triple bottom line accounting for optimizing natural gas sustainability a statistical linear programming fuzzy ilowa optimized sustainment model approach to reducing supply chain global cybersecurity vulnerability through information and communications technology abstract in this paper we employed triple bottom line tbl accounting and considered threats to cybersecurity in the context of natural gas and global supply chain sustainability the global supply chain is a diverse assortment of contingent claims contracts and relationships that span the world it contains both risks and benefits in this study consideration is given to the balance of consequences we propose a sustainable economic model that preserves the positive dynamics of capitalism and accounting principles while improving collaboration between industry landowners and environmentalists to optimize return on profits for companies provide royalties to landowners and satisfy the planet s environmental concerns our tbl approach supports the need to preserve the best qualities of free enterprise and market driven regulation profits while also providing social and environmental benefits our proposed approach is novel and may be helpful for decision makers in all sectors from public to private we have endeavored to make sufficiently objective and appropriate conclusions that guide how the model can be used in other sectors or by other decision makers this review has several aims first we aim to understand the technical application of tbl optimization and to associate it with the use of mathematical and statistical analysis second we present a fuzzy integrated linguistic operator weighted average application to better understand tbl and to strengthen the argument for its use finally we debate issues inherent in applying analyses of this type with regard to stakeholder viewpoints and objectivity

trade and direct investment in producer services and the domestic market for expertise foreign producer services can provide substantial benefits for domestic firms we build on earlier monopolistic competition models of intermediate producer services in this paper results show that 1 while foreign services are partial equilibrium substitutes for domestic skilled labour they may be general equilibrium complements 2 service trade can provide crucial missing inputs that reverse comparative advantage in final goods 3 the optimal tax on imported services may be a subsidy and 4 in our dynamic formulation there may be earnings losses for immobile workers along a transition path that suggest potentially important equity consequences of reform jel classification f12 f16 f23 commerce international et investissement direct dans les services de production et le marche interieur de l expertise les services de production en provenance de l etranger peuvent engendrer des avantages substantiels pour les entreprises domestiques dans ce memoire les auteurs construisent sur la base de certains modeles anterieurs de concurrence monopolistique de services de production intermediaires les resultats montrent que 1 alors que les services de l etranger sont des substituts pour le travail domestique specialise en equilibre partiel en equilibre general ils peuvent etre des complements 2 le commerce de services peut fournir des intrants cruciaux qui manquent et ce faisant renverser les avantages comparatifs dans les produits finaux 3 la fiscalite optimale imposee sur les services importes peut etre une subvention et 4 dans la formulation dynamique du modele il peut y avoir perte de revenus pour les travailleurs immobiles le long du sentier de transition ce qui suggere qu il peut y avoir des consequences importantes au plan de l equite associees a certaines reformes

social norms and energy conservation beyond the us abstract the seminal studies by allcott and mullainathan 2010 allcott 2011 and allcott and rogers 2014 show that social comparison based home energy reports her are a cost effective climate policy intervention in the us our paper demonstrates the context dependency of this result in most industrialized countries average electricity consumption and carbon intensity are well below us levels consequently her interventions can only become cost effective if treatment effect sizes are substantially higher for germany we provide evidence from a large scale randomized controlled trial that effect sizes are in fact considerably lower than in the us we conclude by illustrating that targeting highly responsive subgroups is crucial to reach cost effectiveness and by identifying the few countries in which her are promising policy instruments

social comparison and energy conservation in a collective action context a field experiment abstract this field experiment quantifies the impact of social norm information on the demand for indoor temperature based on high frequency data from indoor temperature monitors we provide participating households with a comparison of average temperature in their apartment relative to that measured in a control group for more than 90 percent of participants financial benefits of energy savings are only indirect as building level heating costs are shared across apartments in proportion to their volume despite the associated collective action problem we estimate that the intervention induces a 0 28 c reduction in average indoor temperature this suggests that direct monetary incentives is not a pre requisite for social comparison feedback to induce energy savings

addressing social dilemmas with mascots information and graphics acknolwedgements this research was supported by funding from the national science foundation for the north east water resources network newrnet grant iia 1330406 and from the center for behavioral and experimental agri environmental research cbear which is supported by the u s department of agriculture economic research service we are grateful for comments received during the 2015 northeastern agricultural and resource economics association annual meeting and the 2015 behavioral and experimental economists of the mid atlantic conference authors listed in alphabetical order

evaluating consumption and cost savings from new air conditioner purchases the case of singapore abstract air conditioning ac is a major source of household electricity consumption in singapore and there is evidence that the efficiency of acs could be improved substantially employing 45 months of energy bills and survey data and the fixed effects difference in differences estimator we calculated a savings of 7 8 of total energy consumption after the purchase of a more efficient ac compared to an estimated expected savings of 12 6 this suggests a rebound or take back of savings around 38 2 such a less than 100 of theoretical savings achieved is in line with other outside singapore estimates and economic behavioural theory since after purchasing a new ac households may i use a lower temperature setting or ii use the ac longer in order to 1 fulfil previously unmet demand and or 2 respond to the effective lower costs of running the ac our results have implications for both energy efficiency labelling policies and for singapore s recently implemented carbon tax

the triple bottom line meeting ecological economic and social goals with individual transferable quotas this paper deals with the sustainable management of a renewable resource based on individual and transferable quotas itqs when agents differ in terms of harvesting costs or catch capability in a dynamic bio economic model we determine the feasibility conditions under which a fishery manager can achieve sustainability objectives which simultaneously account for stock conservation economic efficiency and maintenance of fishing activity for the agents along time we show how the viability of quota management strategies based on itq depends on the degree of heterogeneity of users in the fishery the current status and the dynamics of the stock together with the selection of tac schedules in particular for a given stock we compute the maximin effort for a given set of agents and we derive the maximal number of active agents for a given guaranteed effort an application to the nephrops fishery in the bay of biscay illustrates the results

behavioral spillover effects from a social information campaign abstract we investigate whether a social information campaign aimed at reducing water use causes a spillover effect on the use of electricity on average water use decreased by 6 percent for the treatment group we identify a positive spillover effect on electricity use among households that had efficient use of water before the campaign the effect is sizeable almost a 9 percent reduction we argue that these results are consistent with a model of cognitive dissonance where the efficient households infer information about electricity use from the water use information

how much versus who which social norms information is more effective abstractwe conduct an experiment to investigate how different types of information about social norms affect individuals stated contributions to a specific pro environment program a student green fee in the context of a referendum compared to students that receive no information about peer contributions on average students that receive information about the dollar value range of contributions at peer institutions contribute less while students that learn about the high percentage of students voting yes on green fee programs at peer institutions contribute more the results are economically significant as the absolute values of both effects represent approximately 25 of average contributions these results suggest that information about participation rates can be more effective than information about dollar amounts in encouraging contributions to environmental initiatives of interest to stated preference researchers we find that results do not change when controlling for self selection into su

the short run and long run effects of behavioral interventions experimental evidence from energy conservation we document three remarkable features of the opower program in which social comparison based home energy reports are repeatedly mailed to more than six million households nationwide first initial reports cause high frequency action and backsliding but these cycles attenuate over time second if reports are discontinued after two years effects are relatively persistent decaying at 10 20 percent per year third consumers are slow to habituate they continue to respond to repeated treatment even after two years we show that the previous conservative assumptions about post intervention persistence had dramatically understated cost effectiveness and illustrate how empirical estimates can optimize program design jel d12 d83 l94 q41

war and institutions new evidence from sierra leone scholars of economic development have argued that war can have adverse impacts on later economic performance war destroys physical capital and infrastructure and disrupts human capital accumulation and it may also damage institutions by creating political instability destroying the social fabric and endangering civil liberties world bank 2003 understanding war s impact on development is particularly important for sub saharan africa where two thirds of all nations suffered from armed conflict during the 1980s and 1990s the proliferation of armed conflict in the world s poorest region begs the question of what role conflict may be playing in africa s disappointing economic performance yet the net long run effects of war are ambiguous from the point of view of economic theory to the extent that war impacts are limited to the destruction of capital the neoclassical model predicts rapid economic growth postwar converging back to steady state growth several recent papers that study war impacts including in japan donald r davis and david e weinstein 2002 and vietnam miguel and gerard roland 2005 find few persistent local impacts of u s bombing with heavily bombed areas experiencing rapid recovery to prewar population and economic trends this is consistent with the neoclassical model if war s main consequence is to destroy capital war could also affect long run growth either positively or negatively by modifying the scale parameter in the neoclassical growth model for example while the world bank 2003 argues that war has adverse institutional consequences charles h tilly shows how war promoted state formation and nation building in europe historically ultimately strengthening institutions tilly 1975 we study the aftermath of the recent civil conflict in sierra leone one notable aspect of this project is the extensive household data for sierra leone on conflict experiences and on local institutions our results are complementary to the other recent studies mentioned above none of which examines institutional impacts

neighborhood effects and social behavior the case of irrigated and rainfed farmers in bohol the philippines artifactual field experiments spatial econometrics and household surveys are combined in a single study to investigate the neighborhood effects of social behaviors the dictator and public goods games are conducted among rice farmers in irrigated and non irrigated areas in the philippines we find the neighborhood effects but the magnitude and statistical significance of endogenous social effects vary with the irrigation availability type of social behavior and type of neighborhood altruistic and cooperative behaviors are significantly influenced by the behaviors of neighbors only in the irrigated area where social ties are strengthened through collective irrigation management through this effect irrigated farmers social behaviors become similar to those of one another neighborhood effects for cooperative behavior are stronger among farm plot neighbors than among residential neighbors which may reflect their interactions in irrigation management although non dynamic these findings are consistent with the theory of social norm evolution through common pool resource management

social norms and pro environmental behavior a review of the evidence in light of the growing attention that social norm interventions have garnered as policy tools we review the current body of evidence on their effectiveness with respect to pro environmental behaviors we identify the various conceptualizations of social norms currently in use and inventory the experimental economics and social psychology literature that has examined the impacts of social norm interventions on pro environmental behavior for each study included in this inventory we note several contextual features the data collection and analytical methods used and any significant main effects attributed to the social norm intervention we also review several theoretical models of behavior that incorporate social norms based on this empirical and theoretical review we draw a number of policy implications and identify avenues for future research on the role of social norms with respect to pro environmental behavior

estimating consumer willingness to supply and willingness to pay for curbside recycling we estimate the willingness to pay for curbside recycling based on a contingent valuation survey of 600 residents of a large southeastern united states city the best estimate of willingness to pay for curbside recycling is 2 29 month after adjustment for hypothetical bias we also report the results of a field experiment designed to test the effectiveness of explicit monetary incentives and communication appeals to influence the decision to recycle and the quantity of materials to recycle while households respond to the monetary cost of recycling the effects of the token ex ante incentives and appeals appear to be small jel d61 q21

integrating sustainable chain management with triple bottom line accounting abstract triple bottom line accounting is widely advanced as a way in which firms can realise broader societal objectives in addition to increasing shareholder value in our analysis of the australian economy we integrate financial input output tables that describe the interdependencies between economic sectors with national social and environmental accounts to construct numerate triple bottom line accounts for 135 discrete sectors the accounts are portrayed against the numeraire of one dollar of gdp thus for a sector of the economy financial aspects of performance can be expressed for example as dollars of export earnings per dollar of gdp social aspects such as employment can be portrayed as minutes of employment generated per dollar greenhouse issues can be portrayed as kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted per dollar since these indicators of triple bottom line performance are referenced against financial units and are consistent with the system of national accounts they can be applied to financial accounts of a firm a service or a product and allow a robust triple bottom line account to be developed across a range of scales the critical advantage of this approach is that it includes both the direct or immediate effects as well as the indirect or diffuse effects associated with a large and distant chain of supply paths the incorporation of most indirect or upstream effects therefore expands the range of issues and effects within the analytical boundary and also includes imports and exports both products and firms can then be assessed properly in sustainable chain management scm terms thus a firm that uses a key intermediate input that requires a large amount of water for example cannot hide the environmental implications since they are revealed in the analysis of the full production chain this revelation can also underpin progress when firms acknowledge both the direct and indirect effects and improve their selection of key inputs on a wider range of criteria rather than on price alone our analysis is well developed at the economic sector level for australia and is also being applied to number of government institutions firms and individual products before the full benefits of numerate triple bottom line accounting can be applied to the equity issues of globalisation trade interdependencies between groups of typical countries will have to be analysed using these whole economy approaches this will allow country specific intensities to be applied to important items in the international production chain

market structure and market access the authors examine an issue at the nexus of domestic competition policy and international trade the interaction between goods trade and market power in domestic trade and distribution sectors theory suggests a set of linkages between service sector competition and goods trade supported by econometrics involving imports of 22 oecd countries compared with 69 exporters competition in services affects the volume of goods trade additionally because of interaction between tariffs and competition the market structure of the domestic service sector becomes increasingly important as tariffs are reduced empirically service competition apparently matters most for exporters in smaller poorer countries the results also suggest that while negotiated agreements leading to cross border services liberalization may boost goods trade as well they may also lead to a fall in goods trade when such liberalization involves foreign direct investment leading to increased service sector concentration

behavioral economics and energy conservation a systematic review of non price interventions and their causal effects abstract research from economics and psychology suggests that behavioral interventions can be a powerful climate policy instrument this paper provides a systematic review of the existing empirical evidence on non price interventions targeting energy conservation behavior of private households specifically we analyze four nudge like interventions referred to as social comparison commitment devices goal setting and labeling in 44 international studies comprising 105 treatments this paper differs from previous systematic reviews by solely focusing on studies that permit the identification of causal effects we find that all four interventions have the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption of private households yet effect sizes vary immensely we conclude by emphasizing the importance of impact evaluations before rolling out behavioral policy interventions at scale

default effect versus active decision evidence from a field experiment in los alamos abstract we examine how consumers respond to distinct combinations of preset defaults and subsequent economic incentives a randomised controlled trial is implemented to investigate the demand reduction performance of two electricity pricing programmes opt in and opt out critical peak pricing both the intention to treat and the treatment on the treated are more pronounced for customers assigned to the opt in group and the opt in treatment effects are relatively more persistent over repeated interventions this result suggests that the opt in type active enrolment itself had an impact on customers subsequent behaviour and made them more responsive to the treatment interventions moreover only the opt in treatment has significant effects beyond the treatment time window our results therefore highlight the important difference between an active and a passive decision making process we also estimate a marginal treatment effect model to inform the external validity of our experiment

behavioral environmental economics promises and challenges environmental issues provide a rich ground for identifying the existence and consequences of human limitations in this paper we present a growing literature lying at the interface between behavioral and environmental economics this literature identifies alternative solutions to traditional economic instruments in environmental domains that often work imperfectly but it also faces a set of challenges including the difficulty of computing welfare effects and the identification of a robust environmental policy based on context dependent socio psychological effects we illustrate our critical discussion with two behavioral schemes that have been widely implemented green nudges and corporate environmental responsibility

prices versus nudges what matters for search versus purchase of energy investments abstract we report the results of a field experiment where we exogenously vary the use of social comparison nudges and subsidies for participation in an in home energy audit program we follow subjects through to subsequent purchase of durable goods we therefore can compare the causal effect of financial incentives and nudges along two margins audits which we liken to search and purchase of durables using data on nearly 100 000 households we document that both prices and nudges cause a statistically significant increase in audits comparing point estimates effective nudges are worth roughly 50 70 however we find that neither nudges nor subsidies do not significantly impact installations

a simple theory of advertising as a good or bad our analysis treats advertisements and the goods advertised as complements in stable metautility functions and generates new results for advertising by building on and extending the general analysis of complements by assimilating the theory of advertising into the theory of complements we avoid the special approaches to advertising found in many studies that place obstacles in the way of understanding the effects of advertising we also use this approach to evaluate advertising from a welfare perspective whether there is excessive or too little advertising depends on several variables the effects on consumer utility the degree of competition in the market for advertised goods the induced changes in prices and outputs of advertised goods and whether advertising is sold to consumers

the perverse impact of calling for energy conservation abstract in periods of high energy demand utilities frequently issue emergency appeals for conservation over peak hours to reduce brownout risk we estimate the impact of such appeals using high frequency data on actual and forecasted electricity generation pollutant emission measures and real time prices our results suggest a perverse impact while there is no significant reduction in grid stress over superpeak hours such calls lead to increased off peak generation co 2 emissions and price volatility we postulate that consumer attempts at load shifting lead to this result

national treatment in the gatt the national treatment nt clause is the first line defense in the gatt and in most other trade agreements against opportunistic exploitation of the inevitable incompleteness of the agreement this paper examines the role of nt as it applies to internal taxation under the gatt it is shown that despite severely restricting the freedom to set internal taxes nt may improve government welfare but it will not completely solve the incomplete contract problem it is meant to remedy furthermore it requires a high degree of economic sophistication on behalf of trade negotiators in order for this beneficial effect to materialize

every drop counts a water conservation experiment with hotel guests we implement a field experiment with hotel guests to measure the effects of nonprice interventions on water conservation and customer satisfaction in hotels guests have no direct pecuniary incentive to conserve water as consumers do at home where they pay their own water bills because hotels earn greater profits when they manage to convince guests to conserve guests may be suspicious of a hotel s stated social goal of water conservation by implementing behavioral interventions that address these challenges we find that our nudges can induce guests to reduce their water consumption even when no direct monetary incentive is provided using post stay customer surveys we detected no adverse effects on customer satisfaction due to these nudges jel d12 i31 q41 q50

agoa and apparel who captures the tariff rent in the presence of preferential market access he african growth and opportunity act agoa was signed by presidentclinton in may 2000 and quickly became one of the most high pro lespecial and differential treatment sdt programmes implemented agoaintends to encourage higher levels of trade and direct investment in support ofpositive economic and political developments throughout sub saharan africa us congress 2000 thirty six countries were designated to be eligible for theagoa preferences for 2003 the main feature of agoa like other sdt programmes such as the unitedstates version of the generalised system of preferences gsp is the duty freeaccess granted to certain products however agoa goes beyond the standardgsp provisions and includes a wide range of textiles and apparel in the list ofproducts to receive preferential market access the trade data indicate that asmall group of apparel exporters have been the main bene ciaries of agoapreferences so far and there has not been signi cant change in the exports of anyother product from the eligible countries in this paper we analyse the impact of agoa s preferences on prices re ceived by apparel exporters in a perfectly competitive market with homogeneousgoods exporters who enjoy duty free access should bene t from a price increase

addressing participant inattention in federal programs a field experiment with the conservation reserve program voluntary land conservation programs depend upon the willingness of land owners to participate since participation requires commitment to long term contracts most studies on participation focus on changes to the pecuniary incentives facing land owners this study presents a large scale field experiment within the usda s conservation reserve program crp that examines whether informational outreach including behavioral nudges could improve land owners willingness to participate the experiment evaluates the impact of three types of reminder letters on the rate at which land is offered into the crp we find that for the most well informed group farms with expiring crp contracts the reminder letters did improve participation we interpret this result as evidence of inattentive behavior we do not detect any differences in the estimated treatment effects among the basic reminder letter and the letters augmented with peer comparisons and social norm messaging nor do we detect any treatment effect among currently unenrolled farms from a policy perspective these results imply that the usda can generate additional crp offers among farms with expiring contracts at an average cost of 39 per additional offer assuming a twenty five million acre program reminder letters sent during every sign up period would result in re enrollment offers from an additional 420 000 acres using simulations based on offers from prior crp sign ups we estimate that these additional offers in the crp auction would reduce program costs depending on the year of simulation the outreach effort achieves a benefit cost ratio of between 20 1 and 90 1

durable goods and residential demand for energy and water evidence from a field trial this article describes a household production model in which energy efficient durable goods cost less to operate so households may use them more the model is estimated using household level data from a field trial in which participants received high efficiency clothes washers free of charge the estimation strategy exploits this quasi random replacement of washers to derive precise estimates of the household production technology and a demand function for clothes washing during the field trial households increased clothes washing on average by 5 6 after receiving a high efficiency washer implying a price elasticity of 06 the complete model is used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of recent changes in minimum efficiency standards for clothes washers

effects of feedback on residential electricity demand findings from a field trial in austria abstract this paper analyzes the effects of providing feedback on electricity consumption in a field trial involving more than 1500 households in linz austria about half of these households received feedback together with information about electricity saving measures pilot group while the remaining households served as a control group participation in the pilot group was random but households were able to choose between two types of feedback access to a web portal or written feedback by post results from cross section ols regression suggest that feedback provided to the pilot group corresponds with electricity savings of around 4 5 for the average household our results from quantile regressions imply that for households in the 30th to the 70th percentile of electricity consumption feedback on electricity consumption is statistically significant and effects are highest in absolute terms and as a share of electricity consumption for percentiles below or above this range feedback appears to have no effect finally controlling for a potential endogeneity bias induced by non random participation in the feedback type groups we find no difference in the effects of feedback provided via the web portal and by post

price elasticities of residential electricity demand estimates from household panel data in bangladesh abstract we collect a household level panel dataset to estimate the price elasticities of electricity demand for different types of urban households in bangladesh we use an instrumental variable estimation strategy which exploits exogenous variation in average electricity prices induced by a value added tax shock the results indicate significant heterogeneity in price elasticities by electricity consumption levels we conduct a number of simulations under alternative policy scenarios to illustrate how incorporating the heterogeneous nature of price elasticities into pricing policy can help decrease electricity demand supply mismatch and inequality in electricity consumption the results have important policy implications for developing countries aiming to address major energy issues by implementing tariff reforms

payments or persuasion common pool resource management with price and non price measures we use lab experiments to study policies that address common pool resource overuse we look at a price mechanism specifically a pigouvian subsidy and four non price interventions the non price policies are information alone information with a normative message communication alone and normative messages with communication allowed in all experiment sessions no intervention occurs in the first seven and last seven rounds allowing us to examine the effects of introducing and taking away a policy the subsidy leads to near efficient extraction but surprisingly leads groups that were not over extracting to also reduce extraction this over compliance decreases efficiency although on net the subsidy is the most efficiency enhancing intervention information provision communication normative appeals and normative appeals combined with communication all reduce over extraction though by less than the subsidy without exacerbating over compliance however the effects of information alone and communication alone are small and not robust the non price policies cause a decline in over extraction of from 0 549 information to 11 441 normative appeals with communication these effects are of the same order of magnitude as the effects seen in major field studies of conservation messaging the subsidy has the worst persistence properties after the intervention ceases while normative messages with communication have the best

the persistence of treatment effects with norm based policy instruments evidence from a randomized environmental policy experiment during a 1977 fireside chat president jimmy carter famously appealed to american hom eowners to set their thermostats at 65 degrees to help conserve supplies of natural gas and fuel oil norm based strategies are commonly used to influence a range of private behaviors with public consequences including alcohol and drug use gambling and resource consump tion in the last decade these strategies increas ingly emphasize the use of social comparisons to motivate behavioral changes efforts to use such comparisons build upon leon festinger s 1954 social comparison theory which posits that individuals validate the appropriateness of an action or thought through comparison to others a subsequent literature in social psychol ogy argues that strategies based on this theory provide an effective means to promote environ mental conservation see e g tim kurz ngaire donaghue and ian walker 2005 p wesley schultz et al 2007 noah j goldstein robert b cialdini and vladas griskevicius 2008 jessica m nolan et al 2008 in this literature the work by schultz et al 2007 has proven most influential and forms the basis of opower s well cited social comparison approach for

sustainability assessment of u s final consumption and investments triple bottom line input output analysis the u s final demand categories such as household consumption private fixed investments government purchases and investments and export of goods and services have a wide range of environmental economic and social impacts analysis of these impacts termed as the triple bottom line tbl stimulated a tremendous interest by policy makers over the last decade therefore current research aims to analyze the tbl of u s final demands from a systems perspective to accomplish this goal the supply and use tables published by the u s bureau of economic analysis are merged with a range of environmental economic and social metrics the results show that household consumption has the largest indirect tbl sustainability impacts compared to other final demand categories with shares that range between 43 and 88 industrial sectors including manufacturing utilities agriculture construction transportation and mining are generally found to be responsible for the highest impacts for most of the environmental impact categories service sectors generally have the highest impacts on the economic and social indicators of sustainability analysis results also indicate that while meeting the household demand agriculture utilities and manufacturing sectors have relatively more environmental impacts than their contributions to gross domestic product gdp whereas service sectors contribute to gdp with a higher share than their environmental burdens furthermore it is envisioned that significant reductions in environmental footprints of u s households can be achieved if environmental policies that aim to reduce the household consumption are also supported with sustainable growth through greener and resource efficient economy

dynamic salience with intermittent billing evidence from smart electricity meters abstract digital tracking and the proliferation of automated payments have made intermittent billing more commonplace and the frequency at which consumers receive price quantity or total expenditure signals may distort their choices while this category of goods has expanded from household utilities toll road access and software downloads to standard consumption goods paid by credit card or other bill me later type systems we know surprisingly little about how these payment patterns affect decisions this paper exploits hourly household electricity consumption data collected by smart electricity meters to examine dynamic consumer behavior under intermittent expenditure signals households reduce consumption by 0 6 1 following receipt of an electricity bill but the response varies considerably by household type and season our results also suggest that spending reminders can reduce peak demand particularly during summer months we discuss the implications for energy policy when intermittent billing combined with inattention induces consumption cycles

a memory based model of bounded rationality in order to investigate the impact of limited memory on human behavior i develop a model of memory grounded in psychological and biological research i assume that people take their memories as accurate and use them to make inferences the resulting model predicts both over and underreaction but provides enough structure to predict when each effect dominates i then use this framework to study the consumption decision the results match empirical work on consumption predictability as well as differences in the marginal propensity to consume from different income streams most importantly because it ties the extent of bias to a measurable aspect of the stochastic process being forecasted the model makes testable empirical predictions

competition competition policy and the gatt the authors argue that further moves to liberalize trade and to implement existing gatt rules and principles may have a greater impact on global competition than would the pursuit of harmonization of competition policy they also suggest that current gatt rules and case law provide scope for disputes to be brought before the gatt that relate to both the application and the nonapplication of existing domestic competition laws of gatt contracting parties this leads to de facto discrimination between domestic and foreign products little use has been made of the gatt in this connection perhaps existing indirect avenues for raising competition related disputes in the gatt should be pursued more actively this would help identify what specific government policies might be the subject of multilateral negotiations and explicitly incorporated into the gatt framework

a re examination of exposure to exchange rate risk the impact of earnings management and currency derivative usage abstract in an attempt to explain the weak evidence of priced exchange rate risk we hypothesize that in addition to currency derivative usages earnings management serves as another factor contributing to a reduction in exchange rate exposure our evidence reveals that earnings management activities particularly those undertaken for the purpose of income smoothing significantly reduce firm specific exchange rate exposure and that such role is particularly important if appropriate currency derivative instruments are limited these results complement prior attempts to explain the puzzle of unpriced exchange rate risk the investigation also highlights the importance of recognizing different managerial purposes behind discretionary accruals

information provision and consumer behavior a natural experiment in billing frequency abstract in this study i estimate a causal effect of increased billing frequency on consumer behavior i exploit a natural experiment in which residential water customers switched exogenously from bimonthly to monthly billing customers increase consumption by 3 5 5 in response to more frequent information this result is reconciled in models of price and quantity uncertainty where increases in billing frequency reduce the distortion in consumer perceptions using treatment effects as sufficient statistics i calculate consumer welfare gains equivalent to 0 5 1 of annual water expenditures heterogeneous treatment effects suggest increases in outdoor water use