fragmentation and stability of markets trading skills are highly rewarded in practice but largely ignored in theoretical models of financial markets this paper demonstrates the importance of skills by examining their interaction with market fragmentation and market stability we consider a computational model where traders abilities to accurately price assets are endogenous in contrast to models that do not consider skills we find that centralising markets can lead to higher price volatility and less resilience to shocks because it increases the equilibrium proportion of unskilled traders

public prioritisation of energy affordability in the uk much research has focused on the so called energy trilemma i e three leading energy policy issues energy security affordability and climate change mitigation whilst substantial understanding exists of why people support climate friendly energy policies little is known about why they think affordability is important particularly what leads members of the public to identify this policy goal as more important than other objectives here we examine this question via a nationally representative survey of 2441 uk residents and demonstrate that concerns about personal costs explain a small amount of variation in the prioritisation of affordability as an energy policy goal a range of other factors also significantly contribute one such factor is beliefs about who is responsible for energy transitions these findings suggest policy actions to address affordability concerns should go beyond energy prices and include additional considerations such as distributive justice and equality

new hedonic technique for estimating attribute demand an application to the demand for automobile fuel efficiency a new hedonic procedure is applied to estimate the effects of gasoline price on the demand for automobile attributes and fuel efficiency direct application of a comparative statics analysis circumvents the problems of identification and severe multicollinearity affecting previous hedonic studies the results indicate that the effect of induced changes in automobile attributes in response to increases in the price of gasoline is to substantially increase fuel efficiency the estimated elasticities of fuel efficiency with respect to the price of gasoline imply that the long run own price elasticity of demand for gasoline is greater than unity 31 references

estimating the gains from trade in limit order markets we present a method to estimate the gains from trade in limit order markets and provide empirical evidence that the limit order market is a good market design using observations on order submissions and execution and cancellation histories we estimate both the distribution of traders unobserved valuations for the stock and latent trader arrival rates we use the resulting estimates to compute the current gains from trade the gains from trade in a perfectly liquid market and the gains from trade with a monopoly liquidity supplier the current gains are 90 of the maximum gains and 150 of the monopolist gains the majority of the world s stock exchanges operate some form of a limit order market a feature of good market design is that traders realize most of the potential gains from trade we develop a method for identifying and estimating the gains from trade in a limit order market and apply our method to a sample from a particular limit order market the vancouver stock exchange vse we find that gains from trade in the vse are approximately 90 of the gains from trade in a perfectly liquid market and approximately 50 more than gains from trade in a market in which liquidity is supplied by a profit maximizing monopolist our results therefore provide new empirical evidence that the limitorder market is a good market design a large number of experimental studies document that the gains from trade in a double auction are close to the maximum gains from trade see for example cason and friedman 1996 or the survey by holt 1995 similarly our empirical results show that the limit order market a market design similar to

rates of time preference and consumer valuations of automobile safety and fuel efficiency this article estimates hedonic price models for automobiles using a data set on almost 3 000 households from the u s department of energy residential transportation energy consumption survey the standard hedonic models are generalized to recognize the role of discounting of fuel efficiency and safety yielding an estimated rate of time preference ranging from 11 to 17 percent this range includes the prevailing rate of interest for car loans in 1988 and is consequently consistent with market rates purchasers exhibit an implicit value of life ranging from 2 6 to 3 7 million which is within the range found in the labor market as well as other market contexts the model also estimates a significant price effect for auto injury risks and fuel efficiency

fuel prices and new vehicle fuel economy comparing the united states and western europe abstract several recent papers have documented an effect of fuel prices on new vehicle fuel economy in the united states this paper estimates the effect of fuel prices on average new vehicle fuel economy for the eight largest european markets the analysis spans the years 2002 2007 and uses detailed vehicle registration and specification data to control for policies consumer preferences and other potentially confounding factors we find fuel prices to have a statistically significant effect on average new vehicle fuel economy in europe the effect estimated for europe is much smaller than comparable estimates for the united states

the economics of aerobics this study presents a simple model that weighs the benefits and costs of aerobic exercise to the individual the model assumes that adding years to life serves as the primary benefit of exercise and that hours of exercise over a lifetime serve as the cost given previous estimates of individual rates of time preference this study finds that people act rationally when they choose to watch a track event rather than choose to run themselves jel i1

wind power an assault on local landscapes or an opportunity for modernization abstract wind power development has produced controversies in many places some people see wind power as a sustainable source of energy others see it as destroying nature and landscapes the opposition to wind power is often asserted to be from local forces and nimbyism and support to be based on the national and global benefits of increased supply of renewable energy in this paper i challenge this view by analyzing how local communities with established or planned wind power parks went through the process of developing wind power what arguments they used and how they think about the wind power technology and its expected local effects i found that most of the arguments in favor of wind power development addressed local concerns regarding the economy modernization and employment opportunities and not a need for sustainable energy the opposition to wind power development was not based on nimbyism rather many different arguments were used and the features of the controversies were distinct to each community

roy model sorting and nonrandom selection in the valuation of a statistical life roy model sorting and the vsl wage hedonics is used to recover the value of a statistical life vsl by exploiting the fact that workers choosing riskier occupations are compensated with a higher wage roy oxford economic papers 3 1951 135 46 suggests that observed wage distributions will be distorted if individuals choose jobs according to idiosyncratic returns we describe how this type of sorting biases wage hedonic vsl estimates and implement two new estimation strategies that correct that bias using data from the current population surveys we recover vsl estimates that are three to four times larger than those based on the traditional techniques statistically significant and robust to a wide array of specifications

willingness to pay for car safety evidence from sweden this study estimates a marginal willingness to pay wtp function for a road mortality risk reduction observed marginal wtp from the swedish car market is used and found to be positively correlated with the baseline risk of the cars no statistically significant relationships between examined owner attributes e g wealth and background risk and marginal wtp are found when comparing the estimated monetary value of a non marginal risk reduction derived from the integral of the marginal wtp function with an estimate based on marginal wtp we find in line with expectations that the difference between the estimates is negligible for smaller risk reductions and small 4 10 also for relatively large risk reductions

discounting environmental health risks new evidence and policy implications abstract when environmental policy benefits accrue over a long time horizon the valuation problem becomes more complex some analysts support the use of financial market interest rates for discounting deferred health benefits while others argue against discounting altogether we address the discounting issue by estimating implicit discount rates for deferred health benefits exhibited by workers in their choice of job risk wage responses to variation in life years at risk provide direct estimates of the discount rate that workers apply to their future utility the estimated real discount rate equals approximately 2 consistent with financial market rates for the period

new frontiers and conceptual frameworks for energy justice this article explores how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision making and highlight the moral and equity dimensions of energy production and use it defines energy justice as a global energy system that fairly distributes both the benefits and burdens of energy services and one that contributes to more representative and inclusive energy decision making the primary contribution of the article is its focus on six new frontiers of future energy justice research first is making the case for the involvement of non western justice theorists second is expanding beyond humans to look at the rights of nature or non anthropocentric notions of justice third is focusing on cross scalar issues of justice such as embodied emissions fourth is identifying business models and the co benefits of justice fifth is better understanding the tradeoffs within energy justice principles sixth is exposing unjust discourses in doing so the article presents an agenda constituted by 30 research questions as well as an amended conceptual framework consisting of ten principles the article argues in favor of justice aware energy planning and policymaking and it hopes that its reconsidered energy justice conceptual framework offers a critical tool to inform decision making

nexus of fuel consumption car features and car prices evidence from major institutions in ibadan abstract this study examined the nexus of fuel consumption car characteristics and prices in ibadan it also ascertained whether car buyers undervalue fuel savings a sample of 600 car owners drawn from the six major institutions in ibadan was used in addition to the descriptive analysis the hedonic car price function was estimated using ols and iv estimation techniques the result of the iv estimations were preferred and interpreted empirical findings indicated that respondents do not undervalue fuel savings more explicitly 98 8 of the respondents indicated that they would pay additional naira to buy fuel efficient car if the additional naira is less than the present value of extra future cost of fuel for an inefficient car moreover when asked to rank the factors considered important when purchasing a car fuel consumption ranked third the estimated hedonic price model indicated that the impact of fuel consumption on car price was significantly negative implying that the respondents were willing to pay less for a fuel inefficient car moreover the security and luxury car features were found to increase the price of cars the study recommended that advocacy and orientations be carried out by the stakeholders in the car market to deepen users and potential buyers understanding on car price determinants

in pursuit of energy justice abstract energy justice provides a framework to perceive disparities in our energy system the foundation of energy justice draws heavily from the environmental justice movement grounded in larger issues of representation economic relations between the state firms and social groups this article draws from the environmental justice movement to explore concepts of universal and particular justice universal energy justice holds to values stemming from judicial and philosophical groundings based in procedural distributional and cosmopolitan justice issues particular energy justice relies on recognition justice of cultural and environmental factors influencing choices around energy technologies and policy preferences for the distribution of energy services empirically this article examines tensions within the energy system in the european union it does this in two areas first by examining how universal energy justice is spread through national regulatory authorities nras dealing with energy second particular energy justice is exemplified by a political solution to energy poverty in bulgaria rather than a regulatory response this contrasts with a western european approach the aim of the article is to show the pursuit of energy justice attempts to resolve tensions between groups and differing politics to both access and provide energy services

danish and norwegian wind industry the relationship between policy instruments innovation and diffusion this article compares the role of policy instruments in stimulating long term technological change in danish and norwegian wind industry it concludes that although predictability has periodically been low denmark s broad portfolio of policies and measures has been well adapted to the different stages in the development of its wind industry this has contributed to a high degree of innovation successful establishment in niche markets high degree of diffusion and establishment of domestic and international mass markets and in recent years an increasingly successful replacement of senescent technology with new the motivation of norway s wind energy policies and measures at least up until the late 1990s has been to increase power supply rather than to stimulate industrial development and technological change policies and measures have been weaker than in denmark have been less stable over time and stimulated the demand side much less they have not sufficiently covered the wind industry s perceived needs on different stages in the development of new technology and have not sufficiently stimulated continuous improvement learning and new product development dynamic efficiency in industry this has been part of the reason why there has been only a limited extent of innovation and diffusion of wind technology in norway

measuring the temporal dynamics of policy mixes an empirical analysis of renewable energy policy mixes balance and design features in nine countries abstract complex societal or environmental problems require fast and substantial socio technical transitions for instance in the case of climate change these transitions need to take place in the energy transport and several industry sectors to induce and accelerate such transitions numerous policy interventions are required which interact with each other in policy mixes while several conceptual studies on policy mixes have been published recently there is very little empirical research apart from single case or small n studies it has been prominently argued that the debate about policy mixes has reached an impasse partly due to this lack of empirical work this paper addresses this gap by providing a first analysis of the temporal dynamics of complex policy mixes to do so we develop a conceptualization and measurement of policy mix balance across instrument types as well as policy mix design features in the form of intensity as a general and technology specificity as a technology focused design feature this allows us to answer the question how temporal dynamics of policy mixes differ between countries regarding their balance and design features our measurement approach is developed bottom up i e policies are assessed individually and then aggregated systematically at the policy mix level this enables overcoming the dependent variable problem in the study of policy change i e the problem of measuring policy output more specifically we develop a comparative dataset of 522 renewable energy policies in nine oecd countries our analysis shows that countries policy mix dynamics vary strongly regarding some variables e g technology specificity but less regarding others e g balance as a validity check we also test the effects of these mix dynamics on policy outcome in the form of renewable energy technology diffusion we reflect our findings in light of the theoretical debates around policy mixes and policy design and discuss how our results provoke an agenda for the new generation of research on policy mixes we specifically discuss avenues for future research with a particular focus on the politics of policy mixes

the high frequency trade off between speed and sophistication abstract central to the ability of a high frequency trader to make money is speed in order to be first to trading opportunities firms invest in the fastest hardware and the shortest connections between their machines and the markets yet this is not enough algorithms must be short no more than a few instructions as a result there is a trade off in the design of optimal high frequency trading strategies being the fastest necessitates being less sophisticated to understand the effect of this tension a computational model is presented that captures latency both of code execution and information transmission trading algorithms are modelled through genetic programming with longer programmes allowing more sophisticated decisions at the cost of slower execution times it is shown that depending on the market composition short fast strategies and slower more sophisticated strategies may both be viable and exploit different trading opportunities the relative profits of these different approaches vary however slow traders benefit and social welfare increase in the presence of hfts a suite of regulations are tested to manage the risks associated with high frequency trading the majority are found to be ineffective though constraining the ratio of orders to trades may be promising

gasoline prices fuel economy and the energy paradox abstract policymakers often assert that consumers undervalue future gasoline costs when they buy automobiles we test this by measuring whether relative prices of vehicles with different fuel economy ratings fully adjust to variation in gasoline prices vehicle prices move as if consumers are indifferent between 1 00 in discounted future gas cost and 0 76 in vehicle purchase price we show how corrections for endogenous market shares and utilization measurement error and different gasoline price forecasts affect the results we also provide unique evidence of sticky information vehicle markets respond to changes in gasoline prices with up to a six month delay

exploring participatory energy budgeting as a policy instrument to foster energy justice abstract the ethical and sustainable production and consumption of energy are becoming increasingly important with the ongoing transformation and decentralization of the energy system for other kinds of goods and commodities ethical consumption have direct implications for and the participation of informed citizens due to its intangibility energy lacks the same levels of reflection and intervention by citizens and those aspects are yet to be fully explored in practice this paper contributes to the understanding of how energy justice might be approached we reflect on an empirical experience of participatory energy budgeting a process aimed at determining how to redistribute a share of energy linked to collective virtuous consumption behaviors we analyze through a qualitative thematic analysis how participants make sense of the participatory energy budgeting process and the emerged dynamics within the local communities and how this process can strive to reconfigure the relationship among civil society the energy sector and politics in order to remediate injustices we highlight how the construction in practice of energy justice in a local community might be closely linked to issues such as the form of energy governance that allows for the participation of citizens and the accountability of the process policies and technological limitations

will a radical transport pricing reform jeopardize the ambitious eu climate change objectives abstract this paper examines the effects of replacing current fuel taxes by a system of taxes that account better for all the different external costs of the different transport modes one of the important implications of this reform is that current fuel taxes are decreased to a level of 80 euro ton of co 2 but that the mileage related taxes on car and truck use increase using the tremove model for the transport sector of 31 european countries one finds that the volume of transport will decrease because current taxes on transport are too low compared to overall external costs overall co 2 emissions will decrease slightly using the markal times model for the belgian energy sector putting all sectors and technologies on equal footing shows that a fuel tax reform makes that it is not cost efficient to require large co 2 emission reductions in the transport sector and that traditional car technologies will continue to dominate the car market in 2020 2030

learning information processing and order submission in limit order markets by introducing a genetic algorithm learning with a classifier system into a limit order market this paper provides a unified framework of microstructure and agent based models of limit order markets that allows traders to determine their order submission endogenously according to market conditions it examines how traders process and learn from market information and how the learning affects limit order markets it is found that measured by the average usage of different group of market information trading rules under the learning become stationary in the long run also informed traders pay more attention to the last transaction sign while uninformed traders pay more attention to technical rules learning of uninformed traders improves market information efficiency but not necessarily when informed traders learn opposite to the learning of informed traders learning makes uninformed traders submit less aggressive limit orders and more market orders furthermore private values can have significant impact in the short run but not in the long run one implication is that the probability of informed trading pin is positively related to the volatility and the bid ask spread

a hybrid stock trading system using genetic network programming and mean conditional value at risk abstract this paper describes a hybrid stock trading system based on genetic network programming gnp and mean conditional value at risk model gnp cvar the proposed method combining the advantages of evolutionary algorithms and statistical model has provided useful tools to construct portfolios and generate effective stock trading strategies for investors with different risk attitudes simulation results on five stock indices show that model based on gnp and maximum sharpe ratio portfolio performs the best in bull market and that based on gnp and the global minimum risk portfolio performs the best in bear market the portfolios constructed by markowitz s mean variance model performs the same as mean cvar model it is clarified that the proposed system significantly improves the function and efficiency of original gnp which can help investors make profitable decisions

chasing trends at the micro level the effect of technical trading on order book dynamics abstract technical traders attempt to exploit trends in market prices and the order flow despite this little is known about how these traders behave in a micro structure context we consider a model of an order book based financial market the market contains two groups informed traders and technical traders a numerical technique is used to identify a markov perfect equilibrium of the trading game and so determine the optimal strategies we find that technical trading rules are profitable and allow traders to increase their returns the effect of technical traders on the market however is ambiguous they decrease volatility and pricing errors but also increase trading costs despite primarily acting as liquidity suppliers

practices and imaginations of energy justice in transition a case study of the noordoostpolder the netherlands abstract renewable energy technologies are often idealized as environmentally innocent alternatives to fossil fuels fossil fuel extraction is often considered as unjust and renewable energy as the just alternative at the same time renewable energy projects such as wind parks are often resisted because of the uneven impacts of its infrastructure this paper analyses such ambiguous meanings of energy justice social justice issues related to energy along the lines of its three tenets distributional procedural and recognition justice aiming to understand how energy justice is constructed from below it does so on the basis of a case study in the noordoostpolder the netherlands where plans for extracting shale gas went together with both large scale and small scale renewable energy practices the paper analyses how energy justice is made by how people resist shale gas and engage in renewable energy practices and as such produce new imaginations and normativities of energy justice such an ethnographic approach helps to understand energy justice as a process of co construction of activists policy makers and scholars and as such responds to recent calls for a human centred approach to the study of energy transitions the paper is based on two and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork in the noordoostpolder

three reasons to use annual payments in contingent valuation surveys convergent validity discount rates and mental accounting abstract we present three arguments for using ongoing annual payments in contingent valuation cv surveys that estimate the benefit of a long lasting environmental improvement first by matching the duration of the payments with the duration of the environmental benefits survey respondents are spared from performing complicated present value calculations second willingness to pay wtp estimates from cv surveys that include ongoing annual payments best match wtp estimates obtained using travel cost surveys third respondents are less likely to face binding mental budget constraints with ongoing annual payments than with a larger one time payment in addition respondents discount rates may be estimated by collecting non hypothetical individual time preference data as part of the valuation survey

hedonic pricing with redevelopment options a new approach to estimating depreciation effects abstract the standard hedonic model of durable assets is a special case of a more general model that contains two additive terms 1 use value of the existing hedonic vector and 2 the value of the option to reconfigure hedonic characteristics one empirical implication is that the two parts of value are related e g use value increases with interior area whereas option value decreases with intensity the ratio of structure value divided by land value increases in building age reduce use value but increase option value data from greenwich connecticut indicate that intensity has the expected negative effect coefficients on building age are shown to be better measures of depreciation when intensity variables are included in the regression

do consumers recognize the value of fuel economy evidence from used car prices and gasoline price fluctuations abstract debate about the appropriate design of energy policy hinges critically on whether consumers might undervalue energy efficiency due to myopia or some other manifestation of limited rationality we contribute to this debate by measuring consumers willingness to pay for fuel economy using a novel identification strategy and high quality microdata from wholesale used car auctions we leverage differences in future fuel costs across otherwise identical vehicles that have different current mileage and therefore different remaining lifetimes by seeing how price differences across high and low mileage vehicles of different fuel economies change in response to shocks to the price of gasoline we estimate the relationship between vehicle prices and future fuel costs our data suggest that used automobile prices move one for one with changes in present discounted future fuel costs which implies that consumers fully value fuel economy

attributing responsibility for energy justice a case study of the hinkley point nuclear complex since 2006 as part of the transition to low carbon technologies uk energy policy has moved towards incentivising new nuclear power production as a result the uk has developed a now delayed strategy to deliver around 16gw of new nuclear power by 2030 this policy context provides an opportunity to reflect not only on the material infrastructure needed to meet transition targets but also on who is responsible for the energy justice implications of these decisions using data collected from 26 semi structured interviews with ngo and policy representatives this paper presents a case study of energy justice concerns surrounding the hinkley point nuclear complex in somerset focusing particularly on the highly controversial hinkley point c developments the results emphasise the importance of considering not only instances of energy justice or injustice but of attributing responsibility for them a concept that has been largely overlooked in the energy justice literature ngos government and business allocate responsibility differently in nuclear energy decision making we find that perceptions of responsibility are highly dependent upon the level of transparency in decision making this article is part of a virtual special issue entitled exploring the energy justice nexus

fuel poverty excess winter deaths and energy costs in vermont burdensome for whom energy whether from electricity natural gas heating oil propane kerosene or wood is essential for the well being of many americans yet those who spend more than 10 percent of their income of energy services can be considered fuel poor this study assesses the extent and severity of fuel poverty in vermont it analyzes energy burdens in vermont by household income deciles using data from the census bureau s american community survey approximately 71 000 people suffered from fuel poverty in vermont in 2000 and in 2012 the number rose to 125 000 or one in five vermonters startlingly fuel poverty grew 76 percent during this period excess winter deaths caused potentially by fuel poverty kill more vermonters each year than car crashes the article then provides 12 policy recommendations based on a small sample of elite semi structured research interviews these include suggestions that the vermont legislature better fund investments in weatherization among low income households that community groups and social service agencies scale up the training of energy efficiency coaches that state agencies endorse improvements in housing efficiency and appropriate fuel switching and that utilities and fuel providers offer extra assistance for disconnected households and allow for on bill financing of efficiency improvements

the cost of fuel economy in the indian passenger vehicle market to investigate how fuel economy is valued in the indian car market we compute the cost to indian consumers of purchasing a more fuel efficient vehicle and compare it to the benefit of lower fuel costs over the life of the vehicle we estimate hedonic price functions for four market segments petrol hatchbacks diesel hatchbacks petrol sedans and diesel sedans to compute 95 confidence intervals for the marginal cost to the consumer for an increase in fuel economy we find that the associated present value of fuel savings falls within the 95 confidence interval for most specifications in all market segments for the years 2002 through 2006 thus we fail to consistently reject the hypothesis that consumers appropriately value fuel economy

new vehicle characteristics and the cost of the corporate average fuel economy standard by 2016 the corporate average fuel economy cafe standard will increase by 40 this article focuses on the medium run effects of fuel economy regulation we estimate consumers willingness to pay for vehicle characteristics we employ a novel empirical strategy that accounts for the characteristics endogeneity by using variation of engine models used in vehicle models the results imply that consumers value an increase in power more than an increase in fuel economy simulations of the effects of an increase in the cafe standard suggest that regulatory costs are significantly smaller in the medium run than in the short run

the role of income in energy consumption behaviour evidence from french households data the main purpose of this paper is to characterise quantitatively the impact of income on household energy consumption in the residential and transport sectors starting from the data collected in a paper survey we analyse the extent of the constraint experienced by households in terms of equipment purchasing behaviour and daily energy consumption this analysis shows that the least well off households are particularly constrained since the share of their budget represented by these energy services is very large 15 25 and this corresponds to a level of energy service well below that of the better off households the case of space heating shows a factor of 2 in terms of level of comfort achieved between the extreme 10 percentiles these households also face a strong capital constraint for equipment purchases this leads either to a large increase in the required rate of return or to a reduction in the proportion of households that are prepared to replace their equipment earlier the least well off households are thus doubly constrained since it is more difficult for them to invest in our opinion it is crucial to take into account this observation in the context of political measures aimed at reducing households co2 emissions

unequal resilience the duration of electricity outages abstract the resilience of social biophysical and technological systems is of increasing scholarly and practical import guided by scholarship on disaster resilience environmental inequality and urban service inequality we advance the study of unequal resilience in a critical infrastructure the electric grid we analyze inequality in electricity outage duration at the census block group level using data from the u s census the u s geological survey and a u s electrical utility s database of power outages from 2002 to 2004 our intersectional approach identifies a factor variable of american indian disadvantage as a correlate of average outage duration suggesting possible support for an institutional bias hypothesis however spatial error regression models demonstrate that unequal resilience within our study area is most consistently explained by proximity to priority assets i e hospitals average downstream customers affected by outages and environmental conditions i e the seasonality of outages these results are consistent with existing research on utilities response to power outages and more broadly with the bureaucratic decision rules perspective on service inequalities we discuss the implications of our findings for future research and energy policy

product innovation in response to environmental standards and competitive advantage a hedonic analysis of refrigerators in the japanese retail market abstract the purpose of this study is to determine whether environmentally friendly attributes that are innovated in response to environmental standards contribute to creating a competitive advantage because manufacturers of products with only commoditized value cannot achieve a competitive advantage they need to add differentiated value including environmentally friendly attributes through product innovation in this situation environmental standards have a potential to encourage them to undertake product innovation thus this study analyzes not only whether a product with environmentally friendly attributes that reflect environmental standards receives a price premium but also whether product commoditization that is associated with drastic price declines has occurred for the product the methodology for these analyses is a hedonic price regression using data for refrigerators sold in the japanese retail market during 1998 2012 the main findings are as follows first the fundamental value of refrigerating has been drastically commoditized in the last 15 years second products that are chlorofluorocarbon free and energy consumption efficient reflecting environmental standards have a price premium third the price premium for each attribute has specific trends during the period these findings support the view that a product s environmentally friendly attributes that reflect environmental standards more or less compensate for the commoditized value through the price premium therefore product innovation in response to environmental standards helps create a competitive advantage especially where product commoditization has occurred

what do consumers believe about future gasoline prices a full understanding of how gasoline prices affect consumer behavior frequently requires information on how consumers forecast future gasoline prices we provide the first evidence on the nature of these forecasts by analyzing two decades of data on gasoline price expectations from the michigan survey of consumers we find that average consumer beliefs are typically indistinguishable from a no change forecast justifying an assumption commonly made in the literature on consumer valuation of energy efficiency we also provide evidence on circumstances in which consumer forecasts are likely to deviate from no change and on significant cross consumer forecast heterogeneity

cost effective subsidy incentives for room air conditioners in china an analysis based on a mcfadden type discrete choice model abstract based on a mcfadden type conditional logit cl discrete choice model this paper estimates the most economic subsidy level mesl for room air conditioners racs in china that minimizes the net cost of subsidy per unit of electricity saved the analysis reveals that given the current price and efficiency spectrum of racs in the chinese market as well as the electricity price and cooling demand of chinese households the mesl for racs in china should be around 60 which is much higher than the current subsidy level of 5 15 a sensitivity analysis suggests that the high mesl 60 is mainly a consequence of relatively low electricity price and household cooling demand in the country if china s household cooling demand increases further and its electricity price were to rise to a higher level the mesl for racs could possibly drop to about 5 15 as household cooling demand varies among chinese cities in different climatic zones and at different levels of economic development the rac subsidy incentives should be region specific with necessary modifications the method for analysis proposed in this paper can also be applied to other household appliances to prioritize the types of appliances requiring subsidies

resolving society s energy trilemma through the energy justice metric carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase to the detriment of society in many forms one of the difficulties faced is the imbalance between the competing aims of economics politics and the environment which form the trilemma of energy policy this article advances that this energy trilemma can be resolved through energy justice energy justice develops the debate on energy policy to one that highlights cosmopolitanism progresses thinking beyond economics and incorporates a new futuristic perspective to capture these dynamics of energy justice this research developed an energy justice metric ejm that involves the calculation of several metrics 1 a country national ejm 2 an ejm for different energy infrastructure and 3 an ejm which is incorporated into economic models that derive costs for energy infrastructure projects an ejm is modeled for china the european union and the united states and for different energy infrastructure in the united kingdom the ejm is plotted on a ternary phase diagram which is used in the sciences for analyzing the relationship trilemma of three forms of matter the development of an ejm can provide a tool for decision making on energy policy and one that solves the energy trilemma with a just and equitable approach

new vehicle fuel economy in the uk impact of the recession and recent policies interests in vehicle fuel economy have increased in the past few years with the implementations of more stringent cafe standard in usa and mandatory carbon emission standard in the eu we seek to understand the effects of recent policies such as restructuring of vehicle excise duties and eu standard on new vehicle fuel economy in the uk in the past few years there have been substantial fluctuations in income and fuel prices offering an interesting testing ground to understand their impact on the demand for fuel economy in vehicles we use a monthly dataset to find that the emission standard is the largest driver for fuel economy improvements in recent years also contrary to some recent findings in europe and in uk we find that income has an effect and that the recession had some role in improving the fuel economy the effects of fuel prices were relatively small restructuring of the ved also improved new vehicle fuel economy in the uk but the scrappage scheme had no significant effect results indicate that both supply and demand side policies are effective in improving fuel economy although quantitatively the emission standard appears more effective due to its stringency it is also important to consider the effects of income while devising demand side policies

energy justice at the end of the wire enacting community energy and equity in wales energy justice has emerged as a useful lens for understanding and guiding energy decision making however whilst calls for greater energy justice have grown fleeting attention has been paid to the role and agency of the very people at the heart of this agenda clearly given the increasing prevalence of local energy initiatives such projects warrant more sustained focus both to explore how energy justice is constructed between settings and to prompt greater consideration of its associated outcomes this paper seeks to address this gap by using energy justice to assess local ownership of small scale energy generation through a study of the community energy sector in wales in so doing it aids greater understanding of the energy equity dimension understood in terms of accessibility and affordability of the energy trilemma from a conceptual standpoint the research examines how energy justice is negotiated and contested at community scale through a focus on issues of distributive and procedural justice from a policy standpoint the research shows that community energy is often involved in a wide range of local objectives and directs attention to how best to support such initiatives to further stimulate local action and deliver more widespread equity gains

examining the effectiveness of price limits in an artificial stock market abstract this paper proposes an agent based framework to examine the effectiveness of price limits in an artificial stock market the market is composed of many boundedly rational and heterogeneous traders whose learning behavior is represented by a genetic programming algorithm we calibrate the model to replicate several stylized facts observed in real financial markets based on this environment the impacts of price limits are analyzed from the perspectives of volatility price distortion volume and welfare we find that the imposition of price limits possesses both positive and negative effects however compared with the market without price limits appropriate price limits help to reduce volatility and price distortion and increase the liquidity and welfare

inventories and the automobile market this article studies the within model year pricing production and inventory management of new automobiles using new monthly data on u s transaction prices we document that for the typical vehicle prices fall over the model year at a 9 0 annual rate concurrently both sales and inventories are hump shaped to explain these time series we formulate an industry model for new automobiles in which inventory and pricing decisions are made simultaneously the model predicts that automakers build to stock inventory management policy substantially influences the time series of prices and sales accounting for four tenths of the price decline observed over the model year

the taxation of drivers and the choice of car fuel type in this paper the choice of the car fuel type is studied in the dutch situation three types are important gasoline diesel and lpg with 80 of the cars using gasoline incentives for using diesel or lpg are provided by the tax system that implies higher fixed cost but lower variable cost for users of these fuel types we start by studying fuel type choice on the basis of a logit model and move on to estimate demand functions for kilometres driven for social purposes while correcting for the possible selectivity bias we find that diesel and lpg are in general regarded as inferior alternatives but that monetary incentives are sufficiently strong to overcome this hurdle for drivers with a large demand for kilometres we also find that there are significant effects of the lower variable cost for diesel and lpg drivers on their demand for kilometres the conclusions are confirmed by estimation of a structural model in which fuel type choice and demand for kilometres are consistently explained on the basis of one set of preferences and unobserved heterogeneity is taken into account

using mandated speed limits to measure the value of a statistical life in 1987 the federal government permitted states to raise the speed limit on their rural interstate roads but not on their urban interstate roads from 55 mph to 65 mph since the states that adopted the higher speed limit must have valued the travel hours they saved more than the fatalities incurred this institutional change provides an opportunity to estimate an upper bound on the public s willingness to trade off wealth for a change in the probability of death our estimates indicate that the adoption of the 65 mph limit increased speeds by approximately 4 percent or 2 5 mph and fatality rates by roughly 35 percent together the estimates suggest that about 125 000 hours were saved per lost life when the time saved is valued at the average hourly wage the estimates imply that adopting states were willing to accept risks that resulted in a savings of 1 54 million 1997 dollars per fatality with a sampling error roughly one third this value we set out a simple model of states decisions to adop

labor market estimates of the senior discount for the value of statistical life abstract this article develops the first measures of age industry job risks to examine the age variations in the value of statistical life because of the greater risk vulnerability of older workers they face flatter wage risk gradients than younger workers which we show to be the case empirically accounting for this heterogeneity in hedonic market equilibria leads to estimates of the value of statistical life age relationship that follows an inverted u shape the estimates of the value of statistical life range from 6 4 million for younger workers to a peak of 9 0 million for those aged 35 44 and then a decline to 3 8 million for those aged 55 62 the decline of the estimated value of statistical life with age is consistent with there being some senior discount in the clear skies initiative analysis

informed traders and limit order markets abstract we consider a dynamic limit order market in which traders optimally choose whether to acquire information about the asset and the type of order to submit we numerically solve for the equilibrium and demonstrate that the market is a volatility multiplier prices are more volatile than the fundamental value of the asset this effect increases when the fundamental value has high volatility and with asymmetric information across traders changes in the microstructure noise are negatively correlated with changes in the estimated fundamental value implying that asset betas estimated from high frequency data will be incorrect

implicit discount rates and the purchase of untried energy saving durable goods many consumers appear to rationally calculate the net worth of a household investment but a substantial minority may lack the skills or alertness to perceive an investment opportunity and initiate analysis intentions to engage in complementary activities play an important role in the investment decision

the application of contrast explanation to energy policy research uk nuclear energy policy 2002 2012 abstract this paper advances the application of the methodology contrast explanation to energy policy research research in energy policy is complex and often involves inter disciplinary work which traditional economic methodologies fail to capture consequently the more encompassing methodology of contrast explanation is assessed and its use in other social science disciplines explored in brief it is then applied to an energy policy research topic in this case nuclear energy policy research in the uk contrast explanation facilitates research into policy and decision making processes in energy studies and offers an alternative to the traditional economic methods used in energy research further contrast explanation is extended by the addition of contested and uncontested hypotheses analyses this research focuses on the methods employed to deliver the new nuclear programme of the uk government in order to achieve a sustainable nuclear energy policy three issues are of major importance 1 law policy and development 2 public administration and 3 project management further the research identifies that policy in the area remains to be resolved in particular at an institutional and legal level however contrary to the literature in some areas the research identifies a change of course as the uk concentrates on delivering a long term policy for the nuclear energy sector and the overall energy sector

car notches strategic automaker responses to fuel economy policy notches where small changes in behavior lead to large changes in a tax or subsidy gure prominently in many policies but have been rarely examined by economists in this paper we analyze a class of notches associated with policies aimed at improving vehicle fuel economy we provide several pieces of evidence showing that automakers respond to notches in fuel economy policy by precisely manipulating fuel economy ratings so as to just qualify for more favorable treatment we then describe the welfare consequences of this behavior and derive a welfare summary statistic applicable to many contexts

politicizing energy justice and energy system transitions fossil fuel divestment and a just transition the burgeoning energy justice scholarship highlights the importance of justice and equity concerns in the context of global decarbonization and the transition to a green economy this paper seeks to extend current conceptualizations of energy justice across entire energy lifecycles from extraction to final use to offer an analytically richer and more accurate picture of the in justice impacts of energy policy decisions we identify two key areas that require greater attention and scrutiny in order to enact energy justice within a more democratized energy system first we call for greater recognition of the politics power dynamics and political economy of socio technical energy transitions we use the example of the fossil fuel divestment movement as a way to shift energy justice policy attention upstream to focus on the under researched injustices relating to supply side climate policy analysis and decisions second the idea of a just transition and the distributional impacts on and the role of labor in low carbon transitions must be addressed more systematically this focus produces a more directly political and politicizing framing of energy in justice and a just energy transition

are energy efficiency standards justified abstract this paper develops an analytical framework for comparing the welfare effects of energy efficiency standards and pricing policies for reducing gasoline electricity and nationwide carbon emissions the model is parameterized with us data and includes key externalities in the energy transportation sectors and possible underinvestment in energy efficiency due to misperceptions over energy savings even with large misperceptions the extra welfare gains from complementing efficient pricing policies with energy efficiency standards are zero for reducing gasoline and 5 percent for reducing electricity and when viewed as substitutes these standards forgo 60 percent or more of the potential welfare gains from corresponding pricing policies a combination of energy efficiency and emissions standards is more than three times as costly as carbon pricing when there is no misperception over energy savings and even with large misperceptions combining carbon pricing with gasoline electricity taxes is better than combining it with energy efficiency standards

price quality and welfare effects of european vers on japanese autos abstract this paper examines the impact of the vers negotiated by the u k france and germany with japanese car makers market share analysis shows that the vers did not arrest the declines in apparent consumption by local producers further analysis from a sample of japanese and other cars sold on the french and german markets indicates quality upgrading between 1981 and 1983 the data also suggest that the ver was strictly binding in france starting around 1984 but not in germany until 1985 the end of the sample period finally the paper shows that the french german and japanese car producers supplied an increasingly similar product mix on the french market throughout the sample period 1979 1985 but the italian producers shifted towards a lower fiscal horsepower mix

willingness to pay and sensitivity to time framing a theoretical analysis and an application on car safety stated preference sp surveys attempt to obtain monetary values for non market goods that reflect individuals true preferences numerous empirical studies suggest that monetary values from sp studies are sensitive to survey design and so may not reflect respondents true preferences this study examines the effect of time framing on respondents willingness to pay wtp for car safety we explore how wtp per unit risk reduction depends on the time period over which respondents pay and face reduced risk in a theoretical model and by using data from a swedish contingent valuation survey our theoretical model predicts the effect to be nontrivial in many scenarios used in empirical applications in our empirical analysis we examine the sensitivity of wtp to an annual and a monthly scenario our theoretical model predicts the effect from the time framing to be negligible but the empirical estimates from the annual scenario are about 70 higher than estimates from the monthly scenario

automobile externalities and policies this paper discusses the nature and magnitude of externalities associated with automobile use including local and global pollution oil dependence traffic congestion and traffic accidents it then discusses current federal policies affecting these externalities including fuel taxes fuel economy and emissions standards and alternative fuel policies summarizing insofar as possible the welfare effects of those policies finally we discuss emerging pricing policies including congestion tolls and insurance reform and summarize the appropriate combination of policies to address automobile externalities

futures markets cognitive ability and mispricing in experimental asset markets we study the effect of a futures market in which contracts maturing in the last period of the life of the asset can be traded our experiment has two treatments one in which a spot market operates on its own and a second treatment in which a spot and a futures market are active simultaneously futures markets lower spot prices but increase price volatility the futures markets themselves exhibit considerable overpricing individuals with higher cognitive reflection test crt scores achieve greater earnings and tend to sell in the overpriced futures market while traders with lower crt scores make purchases in the futures market greater average crt score among a group of traders is associated with better price discovery when no futures market is present but there is no such relationship in the presence of a futures market modified measures of crt which take into account different types of incorrect responses are introduced

the effect of vehicle fuel economy standards on technology adoption abstract many countries are tightening passenger vehicle fuel economy standards this paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of fuel economy standards on technology adoption we investigate changes in the rate and direction of technology adoption that is the extent to which technology is used to increase fuel economy at the expense of other vehicle attributes we find that recent changes in u s and european standards have both increased the rate of technology adoption and affected the direction of technology adoption producers reduced horsepower and torque compared to a counterfactual in which fuel economy standards remained unchanged we estimate opportunity costs from reduced horsepower and torque to be economically significant relative to the gains from fuel savings

is technical analysis in the foreign exchange market profitable a genetic programming approach using genetic programming techniques to find technical trading rules we find strong evidence of economically significant out of sample excess returns to those rules for each of six exchange rates over the period 1981 1995 further when the dollar deutsche mark rules are allowed to determine trades in the other markets there is significant improvement in performance in all cases except for the deutsche mark yen betas calculated for the returns according to various benchmark portfolios provide no evidence that the returns to these rules are compensation for bearing systematic risk bootstrapping results on the dollar deutsche mark indicate that the trading rules detect patterns in the data that are not captured by standard statistical models

uncertainty loss aversion and markets for energy efficiency increasing energy efficiency is critical to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion reducing oil dependence and achieving a sustainable global energy system the tendency of markets to neglect apparently cost effective energy efficiency options has been called the efficiency gap or energy paradox the market for energy efficiency in new energy using durable goods however appears to have a bias that leads to undervaluation of future energy savings relative to their expected value this paper argues that the bias is chiefly produced by the combination of substantial uncertainty about the net value of future fuel savings and the loss aversion of typical consumers this framework relies on the theory of context dependent preferences the uncertainty loss aversion bias against energy efficiency is quantifiable making it potentially correctible by policy measures the welfare economics of such policies remains unresolved data on the costs of increased fuel economy of new passenger cars taken from a national research council study illustrate how an apparently cost effective increase in energy efficiency would be uninteresting to loss averse consumers

assessing fairness of dynamic grid tariffs the increase in the supply of intermittent renewable energy and the higher electricity use lead to stronger variation in network usage which either requires costly network extensions or the implementation of incentives to reduce peaks this paper focuses on the latter namely dynamic tariffs however a tension may exist between economic arguments for dynamic pricing and people perceiving such pricing as unfair this paper seeks to assess the fairness of dynamic tariffs through a combination of theoretical and empirical research fairness is defined broader than inequality it is understood more objectively than just people s perceptions and thus requires engagement with ethical theory and the fairness analysis is not only based on abstract ethical reflection but also on analysing the underlying arguments for people s perceptions both the theoretical fairness assessment and the survey among dutch households reveal that dynamic tariffs are less fair than transport and capacity tariffs and fairer than ramsey pricing the fairness of dynamic tariffs depends on implementation conditions such as clear non economic arguments as justification guarantying basic needs fulfilment decreasing perception that peak use is only for the rich and increasing predictability

are consumers myopic evidence from new and used car purchases abstract we investigate whether car buyers are myopic about future fuel costs we estimate the effect of gasoline prices on short run equilibrium prices of cars of different fuel economies we then compare the implied changes in willingness to pay to the associated changes in expected future gasoline costs for cars of different fuel economies in order to calculate implicit discount rates using different assumptions about annual mileage survival rates and demand elasticities we calculate a range of implicit discount rates similar to the range of interest rates paid by car buyers who borrow we interpret this as showing little evidence of consumer myopia jel d12 h25 l11 l62 l71 l81

levelling the playing field the influence of national wind power planning instruments on conflicts of interests in a swedish county slow and complicated wind power planning and permitting procedures have been a large obstacle for wind power diffusion in sweden and other countries this paper complements previous siting oriented literature with a planning perspective on these problems the focus is two national planning instruments implemented in sweden in the early 2000s a national planning target and an appointment of areas of national interest for wind power the paper identifies different types of conflicts of interest related to wind power in addition to the conflict between wind power as a national public interest and various local private interests and analyses the impact of the national planning instruments on the handling of these conflicts in the land use planning process in the county of ostergotland the analysis shows that the planning target actually made local planning officials even more inclined to treat wind power as a private rather than a public interest and that the method used to identify areas of national interest of wind power forced wind power to compete with the combined strengths of all other public interest the planning instruments thus left wind power to fight an uphill battle rather than to meet other interests face to face on a level playing field

quality based price discrimination and tax incidence the market for gasoline and diesel cars in europe the existing tax policies toward gasoline and diesel cars in european countries provide a unique opportunity to analyze quality based price discrimination and the implied tax incidence in my econometric framework consumers choose the type of engine based on their annual mileage prices are set by the manufacturers the relative pricing of gasoline and diesel cars appears to be consistent with monopolistic price discrimination effectively segmenting low mileage from high mileage consumers on average about 75 to 90 of the price differentials between gasoline and diesel cars can be explained by markup differences i draw implications for the effectiveness and the revenue effects of tax policy

labeling energy cost on light bulbs lowers implicit discount rates lighting accounts for nearly 20 of overall u s electricity consumption and 18 of u s residential electricity consumption a transition to alternative energy efficient technologies could reduce this energy consumption considerably to quantify the influence of factors that drive consumer choices for light bulbs we conducted a choice based conjoint field experiment with 183 participants we estimated discrete choice models from the data and found that politically liberal consumers have a stronger preference for compact fluorescent lighting technology and for low energy consumption greater willingness to pay for lower energy consumption and longer life was observed in conditions where estimated operating cost information was provided providing estimated annual cost information to consumers reduced their implicit discount rate by a factor of five lowering barriers to adoption of energy efficient alternatives with higher up front costs however even with cost information provided consumers continued to use implicit discount rates of around 100 which is larger than that experienced for other energy technologies