial hwl has a large value to smokers and a higher value than a label that only contains text insofar as changing purchase behavior

information and consumer willingness to pay for biofortified yellow cassava evidence from experimental auctions in nigeria in this article we use the becker degroot marschak mechanism to estimate consumer demand for biofortified yellow cassava varieties in two states of nigeria imo in the southeast and oyo in the southwest these two states exhibit distinct habitual product color preferences for staple food made with cassava we estimate the effect of nutrition information campaigns and nature of planting material delivery institutions on consumer demand willingness to pay estimations account for the effect of product endowment censoring in bids and nonpayment in oyo consumers are willing to pay a premium for light yellow cassava variety even in the absence of nutrition information the article finds that nutrition information results in a large and significant price premium for biofortified cassava in both states and the nature of delivery institution has no significant effect

what is it about organic milk an experimental analysis auction experiments were used to examine demand relationships and willingness to pay wtp for organic rbst free no antibiotics used and conventional milk elasticities showed strong substitute and complement relationships between organic rbst free and no antibiotics varieties the sum of the latter two s premiums were not significantly different than the organic premium suggesting diminishing marginal utility for added attributes results from a two stage heteroskedastic tobit model demonstrated that wtp premiums for the varieties differ significantly by demographics and beliefs regarding the conventional version these suggest market segments for rbst free and no antibiotics versions could succeed alongside organic benefiting consumers and producers copyright 2007 oxford university press

a split sample revealed and stated preference demand model to examine homogenous subgroup consumer behavior responses to information and food safety technology treatments the combination and joint estimation of revealed and stated preference rp sp data approach to examining consumer preferences to relevant policy based measures typically fail to account for heterogeneity in the data by considering behavior of the average individual however in policy based analyses where the research is often driven by understanding how different individuals react to different or similar scenarios a preferred approach would be to analyze preferences of homogenous population subgroups we accomplish this by developing a split sample rp sp analysis that examines whether homogenous subgroups of the population based on individual health and behavioral characteristics respond differently to health risk information and new food safety technology the ongoing efforts by the us food and drug administration fda to reduce illness and death associated with consuming raw gulf of mexico oysters provide an ideal platform for the analysis as the health risks only relate to a very specific consumer subgroup results from split sample demand models indicate that educational information treatments cause vulnerable at risk consumers to reduce their oyster demand implying that a more structured approach to disseminating the brochures to the at risk population could have the desired result of reducing annual illness levels also findings across all subgroups provide strong empirical evidence that the new fda policy requiring processing technology to be used in oyster production will have a detrimental effect on the oyster industry

stochastic inflation and government provision of indexed bonds abstract this paper examines the consequences of using indexed bonds as one of the government financing instruments along with money and taxes it is shown that open market operations between money and indexed bonds do not matter in a real sense despite their different risk characteristics increasing the share of indexed bonds in the government portfolio increases the volatility and the conditional mean of real rates of return on money when provided by means other than open market operations indexed bonds can affect the allocation of resources but these reallocations cannot be pareto improving

policies and market factors driving wind power development in the united states abstract in the united states there has been substantial recent growth in wind energy generating capacity with growth averaging 24 percent annually during the past five years about 1700 mw of wind energy capacity was installed in 2001 while another 410 mw became operational in 2002 during 2003 development activity has remained strong with an estimated 1600 mw of capacity installed with this growth an increasing number of states are experiencing investment in wind energy projects currently about half of all states host at least one wind power project this paper explores the key factors at play in the 12 states in which a substantial amount of wind energy capacity has been developed or planned some of the factors that are examined include policy drivers such as renewable portfolio standards rps federal and state financial incentives as well as market drivers such as consumer demand for green power natural gas price volatility and wholesale market rules

the structure of technology in a multioutput branch banking firm we formulate and estimate a multioutput bank s cost function amenable for distinguishing between economies of scale and economies of network density we find significant returns to network density especially for smaller banks diseconomies of scale are found for the larger banks whereas the hypothesis of constant returns to scale could not be rejected for the smaller banks

european co2 prices and carbon capture investments we assess the option to install a carbon capture and storage ccs unit in a coal fired power plant operating in a carbon constrained environment we consider two sources of risk namely the price of emission allowance and the price of the electricity output first we analyse the performance of the eu market for co2 emission allowances specifically we focus on the contracts maturing in the kyoto protocol s first commitment period 2008 to 2012 and calibrate the underlying parameters of the allowance price process then we refer to the spanish wholesale electricity market and calibrate the parameters of the electricity price process we use a two dimensional binomial lattice to derive the optimal investment rule in particular we obtain the trigger allowance prices above which it is optimal to install the capture unit immediately we further analyse the effect of changes in several variables on these critical prices among them allowance price volatility and a hypothetical government subsidy we conclude that at current permit prices immediate installation does not seem justified from a financial point of view this need not be the case though if carbon market parameters change dramatically carbon capture technology undergoes significant improvements and or a specific governmental policy to promote these units is adopted

money and interest in a cash in advance economy the authors analyze an aggregative general equilibrium model in which the use of money is motivated by a cash in advance constraint applied to purchases of a subset of consumption goods the system is subject to both real and monetary shocks which are economy wide and observed by all they develop methods for verifying the existence of characterizing and explicitly calculating equilibria copyright 1987 by the econometric society

mandatory versus voluntary labelling of genetically modified food evidence from an economic experiment opponents of the voluntary labelling scheme for genetically modified gm food products often argue that consumers have the right to know and therefore advocate mandatory labelling in this article we argue against this line of reasoning using experimental auctions we show that the quality of the signal generated by a mandatory labelling scheme is affected by the number of labels in the market if there are two labels one for gm products and one for non gm products mandatory and voluntary labelling schemes generate a similar degree of uncertainty about the quality of products that do not carry a label

why is south korea s renewable energy policy failing a qualitative evaluation abstract this study explores the causes of the south korean government s failure to successfully deploy its renewable energy policy despite the south korean government s ongoing efforts since 2002 to promote the deployment of renewable energy the established deployment target has not been met and the share of renewable energy supply in total primary energy supply is poor compared to peer countries with a similar level of economic development therefore we attempt to find the causes of this policy failure using qualitative evaluation methods through the analyses conducted using focused interviews and secondary data we found that the domination of the fossil fuel and nuclear power industry s interests inconsistent policy shifts policy design that lacks sufficient support schemes poorly coordinated government activities and unsystemic and untimely monitoring and feedback have led to the failure of renewable energy deployment policies in south korea to overcome these problems we suggest that the south korean government should set more ambitious policy goals establish a new independent organization that focuses on energy policy issues use a varied policy mix and secure political support from diverse policy actors

off shore enhanced oil recovery in the north sea the impact of price uncertainty on the investment decisions although co2 capture and storage ccs is considered a key solution for co2 emission mitigation it is currently not economically feasible co2 enhanced oil recovery can play a significant role in stimulating ccs deployment because co2 is used to extract additional quantities of oil this study analyzes the investment decision of both a carbon emitting source and an oil company separately by adopting a real options approach it is shown that when uncertainty is integrated in the economic analysis co2 and oil price threshold levels at which investments in co2 capture and enhanced oil recovery will take place are higher than when a net present value approach is adopted we also demonstrate that a tax on co2 instead of an emission trading system results in a lower investment threshold level for the investment in the co2 capture unit furthermore we determine a minimum co2 selling price between the two firms and show that co2 eor has the potential to pull ccs into the market by providing an additional revenue on the capture plant however when co2 permit prices are above an identifiable level the eu ets does not necessarily result in the adoption of ccs and stimulates oil production

cost effectiveness of renewable electricity policies we analyze policies to promote renewable sources of electricity a portfolio standard rps raises electricity prices and primarily reduces gas fired generation a knee of the cost curve exists between 15 and 20 goals for 2020 in our central case and higher natural gas prices lower the cost of greater reliance on renewables a renewable energy production tax credit lowers electricity price at the expense of taxpayers which limits its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions and it is less cost effective at increasing renewables than a portfolio standard neither policy is as cost effective as a cap and trade policy for achieving carbon emission reductions

the dynamics of inflation with constant deficit under expected regime change a model that describes the dynamics of inflation with a fully anticipated stabilization program is developed it is shown that with a constant deficit an economy tends to stay at the neighborhood of the lower of the two state inflation rates that are compatible with the deficit further increasing inflation rates prior to the stabilization are compatible only with deficits that are lower than the maximal feasible staedy state deficits and with a stabilization program that reduces the demand for real balances if these conditions are not met inflation decreases towards the stabilization date it is argued that the data generated by actual inflationary episodes fit the conditions described above and corroborate the model this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

determinants of renewable energy growth a global sample analysis abstract we investigate factors influencing country level renewable energy growth by applying fevd and pcse estimation methods in a unique sample analysis with a longer time series 1990 2010 and a broader sample size of countries including brazil russia india china and south africa than previous studies our results reveal new insights the results suggest that certain government backed energy policies impede renewable energy investments thus implying significant failures in policy design these policies may be failing mainly because of uncertainty and the likelihood of discontinuity weak voluntary approaches are introduced in order to satisfy public demand for more sustainable investments and programmes we find that these may have negative influences on the growth of renewables as well the insight gained is consistent over the estimation methods employed

speculative hyperinflations and currency substitution abstract we propose a rational expectations framework for understanding speculative hyperinflations that end in response to orthodox stabilization programs motivated by a strong degree of hysteresis in the stock of real balances after the end of hyperinflations we provide a cash and credit model in which the money demand exhibits persistence because individuals can establish long lasting credit relationships we use the model to show that if hysteresis in real balances is possible then a fiscal monetary reform that successfully stops a speculative hyperinflation may fail to prevent it we argue that speculative hyperinflationary equilibria are consistent with some key stylized facts observed in extreme hyperinflations

state renewable energy electricity policies an empirical evaluation of effectiveness over the past decade state governments have emerged as us energy policy leaders across the country states are adopting policy instruments aimed at carbon mitigation and renewable energy deployment one of the most prevalent and innovative policy instruments is a renewable portfolio standard rps which seeks to increase the share of renewable energy electrification in the electricity market this analysis evaluates the effectiveness of state energy programs with an empirical investigation of the linkage between state rps policy implementation and the percentage of renewable energy electricity generation across states we use a variant of a standard fixed effects model referred to as a fixed effects vector decomposition with state level data from 1998 to 2006 results indicate that rps implementation is not a significant predictor of the percentage of renewable energy generation out of the total generation mix yet for each additional year that a state has an rps policy they are found to increase the total amount of renewable energy generation these findings reveal a potentially significant shortcoming of rps policies political institutions natural resource endowments deregulation gross state product per capita electricity use per person electricity price and the presence of regional rps policies are also found to be significantly related to renewable energy deployment

relying on the information of interested parties we investigate the conventional wisdom that competition among interested parties attempting to influence a decisionmaker by providing verifiable information elicits all relevant information we find that if the decisionmaker is strategically sophisticated and well informed about the relevant variables and about the preferences of the interested party or parties competition may be unnecessary to achieve this result if the decisionmaker is unsophisticated or not well informed competition is not generally sufficient if the interested parties interests are sufficiently opposed however or if the decisionmaker is seeking to advance the parties welfare then competition can reduce or even eliminate the decisionmaker s need for prior knowledge about the relevant variables and for strategic sophistication in other settings only the combination of competition among information providers and a sophisticated skepticism is sufficient to allow effective decisionmaking

willingness to pay for natural organic and conventional foods the effects of information and meaningful labels vague food labels and distorted product claims have persisted in the natural food industry while organic claims can be certified by the u s department of agriculture usda using experimental methods and a sample of randomly selected subjects we test food label and information treatment effects on subjects willingness to pay wtp for organic natural and conventional foods random nth price auctions are used to elicit wtp after subjects received one of five randomly assigned information treatments we find large information effects including asymmetric cross market effects for natural and organic foods perhaps surprising is that organic premiums increase in response to subjects seeing the natural foods industry s perspective on its products demographics effects are also important the results have practical implications for natural and organic food marketing and valuing products where there are vague claims about their attributes