monitoring changes in economy wide energy efficiency from energy gdp ratio to composite efficiency index since the 1973 world oil crisis monitoring trends in energy efficiency at the economy wide level has been an important component of energy strategy in many countries to support this effort various energy efficiency related indicators have been developed we examine some classical indicators which are often found in national and international energy studies in the 1970s and 1980s we then describe the recent developments in using the index decomposition analysis to give an economy wide composite energy efficiency index based on a bottom up approach this composite index is superior to the classical indicators as an economy wide energy efficiency measure and has lately been adopted by a growing number of countries for national energy efficiency trend monitoring

co2 emissions of china s food industry an input output approach in a joint u s china statement on climate change the chinese government declared to peak co2 emissions around 2030 this demonstrates the government s determination to deal with carbon emission and climate change although the food industry is not a carbon emission intensive industry its large scale makes the emission reduction in the industry very important based on the input output structural decomposition method this paper calculates the co2 emissions of china s food industry from 1991 to 2012 and decomposes the change in co2 emissions of the industry during 1992 1997 1997 2002 2002 2007 and 2007 2010 into four main effects emission factor energy structure energy intensity and total output including four sub effects intermediate use domestic final demand import substitution and export extension the results show that changes in co2 emissions in the food industry mainly depends on total output effect and energy intensity effect energy intensity effect is the most important factor reducing co2 emissions as it reduced cumulative 213 million tons mt co2 emissions of the industry among total output effect the effects of intermediate use and domestic final demand are the two biggest contributors to carbon emissions finally we provide some policy advices for constraining and reducing co2 emissions of china s food industry the advices include increasing r d investment and the substitution of energy with other input factors to decrease energy intensity increasing the added value of the food industry optimizing the energy structure with more clean and low carbon energy and maintaining the prices of raw materials of the food industry i e agricultural products with taxes or subsidies

stochastic modeling of financial electricity contracts abstract we discuss the modeling of electricity contracts traded in many deregulated power markets these forward futures type contracts deliver either physically or financially electricity over a specified time period and is frequently referred to as swaps since they in effect represent an exchange of fixed for floating electricity price we propose to use the heath jarrow morton approach to model swap prices since the notion of a spot price is not easily defined in these markets for general stochastic dynamical models we connect the spot price the instantaneous delivery forward price and the swap price and analyze two different ways to apply the heath jarrow morton approach to swap pricing either one specifies a dynamics for the non existing instantaneous delivery forwards and derives the implied swap dynamics or one models directly on the swaps the former is shown to lead to quite complicated stochastic models for the swap price even when the forward dynamics is simple the latter has some theoretical problems due to a no arbitrage condition that has to be satisfied for swaps with overlapping delivery periods to overcome this problem a practical modeling approach is analyzed the market is supposed only to consist of non overlapping swaps and these are modelled directly a thorough empirical study is performed using data collected from nord pool our investigations demonstrate that it is possible to state reasonable models for the swap price dynamics which is analytically tractable for risk management and option pricing purposes however this is an area of further research

who suffers the penalty a panel data analysis of earnings gaps in vietnam in spite of its predominant economic weight in developing countries little is known about the informal sector earnings structure compared to that of the formal sector taking advantage of the rich vhlss dataset in vietnam in particular its three wave panel data 2002 2004 2006 we assess the magnitude of various formal informal earnings gaps while addressing heterogeneity at three different levels the worker the job wage employment vs self employment and the earnings distribution we estimate fixed effects and quantile regressions to control for unobserved individual characteristics our results suggest that the informal sector earnings gap highly depends on the workers job status and on their relative position in the earnings distribution penalties may in some cases turn into premiums by comparing our results with studies in other developing countries we draw conclusions highlighting vietnam s labour market specificity

a spot forward model for electricity prices with regime shifts 2014 elsevier b v all rights reserved this is the authors manuscript preprint to the article

new roles for marriage in urban africa kinship networks and the labor market in kenya abstract this paper explores new roles that traditionally rural kinship networks organized around the marriage institution might play in improving labor market outcomes in urban africa using new data from kisumu kenya and controlling for selection into marriage we find that marriage significantly increases employment levels and incomes in our sample of migrants at the same time marriage increases the remittances that migrants send to the extended family consistent with the view that the benefits of the network come with additional social obligations these obligations appear to be borne disproportionately by high ability individuals who consequently defer marriage the negative selection into marriage that we uncover has consequences for the future viability of the urban networks with implications for long term growth and distribution in this economy

the economics of roscas and intrahousehold resource allocation this paper investigates individual motives to participate in rotating savings and credit associations roscas detailed evidence from roscas in a kenyan slum nairobi suggests that most roscas are predominantly composed of women particularly those living in a couple and earning an independent income to explain this phenomenon we propose an argument based on conflictual interactions within the household participation in a rosca is a strategy a wife employs to protect her savings against claims by her husband for immediate consumption the empirical implications of the model are then tested using the data collected in kenya

why did the energy intensity fall in china s industrial sector in the 1990s the relative importance of structural change and intensity change there have been a variety of studies investigating the relative importance of structural change and real intensity change to the change in china s energy consumption in the 1980s however no detailed analysis to date has been done to examine whether or not the increased energy efficiency trend in the 1980s still prevailed in the 1990s this article has filled this gap by investigating the change in energy consumption in china s industrial sector in the 1990s based on the data sets of value added and end use energy consumption for the 29 industrial subsectors and using the newly proposed decomposition method of giving no residual our results clearly show that the overwhelming contributor to the decline in industrial energy use in the 1990s was the decline in real energy intensity indicating that the trend of real energy intensity declines in the 1980s at the 2 digit level was still maintained in the 1990s this conclusion still holds even if we lower the growth rate dramatically in line with the belief that the growth rate of china s gdp may be overestimated

relationships and traders in madagascar this article documents the role that personal relationships play in economic exchange original survey data show that agricultural traders in madagascar perceive relationships as the most important factor for success in their business evidence details the extent to which relationships are used to serve a variety of purposes such as the circulation of information about prices and market conditions the provision of trade credit the prevention and handling of contractual difficulties the regularity of trade flows and the mitigation of risk of these the regularity of supply and demand and the sharing of risk appear particularly important larger and more prosperous traders are those with quantitatively and qualitatively better relationships family plays little role in business beyond assistance at start up

releasing constraints to growth or pushing on a string policies and performance of mexican micro firms abstract using firm level data from mexico this paper investigates the firm characteristics associated with participation in credit markets access to training tax payments and membership in business associations we find that firms which participate in these institutions exhibit significantly higher profits moreover firms that borrow from formal or informal sources and those that pay taxes are significantly more likely to stay in business but firms that received credit exhibit lower rates of income growth these results persist when firm characteristics that are arguably correlated with unobserved entrepreneurial ability are controlled for our findings suggest that the significant within country differences in firm productivity observed in developing economies are due in part to market and government failures that limit the ability of micro firms to reach their optimal sizes

embodied energy and intensity in china s normal and processing exports and their driving forces 2005 2015 abstract international trade has important impacts on a country s energy consumption this paper first uses the time series 2005 2015 extended input output database to study china s embodied energy and intensity in both normal and processing exports structural decomposition analysis sda is then applied to analyze the driving forces behind the embodiment changes the empirical results show that china s energy embodied in both normal and processing exports first increased in 2005 2008 dropped in 2009 due to the global financial crisis and then rose again after 2009 and finally dropped in 2014 2015 the embodied energy in trade as a percentage of total energy consumption in china was relatively stable before and after the global financial crisis at around 28 over the 2005 2008 period and 22 over the 2009 2015 period the contribution of the aggregate embodied intensity aei of exports to china s aggregate energy intensity dropped from 30 in 2005 to 21 in 2015 among china s trading partners the united states japan and korea together accounted for around half of china s embodied energy and aei in exports in 2005 but their shares dropped to only one third in 2015 energy efficiency improvement played the key role in reducing the embodied energy and intensity in china s exports similar analysis can be applied to other regions and indicators

china s changing energy intensity trend a decomposition analysis china experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000 but since then the rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003 most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change but disagreed on the role of structural change to the best of our knowledge no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000 in this paper we use logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980 2003 we find that 1 technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity 2 structural change at the industry and sector sub industry level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980 2003 although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post 1990 period 3 structural change involving shifts of production between sub sectors however decreased overall energy intensity 4 the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress 5 inter fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity

can china achieve its carbon intensity target by 2020 while sustaining economic growth in 2009 the chinese government announced its carbon intensity target for 2020 can china achieve this carbon intensity while sustaining economic growth to address this essential issue the contributions of this study lie in three aspects first we quantitatively capture the relationship between china s economic growth and energy consumption using the cointegration theory and predict china s energy consumption by 2020 according to different economic growth targets second we forecast china s energy structure in 2020 using compositional data and arima models under different scenarios third we deduce china s co2 emission and carbon intensity in 2020 furthermore we investigate whether or not china can realize the carbon intensity target in premise of ensuring economic growth and evaluate the contribution of the energy structure s adjustment to meeting this target finally we put forward some relevant policy implications for achieving china s carbon intensity target

comparing structural decomposition analysis and index to analyze and understand historical changes in economic environmental employment or other socio economic indicators it is useful to assess the driving forces or determinants that underlie these changes two techniques for decomposing indicator changes at the sector level are structural decomposition analysis sda and index decomposition analysis ida for example sda and ida have been used to analyze changes in indicators such as energy use co2 emissions labor demand and value added the changes in these variables are decomposed into determinants such as technological demand and structural effects sda uses information from input output tables while ida uses aggregate data at the sector level the two methods have developed quite independently which has resulted in each method being characterized by specific unique techniques and approaches this paper has three aims first the similarities and differences between the two approaches are summarized second the possibility of transferring specific techniques and indices is explored finally a numerical example is used to illustrate differences between the two approaches

household entrepreneurship and social networks panel data evidence from vietnam en utilisant un panel de microentreprises familiales au vietnam cet article met en relation le reseau social des entrepreneurs et de leur menage avec la performance de la microentreprise familiale nous abordons deux questions connexes la premiere examine la possibilite d effets differencies de l emploi des membres de la famille par rapport a des travailleurs recrutes sur le marche du travail sur la performance de la microentreprise une deuxieme question aborde les effets respectifs des differentes dimensions des reseaux sociaux sur l efficience technique de la microentreprise l hypothese testee est que au dela du canal de la productivite du travail les entrepreneurs qui sont confrontes a un environnement social defavorable pourraient produire moins efficacement et realiser une valeur ajoutee plus faible que ce qui pourrait etre possible avec la meme quantite de ressources nous montrons qu il existe en effet un differentiel de productivite entre le travail familial et le travail recrute sur le marche et nos resultats attestent de la presence d effets defavorables du reseau social pour certains menages gerant une microentreprise nous soulignons aussi l importance des reseaux professionnels pour la reussite de l entreprenariat familial

the impact of informal networks on quit behavior sector disaggregation the change in the level effect accounts for only 0 35 0 41 percentage point of the 2 24 percentage point deceleration in labor productivity growth between the 1948 65 and 1973 78 periods the aggregate rate and level effects are not very sensitive to the degree of disaggregation 12versus 60 sector although some large level effects are evident within and across major industrial divisions they often cancel out in the aggregate however the level effect from the shift out of farming is quantitatively large and is close to the aggregate level effect using either 12 sector or 60 sector disaggregation although one can approximate the aggregate level effect by looking only at that for agriculture one should note that other fairly large level effects exist both within and across major industrial divisions other than agriculture

hanoi s ancient quarter traders resilient livelihoods in a rapidly transforming city within the rapidly transforming city of hanoi vietnam s capital lies the ancient quarter home to a broad array of small entrepreneurs and traders since the 13th century utilising a longitudinal

job information networks neighborhood effects and inequality this paper explores the theoretical and empirical literature to examine the use by different social groups of informal sources of information provided by friends relatives and acquaintances during job search and its consequences for the job market it also addresses the role of network structure and size the resource endowments of contacts and nature of the links between contacts to explain differences in the effects of job information networks in doing so the paper also turns to the sociology literature on job information networks and provides an economic perspective on such sociological concepts as strong versus weak ties inbreeding distance from structural holes etc the paper distinguishes between models of exogenous job information networks that is where individuals obtain job related information through a given social structure and endogenous job information networks which are social networks that result from individuals uncoordinated actions the paper pays special attention to such issues as physical and social proximity and sharing of information and discusses them in the context of the recent social interactions and neighborhood effects literature finally the paper outlines a model that integrates job information networks where interactions occur in business cycle frequencies with the dynamics of human capital formation which include the joint effects of parental community and neighborhood human capital and are set in life cycle frequencies for the purpose of organizing suggestions for future research and examining earned income inequality

urban energy transition in china insights from trends socioeconomic drivers and environmental impacts of beijing abstract the coal dominated energy structure has not only fueled china s rapid economic development but also brought great pressure on china promoting energy transition is among the great challenges for china as one of the most developed megacities in china beijing promotes energy transition intensively in this study we explored the trends socioeconomic drivers and environmental impacts of the energy transition process in beijing during the decades we found that beijing s energy transition has gone through four typical stages after a parallel growth between the economy and coal dominated energy consumption at beginning the growth rate of energy consumption has gradually slowed down since 1996 between 2000 and 2007 the energy structure became relatively balanced and diversified driven by the changes of energy intensity energy structure and final demand composition along with the economic structure s shift from heavy manufacturing to service thereafter economic development was seriously decoupled from direct energy consumption and the de coal trend had made remarkable achievements so2 and nox emissions have declined significantly since 2007 diversified energy structure based on the de coal trend cleaner energy and economic restructuring promotes energy transition meanwhile the feasibility of implementation also should be considered in other cities energy transition process in china

why did china s energy intensity increase during 1998 2006 decomposition and policy analysis abstract despite the fact that china s energy intensity has continuously decreased during the 1980s and mostly 1990s the decreasing trend has reversed since 1998 and the past few years have witnessed rapid increase in china s energy intensity we firstly conduct an index decomposition analysis to identify the key forces behind the increase it is found that 1 the high energy demand in industrial sectors is mainly attributed to expansion of production scale especially in energy intensive industries 2 energy saving mainly comes from efficiency improvement with energy intensive sectors making the largest contribution and 3 a heavier industrial structure also contributes to the increase this study also makes the first attempt to bridge the quantitative decomposition analysis with qualitative policy analyses and fill the gap between decomposition results and policy relevance in previous work we argue that 1 energy efficiency improvement in energy intensive sectors is mainly due to the industrial policies that have been implemented in the past few years 2 low energy prices have directly contributed to high industrial energy consumption and indirectly to the heavy industrial structure we provide policy suggestions in the end

the benefits of formalization evidence from vietnamese manufacturing smes summary based on unique panel data consisting of both formal and informal firms this paper uses a matched double difference approach to examine the relationship between legal status and firm level outcomes in micro small and medium manufacturing enterprises smes in vietnam controlling for determining factors and observable time variant factors that may simultaneously influence the decision to formalize and subsequent firm performance we find evidence that becoming officially registered leads to an increase in profits and investments and a decrease in the use of casual labor improved contract conditions for workers thus we conclude that formalizing is beneficial both to firms and the workers in these firms

what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate 1997 2006 abstract china is the second largest energy consumer in the world during 1997 2002 china s energy intensity declined by 33 however it rose by 10 7 over 2003 2005 and declined by 1 2 in 2006 what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate so drastically industry accounts for approximately 70 of the total energy consumption in china in this paper we decompose china s industrial energy intensity changes between 1997 and 2002 into sectoral structural effects and efficiency effects measured by sectoral energy intensities at two digit level and including the shifts of product mix in the sub sector or firm level using tornqvist and sato vartia index methods the results show that in this period efficiency effects possibly contributed to a majority of the decline while the contribution from structural effects was less during 2003 2005 the excessive expansion of high energy consuming sub sectors and the high investment ratio were foremost sources of the increasing energy intensity attributed to the government efforts the energy intensity has started to decline slightly since july 2006 in future to save more energy in addition to technical progress china should attach more importance to optimizing its sectoral structure and lowering its investment ratio

pricing reliability options under different electricity price regimes abstract reliability options are capacity remuneration mechanisms aimed at enhancing security of supply in electricity systems they can be framed as call options on electricity sold by power producers to system operators this paper provides a comprehensive mathematical treatment of reliability options their value is first derived by means of closed form pricing formulae which are obtained under several assumptions about the dynamics of electricity prices and strike prices then the value of the reliability option is simulated under a real market calibration using data of the italian power market we perform sensitivity analyses to highlight the role of the level and volatility of both power and strike price of the mean reversion speeds and of the correlation coefficient on the reliability options value finally we calculate the parameter model risk to quantify the impact that a model misspecification has on the equilibrium value of the ro

does the classic microfinance model discourage entrepreneurship among the poor experimental evidence from india do the repayment requirements of the classic microfinance contract inhibit investment in high return but illiquid business opportunities among the poor using a field experiment we compare the classic contract which requires that repayment begin immediately after loan disbursement to a contract that includes a two month grace period the provision of a grace period increased short run business investment and long run profits but also default rates the results thus indicate that debt contracts that require early repayment discourage illiquid risky investment and thereby limit the potential impact of microfinance on microenterprise growth and household poverty jel a21 g32 i32 l25 l26 o15 o16

a market approach to long term security of supply the problem of ensuring that there is enough generation capacity to meet future demand has been an issue in market design since the beginning of the deregulation process although ideally the market itself should be enough to provide adequate investment incentives there are several factors that prevent this result from being achieved and some actual markets have already experienced problems related with a lack of generation capacity a regulatory framework to address this question is presented the procedure is based on an organized market where reliability contracts based on financial call options are auctioned so both their price and their allocation among the different plants are determined through competitive mechanisms this results in a stabilization of the income of the generators and provides a clear incentive for new generation investment with a minimum of regulatory intervention additionally the method represents a market compatible mechanism to hedge demand from the occurrence of high market prices

measuring structural change and energy use decomposition of the us economy from 1997 to 2002 abstract the steadily increasing focus on energy production and consumption has led to growing research attention to patterns of energy use within economies of particular interest has been comparing the driving forces of increasing efficiency and economic structural change input output analysis ioa and decomposition analysis have become critical tools for performing such analyses this study analyzes aggregate energy use in the united states in 1997 and 2002 to discover the causes of changing energy usage and flows results show that rising population and household consumption acted to drive up energy demand but this driving force was offset by considerable structural change within the economy particularly related to a quickly increasing trade deficit in manufacturing goods thus while total energy intensity the ratio of energy use to economic output declined by approximately 12 between 1997 and 2002 changes in the structure of the economy explain this drop more than increased energy efficiency the level of aggregation at which decomposition analyses are run was identified as a crucially sensitive parameter for the determination of structural change and future studies should specifically address the amount of detail necessary to adequately measure changes in economic structure

input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade competitive versus non competitive imports energy related co2 emissions embodied in international trade have been widely studied by researchers using the environmental input output framework in the literature two different approaches to deal with emissions embodied in a country s imports can be found one of the approaches is based on the assumption of competitive imports while the other is based on the assumption of non competitive imports we show that the implications of the results obtained using different imports assumptions are not the same the approach using the competitive imports assumption gives estimates larger than those obtained using the non competitive import assumption the differences between the two embodiment estimates come from the transition of embodied emissions in china s imports for intermediate consumption to those in china s exports this explains why relatively high estimates of co2 emissions embodied in china s exports are reported in several recent studies appearing in energy policy

the driving forces of china s energy use from 1992 to 2010 an empirical study of input output and structural decomposition analysis abstract the energy consumption in china has accelerated since the early 2000s and china became the largest energy consumer in the world by 2010 to examine the driving forces of china s energy use this paper conducts a structural decomposition analysis based on hybrid input output tables in addition we describe the framework of china s energy system by using two energy flow charts the results show that china s current energy use is investment led demand between 1992 and 2007 the three main final demand categories gross fixed capital formation household consumption and exports contributed approximately one third each to the changes of total energy use in china between 2007 and 2010 however three quarters of energy consumption changes came from investment activity only technological improvement saved approximately five percent of the total energy use annually during the periods of 1992 1997 1997 2002 and 2007 2010 in the period of 2002 2007 however its contribution dropped to only three percent p a due to the rise of the indirect energy requirement coefficient in the construction sector these results suggest that adjusting the final demand structure and improving energy efficiency further will meet china s energy challenges in the future

south african land policy the legacy of history and current options abstract the highly dualistic farm structure of south africa and the low productivity of native african farmers have been the result of systematic distortions in land allocation output markets the provision of infrastructure agricultural credit and services the dualistic structure did not emerge because of genuine economies of scale in the large commercial sector other countries in latin america and africa that once supported a dualistic farm size structure through similar distortions have either implemented large scale land reforms or have experienced decades of peasant revolts and civil war the paper compares these international experiences to south africa and outlines judicial and market assisted approaches to south african land reform

input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade the effects of sector aggregation abstract energy related co2 emissions embodied in international trade have been widely studied by researchers using the environmental input output analysis framework it is well known that both sector aggregation and spatial aggregation affect the results obtained in such studies with regard to the latter past studies are often conducted at the national level irrespective of country or economy size for a large economy with the needed data studies may be conducted at different levels of spatial aggregation we examine this problem analytically by extending the work of su et al su b huang h c ang b w zhou p 2010 input output analysis of co2 emissions embodied in trade the effects of sector aggregation energy economics 32 1 166 175 on sector aggregation we present a numerical example using the data of china and by dividing the country into eight regions it is found that the results are highly dependent on spatial aggregation our study shows that for a large country like china it is meaningful to look into the effect of spatial aggregation

returns to capital in microenterprises evidence from a field experiment small and informal firms account for a large share of employment in developing countries the rapid expansion of microfinance services is based on the belief that these firms have productive investment opportunities and can enjoy high returns to capital if given the opportunity however measuring the return to capital is complicated by unobserved factors such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks which are likely to be correlated with capital stock the authors use a randomized experiment to overcome this problem and to measure the return to capital for the average microenterprise in their sample regardless of whether they apply for credit they accomplish this by providing cash and equipment grants to small firms in sri lanka and measuring the increase in profits arising from this exogenous positive shock to capital stock after controlling for possible spillover effects the authors find the average real return to capital to be 5 7 percent a month substantially higher than the market interest rate they then examine the heterogeneity of treatment effects to explore whether missing credit markets or missing insurance markets are the most likely cause of the high returns returns are found to vary with entrepreneurial ability and with measures of other sources of cash within the household but not to vary with risk aversion or uncertainty

is energy efficiency a driver or an inhibitor of energy consumption changes in spain two decomposition approaches abstract the 2000 2008 expansion period of the economy was accompanied by an important increase of energy consumption the desire of decoupling has led us to analyse the driving forces behind the energy consumption changes during this expansion period through a structural decomposition analysis sda based on the spanish input output tables previous decomposition has been supplemented by a logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi analysis of the energy consumption changes during a longer period 2000 2013 the results show that the energy intensity was the main inhibitor effect of the energy consumption changes of sectors of production not only during the recession but also during the expansion period secondly the energy intensity was a driver of the energy consumption change of households during the expansion period however during the recession period the energy intensity of private transport contributed to reducing energy consumption having an inhibitor effect therefore if the activity effect is still the most important driver the energy intensity effect has become the main inhibitor of energy consumption changes the energy policy recommendation is to focus on household energy consumption in the future if the spanish government aims to attain the eu energy efficiency objectives

do the vietnamese support the economic doi moi abstract each reform implies social and economic changes after experiencing war and reunification today vietnam is implementing a comprehensive and deep process of renovation doi moi but a revolution needs the support of the population to be successful this article investigates whether the vietnamese are supportive of some of the main features of a market economy in particular the preferences for competition ownership of firms either private or public and income inequality as an incentive to productivity are studied here the data allow us to conclude that the doi moi is not at risk but the population tend to contrast income inequality

what drive the changes in china s energy consumption and intensity during 12th five year plan period abstract during the 12th five year plan period 2011 2015 the chinese government has released a series of energy conservation plans to launch and deepen the transition in the energy use particularly the dual control of the energy consumption and energy intensity was firstly emphasized this paper intends to explore the targeted and effective energy policy implications through investigating the drivers of changes in energy consumption intensity of china during the 12th five year plan period under the input output framework the embodied energy consumptions intensities by final demand category were estimated at aggregate sector level and the total energy consumption intensity was decomposed using the additive multiplicative structural decomposition analysis among the final demand categories china s energy consumption intensity was mainly contributed by the investment followed by the household consumption according to the sda results china s total energy consumption increased by 28 8 of which the energy intensity effect and the investment effect were the most retardant and accelerator respectively at the same time china s total aggregate energy intensity decreased by 16 0 of which the energy intensity effect and the household consumption effect were the most retardant and accelerator respectively in detail the key sectors with respect to the critical effects were picked out above all policy implications are discussed for achieving the energy goals during the 13th five year plan period and launching the energy revolution during the 14th five year plan period

pretending to be poor borrowing to escape forced solidarity in cameroon abstractfrom field observations of credit cooperatives in cameroon we find that 19 of the loans taken are fully collateralized by savings held in the same institutions this behavior is costly to the borrower as it represents a net interest payment of about 24 per year while traditional explanations may partly explain this behavior interviews with members of the cooperatives suggest the following new rationale members resort to borrowing to signal to friends and relatives that they are poor and do not have savings available by doing so they can avoid requests for financial help we develop a signaling model to analyze the conditions under which this behavior is an equilibrium outcome

parametric model risk and power plant valuation abstract the fact that model and parameter risk are important sources of uncertainty in option pricing models and for risk management procedures has recently been recognised for financial markets see cont 2006 morini 2011 bannor and scherer 2013 in the context of energy markets investment decisions are often based on the valuation of fossil power plants as real options depending on various underlying processes such as the power carbon emission certificate and gas price to capture parametric model risk inherent in the valuation procedure of fossil power plants we use a methodology recently established in bannor and scherer 2013 as gas fired power plants are seen as flexible and low carbon sources of electricity which are important building blocks in terms of the switch to a low carbon energy generation we consider the model risk in this asset class in detail our findings reveal that spike risk is by far the most important source of parametric model risk

investing in electricity production under a reliability options scheme abstract reliability options ros are used to enhance the security of supply in electricity systems when a power producer writes a ro s he agrees to set a cap on the price of electricity that s he cashes in return the system operator i e the party that is buying the option pays to the option issuer a fixed premium in this paper we analyze how ros affect the timing and value of investments in the energy sector and we show under what conditions they can be used as investment stimuli we prove that contrarily to what is expected ros can potentially harm the security of supply by delaying the adoption of new capacity and by reducing the value of investing in it to avoid such a result a careful setting of the relevant parameters is needed

a dark side of social capital kinship consumption and savings abstract we explore whether traditional sharing norms in kinship networks affect consumption and accumulation decisions of poor black households in kwazulu natal south africa using a proxy for the number of family dependents our results are consistent with the interpretation that households try to evade their sharing obligations by i accumulating durables that are non sharable at the expense of durables that may be shared and ii reducing savings in liquid assets by attenuating accumulation incentives kinship sharing may come at the expense of income growth if so a culturally induced poverty trap can possibly eventuate we demonstrate tentative evidence that more extensive kinship networks are associated with lower incomes

behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture in this essay we develop a framework for analysing the major institutions governing the production and exchange of output and the primary factors of production in rural areas the analysis incorporates general considerations of risk and information constraints jointly with the principal material attributes of agriculture and of agricultural production factors the framework is used to analyse barriers to the existence of the major intertemporal and factor markets it is applied specifically to land scarce environments for which it provides an internally consistent explanation for many of the well documented institutional features of such settings in addition the analysis provides new implications for among other phenomena the inter relationships among ownership holdings operational scale family size and factor productivity for the scarcity of animal rental markets and use of animals as collateral for the renting out of land by small landowners and for the existence of plantations for certain crops

the changing role of non farm household enterprises in vietnam summary in this paper we study the importance of the non farm household enterprise nfhe sector in vietnam we do find that nfhes increase income and reduce between household inequality however the role of the nfhe sector has been diminishing especially in urban areas and the nfhes have been affected by trade liberalization in the period 1993 2002 in terms of policy this suggests that there is increasing scope for targeting nfhe sector policies at those nfhes that are in the best position to benefit from the new opportunities in the liberalizing environment

industry energy use and structural change a case study of the people s republic of china abstract this paper examines the effects of structural change and improvements in energy intensities of individual industries in aggregate industry energy intensity changes in china during 1980 88 the divisia index is used to decompose the energy intensity effect and structural effect a major finding of this analysis is that the main contribution to changed aggregate energy intensity was from the changes in energy intensities of individual industries during the period structural effects were found to contribute little to the aggregate energy intensity changes

employment vulnerability and earnings in urban west africa this article develops indicators of vulnerability in employment in seven economic capitals of west africa and studies their links with individual incomes quantitative distributional and qualitative analyses show that vulnerability compensating mechanism is mainly seen in the informal sector in the upper tail of the earnings distribution and particularly in the circumstance of visible underemployment employment vulnerability is not compensated for the poorest workers in the private sector long job queues and weak institutional protection of workers may have reduced bargaining power in the formal sector

analysis of interregional industry linkage and economic distance in china evidence from the mining industry abstractthe mining industry is an important sector of the national economy which provides essential support for energy and other resources for economic development industrial linkage and economic distance are two different concepts in measuring the correlationship of different industries in this article we apply the model that combines both of them to analyse the industries significantly influence the mining industry we find that electricity and heating industry and the mining industry itself from forward linkages have greatly influenced the mining industry and the industries from backward linkages affect mining industry are changing with industrial economic transformation we also find resources can flow across several regions only after 2007 which means the role of geographical factors limiting long range transportation of resources is weakening after 2007 and we explain how resources flow among various regions during 1997 2007 based on the findings above policy implications from the empiri

energy intensity and embodied energy flow in australia an input output analysis abstract decoupling energy use from economic growth is critical for improving energy productivity and mitigating climate change input output databases have been increasingly utilised for consumption based energy accounting and for exploring both the direct and indirect influence of energy use this study performed an environmentally extended input output analysis of energy use in australia from 2006 to 2015 to investigate the total energy intensity of industry sectors and the embodied energy flow from sources of energy use to the final consumption of commodities between 2006 and 2015 the national direct energy intensity reduced by an average of 2 per annum nearly all industry sectoral groups reduced their total energy intensity because of direct energy intensity reduction from other or within industry sectoral groups the difference between the embodied energy use in the import and the export had widened making australia a greater net importer of embodied energy with significant outsourcing of direct energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions despite a slight reduction in per capita direct household energy use 3 the per capita indirect energy use embodied in household commodity consumption increased by 7 as indirect household energy use is more than three times direct household energy use improving end use energy efficiency should also consider the embodied energy in commodities structural decomposition analysis shows that for the studied period population growth and per capita demand for imported commodities are two major contributors for the increased total embodied energy in australia

matchmaker matchmaker the effect of old boy networks on job match quality earnings and tenure firms often view job applicant referrals from current employees as more informative than direct applications or referrals through formal labor market intermediaries such as placement firms we argue that old boy networks reduce employers uncertainty about worker productivity using jovanovic s job matching model we show that workers hired through the old boy network should 1 earn higher initial salaries 2 experience lower subsequent wage growth on the job and 3 stay on the job longer than otherwise comparable workers hired from outside the network we find considerable support for this theory using data from the 1972 survey of natural and social scientists and engineers