new light on an old problem reflections on barriers and enablers of distributed energy this viewpoint article new light on an old problem aims to stimulate thought and discussion on pathways to rapid emission reduction trajectories it considers briefly the history of the australian energy system and recent attempts to support emerging distributed energy supply systems before exploring the importance of new energy supply models and how they may emerge organically ahead of further policy and regulatory shifts in australia the article is shaped by extensive primary research literature review and engagement with policy makers industry and community organisations energy market institutions colleagues and others over a period of four years it outlines how new business models may reduce emissions ahead of policy and regulation and the importance of keeping an open mind when considering barriers to distributed energy we hope this article will spark interest and dialogue with colleagues who may be experiencing and grappling with similar challenges

wage and technology dispersion this paper explains why firms with identical opportunities may use different technologies and offer different wages our key assumption is that workers must engage in costly search in order to gather information about jobs stigler 1961 in equilibrium some firms adopt high fixed cost high productivity technologies offer high wages and fill job openings quickly other firms adopt less capital intensive technologies and offer low wages hiring mostly uninformed workers in equilibrium the amount of wage dispersion leaves workers indifferent about whether to gather information and the fraction of informed workers leaves firms indifferent about their wage and technology choice we show that worker search which would appear to be a rent seeking activity in partial equilibrium may be efficiency enhancing in general equilibrium

taxation in a two sided search model abstract this paper analyzes the effects of wage and profit taxation in a simple search and bargaining model wage tax effects depend upon the level of unemployment benefits if unemployment benefits are less than search costs or if benefits are taxed as income then a wage tax decreases unemployment it also decreases the wage thereby overshifting the tax burden profit tax effects depend upon job entry in the short run with a fixed number of jobs filled jobs plus vacancies a profit tax decreases unemployment it also raises the wage again overshifting the tax in the long run the converse holds

the caloric costs of culture evidence from indian migrants anthropologists have long documented substantial and persistent differences across social groups in the preferences and taboos for particular foods one natural question to ask is whether such food cultures matter in an economic sense in particular can culture constrain caloric intake and contribute to malnutrition to answer this question i first document that inter state migrants within india consume fewer calories per rupee of food expenditure compared to their non migrant neighbors even for households with very low caloric intake i then form a chain of evidence in support of an explanation based on culture that migrants make nutritionally suboptimal food choices due to cultural preferences for the traditional foods of their origin states first i focus on the preferences themselves and document that migrants bring their origin state food preferences with them when they migrate second i link together the findings on caloric intake and preferences by showing that the gap in caloric intake between locals and migrants is related to the suitability and intensity of the migrants origin state food preferences the most adversely affected migrants households in which both husband and wife migrated to a village where their origin state preferences are unsuited to the local price vector would consume 7 percent more calories if they possessed the same preferences as their neighbors

a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy this paper proposes a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy based on the coevolution of ecosystems technologies institutions business strategies and user practices within a multi level micro meso macro perspective this builds on and develops previous coevolutionary analyses of long term technological and industrial change and recent renewed interest within ecological economics on coevolutionary approaches previous work has analysed how the coevolution of technologies and institutions has led to the lock in of current high carbon energy systems and how the coevolution of physical and social technologies and business strategies has brought significant material and welfare benefits to the minority of the world s population living in industrialised countries the coevolutionary framework proposed here may be used to undertake 1 detailed empirical analyses at a micro meso level of the challenges relating to the innovation and adoption of particularly low carbon technologies 2 as a framework for analysing the multi level interaction of social and technological elements within potential transition pathways to a low carbon energy system 3 to assess the implications for economic growth and prosperity of a transition to a low carbon economy and 4 to assist in the development of more formal multi level evolutionary economic models

sustainable homeservices toward household services that enhance ecological social and economic sustainability abstract the idea of services replacing products is increasingly offered as a solution to making the production and consumption patterns of the affluent consumers more sustainable however the discussion about sustainable services or sustainable product service systems tends to emphasize the eco efficiency perspective rather than explicitly capture all sustainability aspects social or socioeconomic considerations are often forgotten or by passed without scrutiny this paper argues that there is the need for a concept of sustainable services in which the social sustainability aspect is also recognized with equal attention since a major part of private consumption occurs in the household context living at home and moving to and from it this paper will put forth the concept of sustainable homeservices and will suggest a way to assess sustainability of services directed to households for assessing the sustainability of services directed to households a set of indicators relating to the ecological social and economic dimensions of sustainability is proposed with the aim of giving an idea of how to assess homeservices in practical terms the paper will also exemplify how one could operationalize these indicators on an ordinal rating scale the conclusion is that it is possible to assess the sustainability of a homeservice in a relative fashion using no service or the product alternative as the point of comparison households alone have a limited capacity to influence their consumption choices because other actors set the frame for this reason institutional arrangements for making services easily available to households are outlined it appears that housing organizations have a central role in the alternative option for organizing the supply of service provision they are involved in five of the seven alternative ways of supplying services that could be identified the role of the housing organization can vary from direct supply to lighter forms such as cooperative arrangements with external service providers or resident involvement

good jobs versus bad jobs this article develops a model of noncompetitive labor markets in which high wage good and low wage bad jobs coexist minimum wages and unemployment benefits shift the composition of employment toward high wage jobs because the composition of jobs in the laissez faire equilibrium is inefficiently biased toward low wage jobs these labor market regulations increase average labor productivity and may improve welfare

the economics of energy service contracts energy service contracting can provide a cost effective route to overcoming barriers to energy efficiency energy service contracts allow the client to reduce operating costs transfer risk and concentrate attention on core activities however the energy services model may only be appropriate for a subset of energy services and energy using organisations a challenge for both business strategy and public policy is to identify those situations in which energy service contracting is most likely to be appropriate and the conditions under which it is most likely to succeed energy service contracting is a form of outsourcing it will only be chosen where the expected reduction in the production cost of supplying energy services can more than offset the transaction cost of negotiating and managing the relationship with the energy service provider production costs will be determined by a combination of the physical characteristics of the energy system and the technical efficiency of the relevant organisational arrangements including economies of scale and specialisation transaction costs in turn will be determined by the complexity of the energy service the specificity of the investments made by the contractor the competitiveness of the energy services market and the relevant legal financial and regulatory rules this paper develops these ideas into a general framework that may be used to assess the feasibility of energy service contracting in different circumstances the framework leads to a number of hypotheses that are suitable for empirical test

towards sustainability of energy systems a primer on how to apply the concept of energy services to identify necessary trends and policies virtually all goods and services that characterize modern societies welfare depend on the provision of commercial energy the core objective of this paper is to identify necessary changes in trends for achieving a transition towards more sustainable energy systems and development paths the major conclusions of this analysis are i a rigorous rethinking process has to take place to identify which level of energy services per capita lead to enhancing human welfare and quality of life ii a significant increase in energy conversion efficiency has to be triggered to finally provide energy services with far less input of energy than today iii a continuous increase in the share of renewable energy sources and other low emission options has to be brought about iv however as history has shown this process of technological learning has to be accompanied by proper energy price and regulatory policies otherwise it is very likely that energy conservation gains due to technical efficiency improvements will be outweighed again by increases in energy service demand and straightforward energy consumption and co 2 emissions

jevons paradox revisited the evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed

quinoa quandary cultural tastes and nutrition in peru abstract using a model of household food demand that incorporates regional preferences tastes for culturally appropriate food i investigate whether tastes for quinoa in the puno region of peru reduced household nutrition intakes when quinoa prices dramatically increased between 2004 and 2012 adapting a model from atkin 2013 and utilizing data from a national peruvian household survey enaho i am able to deconstruct regional changes in household nutrition over time into several general equilibrium effects in particular i isolate the effect of regional tastes for quinoa on nutrition outcomes this effect is identified by an exogenous spike in quinoa prices driven by international demand for quinoa while i find evidence that regional tastes for quinoa do exist in the puno region these tastes do not have a statistically significant impact on nutrition outcomes my results lend support to the conjecture that tastes for culturally appropriate food do not meaningfully affect household nutrition if the food in question is a sufficiently small component of a household s overall diet

persistent wage dispersion and involuntary unemployment it is costly for firms offers to workers to be turned down both because firms must make additional offers and making offers is costly and because capital is underused or unused provided that workers apply to at least two firms for jobs there will be wage dispersion in equilibrium and some workers will randomly fail to receive any wage offers firms in the same industry with access to the same technology may nevertheless choose different levels of capital intensity firms using capital intensive technologies will pay higher wages

explaining the role of incumbent utilities in sustainable energy transitions a case study of the smart grid development in china abstract smart grids sgs have been widely recognized as an enabling technology for delivering sustainable energy transitions such transitions have given rise to more complex government utility consumer relationships however these stakeholder relationships remain largely under researched this paper critically examines and explains the role of incumbent utilities in sustainable energy transitions using sg developments in china as a case study we have three major findings first china has developed an incumbent led model for deploying sgs second two incumbents the major state owned grid companies act as enablers of sg deployment they are strategic first movers and infrastructure builders of sgs they have also developed five types of networks as they increasingly reach out to other state actors businesses and electricity consumers thirdly these two grid companies also act as a fundamental block to structural changes in socio technical regimes disincentives to these large existing grid companies coupled with excessive reliance on them to provide public goods have resulted in major weaknesses in china s incumbent led model our findings have clear policy implications innovation in regulating incumbents is needed in order to provide sufficient regulatory incentives for advancing sg developments in china

equilibrium wage dispersion and interindustry wage differentials this paper develops a search theoretic explanation of interindustry wage differentials given coordination problems in the labor market the probability of filling a vacancy is an increasing function of the wage offered in equilibrium firms that find vacancies more costly will offer higher wages the model thus explains the persistence of interindustry wage differentials and their correlation with industry average capital labor ratio and profitability additionally the model predicts that high wage firms will receive more applications per job opening and that wages in the labor market will behave as strategic complements

wage and effort dispersion we construct a simple model where ex ante homogeneous firms offer jobs with different wages and effort levels to ex ante homogeneous workers a minimum wage is shown to be welfare reducing because of its effect on the distribution of wages and effort

trade tastes and nutrition in india this paper introduces habit formation into an otherwise standard model of international trade household tastes evolve over time to favor foods consumed as a child the opening of trade causes preferred goods to rise in price as these were relatively inexpensive in autarky neglecting the correlation between tastes and agro climatic endowments overstates the short run nutritional gains from agricultural trade liberalization and masks potential caloric losses for laborers i examine the predictions of this model of trade with habit formation using household survey data from india both by looking across indian regions and by examining the consumption patterns of inter state migrants

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

labour supply search and taxes abstract classical labour supply theory is one of the most sophisticated parts of labour economics yet there is no compelling theoretical reason to believe in an outcome on a classical labour supply curve and it is unclear whether it is a good empirical description of the way in which labour markets actually work this paper uses the techniques of search theory to analyse the impact of changes in the tax system on incentives to work when individuals do not have flexibility of hours within jobs it is shown how the traditional comparative statics are of some use but are rarely the whole story and some comparative statics results are surprising

taxes subsidies and equilibrium unemployment this paper considers the effects of wage taxes employment subsidies and unemployment benefits in a simple model of equilibrium search unemployment is determined by the equality of job matchings and job separations job vacancies are determined by a zero profit condition and wages by a nash bargain between the meeting firm and worker i show that marginal wage taxes influence the firm s and worker s equilibrium sharing rule whereas employment subsidies and unemployment benefits influence only the surplus shared hence tax financed subsidies reduce wages and raise employment and vacancies whereas tax financed unemployment benefits raise wages and reduce employment and vacancies in this paper we consider the effects of wage taxes employment subsidies and unemployment benefits on equilibrium search unemployment in a model where wages are determined competitively by the meeting firm and worker discussions about the desirability of taxes and subsidies and their effect on employment and wages abound in the labour economics literature yet the only tax or subsidy that has been systematically discussed in a competitive search framework is a lump sum unemployment benefit the reason for this might be that the structure of the model is such that it is ideally suited to the study of unemployment benefits whereas traditional supply and demand analysis could arguably cope with other kinds of taxes this might be true in some cases but if it is at all appropriate to think of equilibrium unemployment as coming out of an essentially competitive framework when the process which brings together jobs and workers is characterized by frictions traditional supply and demand analysis may not be rich enough to give us all the answers we need 1 the model of this paper is a simple equilibrium model with endogenous unemployment supply of jobs i e demand for labour and real wages unemployment exists because unemployed workers and unfilled jobs cannot find each other instantaneously in the interval of time required to match all workers and jobs some existing job worker pairs break up providing a new flow into unemployment thus unemployment can never be eliminated in equilibrium flows into and flows out of unemployment are equal wages are set endogenously by generalized nash bargains between the individual firm and worker the equilibrium wage rate is shown to depend on all the parameters of the model and to be determined simultaneously with equilibrium unemployment the driving force in the model which provides the link between wages and unemployment is the rate of job vacancies the total number of jobs is determined by zero profit conditions because of constant returns to scale the number of jobs taken up each period depends positively on the number of job vacancies because a typical unemployed worker will have a better chance of locating a job when there are more vacancies if the real wage rate falls the expected profits from a job rise firms open up more vacancies to take advantage of this and so more jobs are taken up but as vacancies rise and

economies of scale household size and the demand for food household scale economies are plausibly attributed to shared household public goods that make larger households better off at the same level of per capita resources larger households should therefore have higher per capita consumption of private goods such as food provided that they do not substitute too much toward the effectively cheaper public goods the evidence shows exactly the opposite data from rich and poor countries indicate that at constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for food decreases with household size and that it does so most in the poorest countries where substitution should be the least

public policy analysis of energy efficiency and load management in changing electricity businesses the focus of this paper is 1 the potential effectiveness of the reform of the electricity industry on promoting energy efficiency and load management and 2 the potential effectiveness of newmechanisms for promoting energy efficiency and load management many countries are initiating reforms of their power sectors to stimulate private investment increase operation and management efficiencies and lower the cost of power these countries are unbundling vertically integrated utilities into distinct generation transmission distribution and retail supply companies introducing commercial management principles to government owned monopolies and in many cases transferring operation or ownership to private companies electric industry restructuring may force regulators and policy makers to re examine existing mechanisms for promoting load management and energy efficiency in some cases electric industry restructuring replaces the long standing relationship between a single monopoly provider and protected customer franchise with a new set of relationships among retail electricity suppliers and customers who may now be free to choose suppliers in these types of situations markets not government regulators and utility monopolies are seen as determining future energy production and consumption decisions however it is uncertain whether this type of restructuring will overcome important market barriers to energy efficiency that limit markets for energy efficient products and services from functioning effectively as a result of these barriers a large untapped potential for cost effective energy efficiency investments exists supporters of public policies argue that energy efficiency programs are an appropriate government strategy to capture economic efficiencies that the market cannot secure unassisted r 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

optimal income transfer programs intensive versus extensive labor supply responses this paper analyzes optimal income transfers for low incomes labor supply responses are modeled along the intensive margin intensity of work on the job and along the extensive margin participation into the labor force when behavioral responses are concentrated along the intensive margin the optimal transfer program is a classical negative income tax program with a substantial guaranteed income support and a large phasing out tax rate however when behavioral responses are concentrated along the extensive margin the optimal transfer program is similar to the earned income tax credit with negative marginal tax rates at low income levels and a small guaranteed income carefully calibrated numerical simulations are provided

food insecurity in vulnerable populations coping with food price shocks in afghanistan we use the case of afghanistan during the 2007 08 food price crisis to illustrate the impact of staple food price increases on household food security using the unconditional quantile regression estimator to identify separate effects for households across the distribution we find evidence of divergent behavior the most vulnerable households with low calorie diets cannot afford to make substantial cuts to caloric intake since they are close to or below the minimum daily energy requirements accordingly we find no decline in per capita daily caloric intake as a result of the price increases such households may be sacrificing diet quality to maintain calories with a potential for serious and long term health consequences households with high calorie diets who can afford to cut back on calories experience the largest declines we find evidence of declines in dietary diversity across the entire distribution of households with slightly larger declines observed for those with the least diversity moving beyond the price responses for the average household can inform policy makers of how the most vulnerable groups are affected such information is particularly salient in a country like afghanistan where decades of war political instability and recurring droughts have led to a precarious state of food insecurity and poverty

a resource based view of opportunities to transform australia s electricity sector abstract proponents of low carbon transformation face an uphill battle to reconfigure incumbent energy systems against powerful interests protecting the status quo australia s electricity sector is an example of such a system wedded to fossil fuels and backed by much of the country s political establishment this paper addresses the potential for low carbon transformation in australia s electricity sector it explores the complex and uncertain dynamics shaping the sector and outlines how these can be understood through the lens of strategic agency with an eye for opportunities to drive a shift to renewables it reviews the dynamics of change and re stability shaping australia s electricity sector between 2006 and 2015 and applies a resource based view of transformative agency to analyse these dynamics results show the sector suffers multiple stressors and emphasise disruptive changes in the pipeline critically many of these transformative dynamics stem from factors outside the influence of the electricity sector and its supporters while results do not point to a clear trajectory or outcome of transformation they indicate the uptake of small scale solar photovoltaic pv systems by households and small business will play a defining role in the sector s future configuration furthermore the exploration of transformative dynamics affecting the electricity sector through a resource based lens shows that many opportunities exist for strategic agents to intervene in support of a disruptive shift to renewables the paper suggests a range of mechanisms that agents could use to undermine the strength of fossil energy in the electricity sector and encourage a shift to renewables

the perverse effects of wage and price controls in search markets abstract this paper examines the effects of price ceilings and minimum wages on the performance of markets in which agents must invest in costly search to become informed about prices or wages in this context it is found that the market equilibrium may respond to changes in policy instruments in strikingly counterintuitive ways in particular the imposition of price ceilings and minimum wages may respectively result in consumer price increases and wage decreases thus an important implication of our analysis is that when unions fight to increase wages by raising the minimum wage they may paradoxically actually be reducing the average wage of its members

foods and fads the welfare impacts of rising quinoa prices in peru abstract riding on a wave of interest in superfoods in rich countries quinoa went in less than a decade from being largely unknown outside of south america to being an upper class staple in the united states the united kingdom and elsewhere as a result concerned commentators suggested that the rising international demand for quinoa which tripled prices might have substantially harmed peruvian quinoa consumers we study the impacts of rising quinoa prices on the welfare of peruvian households our analysis suggests these fears are unwarranted a descriptive analysis shows that quinoa is a small part

ranking unemployment duration and wages it explores the implication of one central assumption when firms receive multiple acceptable applications they hire the worker who has been unemployed for the least amount of time this assumption ranking is contrasted with the assumption of random hiring no ranking by embodying this assumption in a model of the labour market with job creation destruction and matching the joint behaviour of unemployment the distribution of unemployment durations and wages are characterized the implication that the re employment prospects of employed workers were they to become unemployed are better than those of the currently unemployed appears to have been an important feature of european unemployment experience in the 1980 s this paper examines the effects of the composition of unemployment on wage determination it explores one central assumption when firms receive multiple acceptable applications they hire the worker who has been unemployed for the least amount of time we refer to this assumption as ranking and contrast it throughout to the assumption of random hiring or no ranking by embodying this assumption in a model of the labour market with job creation destruction and matching we characterize the joint behaviour of unemployment the distribution of unemployment durations and wages ranking has a number of important implications first in addition to the obvious result that the exit rate from unemployment is a decreasing function of duration we show that the effect of duration is stronger the higher the rate of unemployment second with the wage depending on the distributions of prospective unemployment durations the presence of long term unemployed per se has little effect on wages third looking at the relation between the wage and the aggregate level of unemployment and comparing ranking to the case of no ranking the wage moves less with the level of unemployment but more with the change in unemployment put simply ranking and no ranking models show exactly the same aggregate unemployment slightly different long run responses of wages to unemployment and sharply different wage dynamics the paper is organized as follows section i characterizes the matching process and derives a matching function based on an urn ball process with vacancies as urns and applications by unemployed workers as balls thus the distribution of applications per vacancy depends on aggregate unemployment and vacancies vacancies with at least one acceptable application are filled when a vacancy receives more than one acceptable application firms use a rule to choose among applicants thus the rule determines who is hired but does not affect the number of hires section ii uses this matching function in a model of the labour market with continual job creation and destruction and characterizes the equilibrium values of unemployment vacancies and hires

income taxation in a frictional labor market a new model of wage dispersion is used to examine welfare aspects of income taxation the model retains the dynamics of wage posting models while exogenizing search effort therefore allowing more insight into policy issues the results highlight effects that standard analyses do not take into account the optimal income tax should depend on an incidence effect between workers and firms this incidence effect arises from firms trying to lower wages as much as possible an employment tax proves in certain cases to be the best method to encourage labor force participation

the co evolutionary relationship between energy service companies and the uk energy system implications for a low carbon transition abstract the energy service company esco business model is designed to reward businesses by satisfying consumers energy needs at less cost and with fewer carbon emissions via energy demand management and or sustainable supply measures in contrast the revenue of the incumbent energy utility company euco model is coupled with the sale of units of energy which are predominantly sourced from fossil fuels the latter is currently dominant in the uk this paper addresses two questions first why has the esco model traditionally been confined to niche applications second what role is the esco model likely to play in the transition to a low carbon uk energy system to answer these the paper examines the core characteristics of the esco model relative to the euco model the paper then examines how escos have co evolved with the various dimensions of the energy system i e ecosystems institutions user practices technologies and business models to provide insight into how escos might help to shape the future uk energy system we suggest that institutional and technological changes within the uk energy system could result in a more favourable selection environment for escos consequently enabling the esco model to proliferate at the expense of the euco model