substitution in the electric power industry an interregional comparison in the eastern us abstract the electric power industry is restructuring as regulations move from states to regional and national levels estimates of regional fuel and input substitution are essential for practitioners and policy makers this paper estimates substitution under static and dynamic scenarios examining changes in technology and total factor productivity from 2001 to 2008 two stage estimation reveals regional characteristics and underlying elements in fuel and factor choice processes substitution varies widely depending on the region coal technology capital investment and r d activities

the effect of deregulation on us fossil fuel substitution in the generation of electricity abstract fossil fuels produce the majority of electricity in the us with coal being by far the most popular fuel used in the past regulation in the natural gas market in the form of well head price controls and under the boiler fuel use restrictions distorted fuel use away from natural gas more recently with deregulation in the natural gas industry these restrictions have been repealed which has changed fuel use patterns to measure the short run fuel use response from regulatory and other market changes we estimate interfuel substitution using two flexible functional forms the translog and the logit on monthly data from 1991 to 1993 in both models we find coal demand has the least elastic price response while gas and oil demand have the highest both models also suggest there is substitution across fuels in the short run but the patterns and magnitudes vary from comparisons with earlier studies fuel use price response is also found to vary across market conditions and regulatory regime

spatial divisions of welfare the geography of welfare benefit expenditure and of housing benefit in britain hamnett c spatial divisions of welfare the geography of welfare benefit expenditure and of housing benefit in britain regional studies this paper examines the structure of state welfare expenditure in britain it argues that the geography of state welfare expenditure and its impacts have been relatively neglected given their importance in terms of state expenditure regional distribution and spatial equality it shows that welfare spending is a key component of government expenditure and that it has a distinct regional and local geography the paper shows that there are distinct differences in the geographical incidence of different welfare benefits some of which function to redistribute income from the south to the north of britain and it focuses on the geography of housing benefit as an example of what has been termed spatial divisions of welfare hamnett c les ecarts geographiques de l aide sociale la geographie des prestations sociales et des allocations logement en grande bretagne regional

further reflections on hidden unemployment an examination of the off flows from the claimant count in the north west of england one of the most significant set of papers to come out of the portfolio of regional studies association publications in recent years has concerned the exposure of the levels of hidden unemployment in many of the old industrial areas of britain see for instance labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields regional studies 30 7 1997 627 640 the authors of these papers christina beatty and stephen fothergill have generated a debate that has uncovered major implications for the way the regional problem is measured perceived and tackled although these are important in terms of regional economic development strategies and policies it remains to be seen how the failure to count the real levels of unemployment will impact on the review of regional policy assisted areas the designation of european structural fund areas and the successful introduction of such initiatives as the new deal and welfare to work underpinning and deepening the rigour of t

unforeseen contingencies and incomplete contracts we scrutinize the conceptual framework commonly used in the incomplete contract literature this literature usually assumes that contractual incompleteness is due to the transaction costs of describing or of even foreseeing the possible states of nature in advance we argue however that such transaction costs need not interfere with optimal contracting i e transaction costs need not be relevant provided that agents can probabilistically forecast their possible future payoffs even if other aspects of the state of the nature cannot be forecast in other words all that is required for optimality is that agents be able to perform dynamic programming an assumption always invoked by the incomplete contract literature the foregoing optimality result holds very generally provided that parties can commit themselves not to renegotiate moreover we point out that renegotiation may be hard to reconcile with a framework that otherwise presumes perfect rationality however even if renegotiation is allowed the result still remains valid provided that parties are risk averse

is coal desulphurisation worthwhile evidence from the market abstract the paper develops a forward looking way to estimate the economic benefits of research and development on coal desulphurisation the methodology makes use of survey based techniques pioneered in environmental economics the empirical results illustrate the difficulty of configuring desulphurised coal to meet the requirements of existing electricity generating plants in addition to estimating the returns to investment in coal desulphurisation the contributions of the paper are in extending survey based valuation to meet the needs of r d investors for intelligence about the prospective value of their investments and using robust estimation techniques to reduce the influence of outliers

mechanism design with renegotiation and costly messages in one interpretation of the mechanism design problem the agents in volved are designing a mechanism for themselves rather than having it im posed on them by an outside planner the mechanism may for example be a contract or a constitution in that case they will presumably choose a mecha nism that will deliver a pareto efficient outcome in equilibrium suppose how ever that play of the mechanism results in an out of equilibrium outcome and that this outcome is pareto inefficient then unless they have been able some how to commit to this mechanism the agents can be expected to tear up the contract and negotiate a new pareto efficient outcome in the two agent case this possibility of renegotiation limits the set of social choice rules that can

interfuel substitution in us electricity generation ongoing changes in the us electricity market include restructuring and increased competition with this unfettering of the market the fuel choice in generation is expected to become more flexible and responsive to investigate this hypothesis studies of us electricity fuel choices over the last three decades are summarized and the most recent analysis is provided on a market very different from the one on which earlier studies were done modern data handling techniques allow the consideration of the most comprehensive database including 185 utilities on monthly data for 1993 this paper finds fuel choice to show a considerable amount of price responsiveness the amount of responsiveness is sensitive to the fuel substitution possibilities within the utility and the amount of responsiveness seems to have increased recently for oil and natural gas

substitution between clean and dirty energy inputs a macroeconomic perspective in macroeconomic models the elasticity of substitution between clean and dirty energy inputs within the energy aggregate is a central parameter in assessing the necessary conditions for long run green growth using new sectoral data in a panel of 26 countries we formulate specifications of nested constant elasticity of substitution production functions that allow estimating this parameter for the first time we present evidence that it significantly exceeds unity a favorable condition for promoting green growth

a dynamic analysis of interfuel substitution for swedish heating plants abstract this paper estimates a dynamic model of interfuel substitution for swedish heating plants we use the cost share linear logit model developed by considine and mount considine t j mount t d 1984 the use of linear logit models for dynamic input demand systems review of economics and statistics 66 434 443 all estimated own price elasticities are negative and all cross price elasticities are positive the estimated dynamic adjustment rate parameter is small however increasing with the size of the plant and time indicating fast adjustments in the fuel mix when changing relative fuel prices the estimated model is used to illustrate the effects of two different policy changes

cooperative investments and the value of contracting recent articles have shown that contracts can support the efficient outcome for bilateral trade even in the face of specific investments and incomplete contracting these studies typically considered selfish investments that benefit the investor e g the seller s investment reduces her production costs the authors find very different results for cooperative investments that directly benefit the investor s partner e g the seller s investment improves the buyer s value of the good most importantly if committing not to renegotiate the contract is impossible then contracting has no value i e the parties cannot do better than to abandon contracting altogether in favor of ex post negotiation

labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields beatty c and fothergill s 1996 labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields reg studies 30 627 640 the paper explores the labour market consequences of the near terminal decline of employment in the uk coal industry despite the job loss registered unemployment has not risen using labour market accounts derived mainly from census of population data the paper examines the roles of migration commuting job creation and changes in labour force participation as mediating influences substantial hidden male unemployment is exposed and rates of real unemployment are also calculated beatty c et fothergill s 1996 l ajustement du marche du travail dans les zones serieusement touchees par le declin industriel cas d etude des bassins houillers au royaume uni reg studies 30 627 640 cet article cherche a examiner l impact sur le marche du travail du declin quasi terminal de l emploi dans l industrie houillere au royaume uni en depit des supp

regional differences in nuclear and fossil fuel generation of electricity previous research on electric gen eration costs has mainly relied on economy wide data this study disaggregates a broad sample into regions known to have marked differences in fossil fuel availability climate regulatory ef fects and other variables we find differences exist in generation costs among the studied re gions and nuclear power using estimates of scale economies and other measures we also find smaller minimum efficient size fossil fuel firms than previous studies based on recent cost information this study provides insights into several industry structure issues such as capac ity expansion competition input costs environ mental policy and transmission access jel q42

electric utilities fuel use and responsiveness to fuel prices this research tests the impact of changes in fuel price to explain fuel use by electric utilities we employ a three stage least squares model that explains changes in fuel use as a function of changes in three fuel prices this model is repeated across sub samples of data aggregated at the plant level and operating holding company level we expect that plants and holding companies reduce fuel use when fuel prices rise several fuel substitution effects within and across plants and holding companies are demonstrated as well as several frictions at the plant level higher prices of natural gas lead to less natural gas consumption less coal consumption and more fuel oil consumption at the operating holding company level results demonstrate the inelasticity of coal use and the increases of natural gas in response to higher coal prices subsamples demonstrate heterogeneity of results across different plants results emphasize that technological market and regulatory frictions may hinder the performance of energy policies

a theory of employment unemployment and sickness beatty c fothergill s and macmillan r 2000 a theory of employment unemployment and sickness reg studies 34 617 630 this paper explains how the measurement of unemployment is distorted by the way that sickness is defined and counted by social security systems drawing on the concepts of hidden sickness the queue for jobs and hidden unemployment and on empirical observations from the uk it shows how job loss can result in increased recorded sickness rather than recorded unemployment it also shows how this process may vary between localities and countries the argument has profound implications for perceptions of the true extent of unemployment and of labour market disparities between regions beatty c fothergill s et macmillan r 2000 l emploi le chomage et la maladie une theorie reg studies 34 617 630 cet article chercheaexpliquer comment la mesure du chomage s avere fausseeacause de la fac on dont la secu definit maladie et la comptabilise puisant dans des notions de

insights into unemployment and non employment in europe using alternative measures one of the most significant set of papers to come out of the portfolio of regional studies association publications in recent years has concerned the exposure of the levels of hidden unemployment in many of the old industrial areas of britain see for instance labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline the case of the uk coalfields regional studies 30 7 1997 627 640 the authors of these papers christina beatty and stephen fothergill have generated a debate that has uncovered major implications for the way the regional problem is measured perceived and tackled although these are important in terms of regional economic development strategies and policies it remains to be seen how the failure to count the real levels of unemployment will impact on the review of regional policy assisted areas the designation of european structural fund areas and the successful introduction of such initiatives as the new deal and welfare to work underpinning and deepening the rigour of t

exclusion unemployment and non employment green a e 1997 exclusion unemployment and non employment reg studies 31 505 520 this paper provides an overview of selected issues pertinent to an examination of comparative experiences of exclusion with foremost emphasis on the labour market dimension of exclusion notably unemployment and non employment the way in which losers and winners emerge as a result of changes in the socio economic environment is outlined with particular attention paid to identification of who the losers are and where they are located specific remarks and empirical details of the uk experience are used for illustrative purposes but much of the discussion relates to the situation in european union countries more generally drawing on this review some of the issues surrounding the identification and measurement of the unemployed and non employed are explored and the need for a range of alternative indicators and methodological perspectives on labour market exclusion is discussed finally some of the issues r

fuel switching and climate and energy policies in the european power generation sector a generalized leontief model abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze a the role and the nature of price induced switching behavior between fossil fuels i e coal oil and natural gas in the western european power sector as well as b the fuel choice impacts of a number of public policies implemented in this sector during the last 20 years the analysis is conducted within a generalized leontief cost function framework and employs pooled data across eight countries over the time period 1978 2004 we present short run own and cross price elasticities of fossil fuel demand and assess the impacts of a set of government policies implemented over this time period the empirical results show evidence of notable short run interfuel substitution between oil and gas and particularly in countries where fossil fuels are used extensively for both base and peak load purposes these findings support the notion that ex post fossil fuel substitution takes place in dual and multi fired plants by switching load between different single fuel fired plants as well as through the conversion of power plants to be able to burn alternate fuels the results also illustrate that different public policies i e removal of coal subsidies electricity market liberalization etc have had profound impacts on fossil fuel choices and have in particular favored power generation gas use at the expense of coal finally the paper makes use of the empirical results to simulate the fuel switching impacts of different carbon prices within the european emissions trading scheme eu ets

why do disability benefit rolls vary between regions a review of the evidence from the usa and the uk mcvicar d 2006 why do disability benefit rolls vary between regions a review of the evidence from the usa and the uk regional studies 40 519 533 over the last 30 years many organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries have seen a dramatic rise in the share of the working age population receiving earnings replacement sickness and disability benefits the reasons behind this growth particularly for the usa but also to a lesser extent elsewhere have been extensively researched in the economics literature what have been less well researched are the large spatial differences in the size of disability benefit rolls that have emerged in some countries over this period the uk displays a distinct regional pattern where working age men and women in the north are considerably more likely to be claiming disability benefits than those in the south the usa has its own version of the north south divide with many southern states displaying disproportionately large disabilit

the economics of fuel choice at us electric utilities abstract this paper compares and contrasts results obtained from estimating fossil fuel cost shares in the generation of electricity in the usa from two models one national and one regional while the national model provides acceptable first order results correct signs and magnitudes of critical parameters it is the regional model that reveals the underlying economics of this fuel choice problem results which hold consistently across regions and across fuels are more plausible than those which are found to be special cases in each region of the country or for each fuel type

the chance to work in britain matching unemployed people to vacancies in good times and bad taulbut m and robinson m the chance to work in britain matching unemployed people to vacancies in good times and bad regional studies giving people the chance to work has been a key justification for welfare reform in britain over the last 15 years the approach is underpinned by the belief that there are sufficient vacancies available to absorb the unemployed into the labour market this paper tests this proposition by using the most comprehensive estimates of vacancies available from the employers skills surveys and two measures narrow and broad of unemployment by occupation geography and time period it also questions whether current approaches to worklessness in britain are adequate to the task given the scale of the challenge

hidden unemployment among men a case study the debate about the extent of hidden unemployment is central to understanding the contemporary uk labour market this paper provides a detailed case study of one area barrow in furness where major industrial job losses have co existed with falling claimant unemployment among men using aggregate statistics and new survey evidence it argues that these trends mask extensive hidden unemployment especially among men on sickness related benefits comparisons are also made with areas covered by similar surveys the paper concludes that the claimant and international labour organization measures of unemployment both appear deeply flawed in the uk context because of the diversion from unemployment to sickness benefits le debat sur l importance du chomage cache est essentiel a la comprehension du marche du travail contemporain au royaume uni cet article cherche a fournir une etude de cas detaillee d une zone barrow in furness ou d importantes suppressions d emplois ont coexiste avec une baisse du nomb

how different are the british in their willingness to move evidence from international social survey data drinkwater s and ingram p how different are the british in their willingness to move evidence from international social survey data regional studies this paper analyses people s willingness to move using data from the 1995 british social attitudes survey and international social survey programme the personal characteristics and sub regional indicators that are important in explaining the willingness to move within britain are identified it is also found that the willingness to move is only higher in a few other countries including the usa the equivalent desire to move is found to be much lower in eastern european countries and in several other european union member states compositional effects such as age and education are generally important in explaining differences in attitudes towards migration in comparison with other western economies however structural effects such as institutions history and culture tend to play a more dominant role in explaining differences compared with countries

unemployment durations and local labour market conditions abstractunemployment durations vary across local authority districts in the uk we explore the extent to which this variation is explained by differences in local labour demand as opposed to compos

renegotiation proof implementation and time preferences this paper explores how the requirement that the implementation of contracts be renegotiation proof affects the set of contracts that can be implemented in a seller buyer scenario in which the information regarding the agents valuations is nonverifiable this paper explicitly adds a time dimension to an implementa tion problem and introduces a natural criterion of renegotiation proofness for the case of time consuming renegotiation the main insight gained is that the addition of the time dimension enlarges significantly the set of contracts that can be implemented in a renegotiation proof manner jel c70 d23 this paper explores how the requirement that the implementation of contracts be renegotiation proof affects the set of con tracts that can be implemented in a seller buyer scenario in which the informa tion regarding the agents valuations is non verifiable the paper s main contributions are that first it explicitly adds a time di mension to an implementation problem and second it introduces a natural criterion of renegotiation proofness for the case of time consuming renegotiation for concreteness the discussion will be conducted in the context of the following example there are two agents a seller and a buyer who sign a contract for the sale of one unit in the future their valuations for the unit denoted by s and b respectively are not known when they sign the contract they become known to both parties after the contract is signed and before it is imple mented thus when it comes to implement ing the contract the parties information is complete but it is assumed to be nonverifi able i e not observable to third parties such as a court 1 when they sign the con tract the parties want to specify for any possible realization of the valuations s b whether or not there will be trade and the price p s b at which it will take place the contract describes the procedure that will be followed after the valuations are real ized the purpose of this procedure is to make sure that the original intentions of the parties are indeed carried out the idea is that the steps laid out in the contract are independent of s b and hence are en forceable by a third party or by a social convention in game theoretic terms a contract specifies a game form that imple ments the function p in the sense that for all s and b p s b is the resulting game s unique subgame perfect equilibrium out come in the context of this scenario we shall investigate the set of price functions p s b that can be so implemented by a contract and examine how this set is affected by the requirement that the contract be renegotia

partially verifiable information and mechanism design in a principal agent model with adverse selection we study the implementation of social choice functions when the agent s message space is a correspondence which depends on this true characteristic we characterize such correspondence for which the revelation principle is valid returns must not contradict easily observable elements of the taxpayer s lifestyle in this paper we present a model of two person organizations in which these considerations are important we ask whether the restrictions on fallacious statements inherent in the system are sufficient to achieve the goals of the organization we show that the optimal way of eliciting the agent s response may not be to establish incentives for truthtelling in all instances in our model there is one player the agent who observes the state of the economic system another player the principal takes an action based on the information presented to him by the agent this class of models is often referred to as the principal agent problem in the extensive and growing literature on this problem it has always been assumed that the agent could lie to the principal and therefore that he had to be properly motivated to act at least partially in the principal s interest our formal way of modelling the partial verifiability of information is to introduce the restriction that the agent s responses must lie in a set m o that varies with the true state 0 it is assumed that this set always admits the possibility of responding with the true state the way in which the allowable response set varies with the true state is known to the principal in other respects we retain the usual principal agent formalization in particular the principal is the stackelberg leader in this game he can commit himself to choose a collective action as a function of the message transmitted by the agent whether the variation of the message space with the true observation is purely technological or whether it is induced by the severity of potential actions of the principal

hidden male unemployment in northern ireland armstrong d 1999 hidden male unemployment in northern ireland reg studies 33 499 511 in recent years there has been growing research evidence in the uk to suggest that official unemployment figures do not accurately reflect the true extent of joblessness mainly because they ignore aspects of economic inactivity such as long term sickness early retirement and participation on government employment and training schemes this paper examines the nature and extent of hidden unemployment in northern ireland and in different local areas within northern ireland the paper shows that there are large numbers of people who do not appear in official unemployment figures but who under plausible assumptions ought to be considered to be part of the stock of unemployed the results show that if the hidden component of joblessness is accounted for total male unemployment in northern ireland is more than one third higher than official figures suggest armstrong d 1999 le chomage masculin deguise en irlande

fossil fuel flexibility in west european power generation and the impact of system load factors this paper analyzes short run interfuel substitution in west european power generation and the impact of system load factors on fossil fuel choice the problems are studied within a restricted translog cost share model the paper concludes that interfuel substitution in existing power plants is substantial especially that between oil and gas this is consistent with the notion that short run fuel substitution takes place in dual or multi fired plants by switching load between different single fired plants and by some conversions of power plants to be able to burn alternate fuels the empirical investigation also indicates that the system load factor is a notable determinant of fossil fuel choices in west europe and the paper ends with an assessment of the fuel consequences of some load management schemes in the region

the true scale of the regional problem in the uk this article argues that the scale of unemployment in the uk and the differences between regions are severely understated by claimant unemployment data it explains how unemployment becomes hidden in particular by a major diversion of older and less healthy workers from unemployment related benefits and how this process is especially marked in the traditional industrial parts of northern britain the true scale of regional differences in joblessness is also underlined by employment rates in different parts of the country

labour underutilisation in metropolitan labour markets in australia individual characteristics personal circumstances and local labour markets there has been a growing awareness that the issue of labour market disadvantage is substantially greater than merely considering unemployment and the ability to find a job there is an increasing l

elasticity of substitution and technical efficiency evidence from the us electricity generation abstractthe implications of national or regional energy policies for technical efficiency and environmental outcomes in electricity generation depend on fossil fuel input substitution this study u