economic analysis of investment in the rooftop photovoltaic systems a long term research in the two main markets abstract nowadays due to incentive policies the photovoltaic pv installations become an economically attractive investment the different policies aim to reduce the pv installation costs consequently to the deployment of the market in recent years a progressive price decrease of components for pv installations has occurred according their learning curve every doubling of the volume implies approximately a cost reduction of 20 in order to reduce the burden of the incentive rate on the national budget maintaining the economic margin of the investment attractive for investors a progressive tariff decline has also taken place this paper provides a technical economic analysis of investments in pv systems installed on the rooftop considering incentive policies and applies it to some significant case studies in the countries in which pv market is the most prosperous germany and italy the analysis puts into evidence the past and current economic margins of the pv investments since 2006 to 2012 four case studies from 3 kwp to 1 mwp are examined in detail the profitability indexes in terms of net present value and internal rate of return evaluated throughout incentive duration of 20 years become very interesting above all in italy higher than 100 of the installation cost and higher than 10 respectively since 2009 when an abrupt decrement in installation cost occurred in italy the best profit margins occur for large size pv plants and are poorly counterbalanced by the decline of the feed in tariff up to 2012 when a new framework has given a knock to the investments whereas in germany the best margins happen for medium size pv plants and are well adjusted by the feed in tariff however it is predictable that a cut in german feed in tariff will take place because the profit margins have been higher in last year than in the previous years

not all price endings are created equal price points and asymmetric price rigidity abstract we document an asymmetry in the rigidity of 9 ending prices relative to non 9 ending prices consumers have difficulty noticing higher prices if they are 9 ending or noticing price increases if the new prices are 9 ending because 9 endings are used as a signal for low prices price setters respond strategically to the consumer heuristic by setting 9 ending prices more often after price increases than after price decreases 9 ending prices therefore remain 9 ending more often after price increases than after price decreases leading to asymmetric rigidity 9 ending prices are more rigid upward than downward these findings hold for both transaction prices and regular prices and for both inflation and no inflation periods

asymmetry in retail wholesale and shipping point pricing for fresh vegetables the linkage among retail wholesale and shipping point prices for a select group of fresh vegetables is measured using wolffram s asymmetry model procedures for dealing with discontinuous time series are shown and granger s causality test is used to show the direction of the price linkage wholesale prices are shown to lead both retail and shipping point prices asymmetry in the retail wholesale response indicates that wholesale price decreases are reflected at the retail more so than are wholesale price increases wholesale price decreases are more fully passed through to the shipping point relative to wholesale increases

rockets and feathers understanding asymmetric pricing prices rise like rockets but fall like feathers this stylized fact of most markets is con rmed by many empirical studies in this paper i develop a model with competitive rms and rational partially informed consumers where such asymmetric response to costs by rms emerges naturally in contrast to public opinion and past work collusion is not necessary to explain such result using a rich dataset of retail gasoline prices i nd the observed price dispersion pattern to be consistent with the model s prediction

carbon pass through in the electricity sector an econometric analysis abstract we conduct an econometric analysis to investigate the carbon pass through in the greek electricity sector for this reason we utilize a rich micro level panel dataset including hourly data for 24 thermal power plants spanning the period from january 2014 to december 2017 in order to study the pass through of emissions costs to wholesale electricity prices we employ an instrumental variable approach our findings survived several robustness checks accounting for logged linear and non linear econometric specifications the empirical results indicate the existence of an almost complete pass through revealing that retailers fully internalize the cost of co2 permits this study incurs important policy implications since the complete pass through signify that wholesale electricity prices will increase at least in the short run however the overall effect on retail prices will be mostly affected by the amount of co2 permits and the fuel energy mix

asymmetric price adjustment and economic fluctuations this paper considers a possible explanation for asymmetric adjustment of nominal prices the authors present a menu cost model in which positive trend inflation causes firms relative prices to decline automatically between price adjustments in this environment shocks that raise firms desired prices trigger larger price responses than shocks that lower desired prices the authors use this model of asymmetric adjustment to address three issues in macroeconomics the effects of aggregate demand the effects of sectoral shocks and the optimal rate of inflation copyright 1994 by royal economic society

effects of a cut off in feed in tariffs on photovoltaic capacity evidence fromgermany abstract we analyze the effects of feed in tariff fit adjustments on installed photovoltaic capacity in germany we find that the current system temporarily accelerates installments and does not countervail over investment therefore we design three alternative fit regimes i constant fits ii linearly decreasing fits and iii fit adjustments related to the changes of photovoltaic panel prices simulations of installed capacities indicate that alternative adjustment mechanisms could be more appropriate to meet the government s installation target moreover we calculate the consumers burden induced by the fits and find that it might be reduced by alternative mechanisms

germany s solar cell promotion dark clouds on the horizon abstract this article demonstrates that the large feed in tariffs currently guaranteed for solar electricity in germany constitute a subsidization regime that threatens to reach a level comparable to that of german hard coal production a notoriously outstanding example of misguided political intervention yet as a consequence of the coexistence of the german renewable energy sources act eeg and the eu emissions trading scheme ets the increased use of renewable energy technologies does not imply any additional emission reductions beyond those already achieved by ets alone similarly disappointing is the net employment balance which is likely to be negative if one takes into account the opportunity cost of this form of solar photovoltaic pv support along the lines of the international energy agency iea 2007 energy policies of iea countries germany 2007 review international energy agency oecd paris p 77 we recommend the immediate and drastic reduction of the magnitude of the feed in tariffs granted for solar based electricity ultimately producing electricity on this basis is among the most expensive greenhouse gas abatement options

economic analysis of different supporting policies for the production of electrical energy by solar photovoltaics in western european union countries abstract within various renewable energy technologies photovoltaics pv today attracts considerable attention due to its potential to contribute a major share of renewable energy in the future however pv market development is undoubtedly dependent on the political support of any given country in this paper after a brief analysis of national support policies in pv technology in western european union eu countries the authors perform an economic analysis of the main support mechanisms as implemented in the same countries based on the calculation of the cash flow the net present value npv and the internal rate of return irr indices the analysis shows that in some situations support policies can be inconvenient for the owner of the pv based generation system and that in many cases the differences between the implementation of the same support policy in different countries can give rise to significantly different results the analysis carried out in this work could help to assess the impact of pv energy policies in different western european member states renewable energy companies to identify potential pv markets and investigate the policy landscape across western eu countries

when do households invest in solar photovoltaics an application of prospect theory abstract while investments in renewable energy sources res are incentivized around the world the policy tools that do so are still poorly understood leading to costly misadjustments in many cases as a case study the deployment dynamics of residential solar photovoltaics pv invoked by the german feed in tariff legislation are investigated here we report a model showing that the question of when people invest in residential pv systems is found to be not only determined by profitability but also by profitability s change compared to the status quo this finding is interpreted in the light of loss aversion a concept developed in kahneman and tversky s prospect theory the model is able to reproduce most of the dynamics of the uptake with only a few financial and behavioral assumptions

on the competitiveness of grid tied residential photovoltaic generation systems in pakistan panacea or paradox abstract pakistan is experiencing a slow uptake of grid tied residential pv generation systems gtrpvgs despite of steep fall in pv module price higher solar irradiation and enactment of net metering by the government this slow uptake is attributed to the lack of awareness of four major stakeholders namely the house hold utility financier and the policy maker this paper presents a coherent framework that addresses the concerns of the stakeholders using four country specific parameters i e the local solar irradiation pv system costs borrowing and discount rates and electricity tariffs to compute npv irr payback period and levelized cost of electricity lcoe assuming net metering we model the economic payoffs on self consumption and sale of pv electricity at varying net metering rates system sizes load to generation profiles borrowing and discount rates findings suggest economic competitiveness of pv electricity with an irr and payback averaging around 28 and 5 years respectively moreover the lcoe is also found to be significantly lower than the retail rates the findings inform the household and financier on the economic yield utility on efficient tariff setting and government on sustainable policy design finally we argue that gtrpvgs bears huge potential for pakistan suffering from energy deficit unsustainable cost transmission losses and environmental hazards

revised feed in tariff for solar photovoltaic in the united kingdom a cloudy future ahead abstract the united kingdom uk started implementing a national feed in tariff fit mechanism on the 1 april 2010 which included specific payment tariffs for solar photovoltaic pv installations however a revised fit rate has been put in place starting from 1 april 2012 applicable to any installations with an eligibility date of on or after 3 march 2012 this paper presents first an overview of solar pv installation in the uk this followed by a general concept of the fit in the uk before analyzing the financial impact of the new fit rate on the consumers similar financial analysis is conducted with selected countries in europe the financial analysis investigates the total profit the average rate of return and the payback period it is found that the new fit rate generates very low profit minimum rate of return and a longer payback period suggesting a downward trend of solar pv uptake in the future

fuel taxes an important instrument for climate policy abstract this article shows that fuel taxes serve a very important role for the environment and that we risk a backlash of increased emissions if they are abolished fuel taxes have restrained growth in fuel demand and associated carbon emissions although fuel demand is large and growing our analysis shows that it would have been much higher in the absence of domestic fuel taxes people often assert that fuel demand is inelastic but there is strong research evidence showing the opposite the price elasticity is in fact quite high but only in the long run in the short run it may be quite inelastic which has important implications for policy makers had europe not followed a policy of high fuel taxation but had low us taxes then fuel demand would have been twice as large hypothetical transport demand in the whole oecd area is calculated for various tax scenarios and the results show that fuel taxes are the single most powerful climate policy instrument implemented to date yet this fact is not usually given due attention in the debate

peer effects in the diffusion of solar photovoltaic panels social interaction peer effects are recognized as a potentially important factor in the diffusion of new products in the case of environmentally friendly goods or technologies both marketers and policy makers are interested in the presence of causal peer effects as social spillovers can be used to expedite adoption we provide a methodology for the simple straightforward identification of peer effects with sufficiently rich data avoiding the biases that occur with traditional fixed effects estimation when using the past installed base of consumers in the reference group we study the diffusion of solar photovoltaic panels in california and find that at the average number of owner occupied homes in a zip code an additional installation increases the probability of an adoption in the zip code by 0 78 percentage points our results provide valuable guidance to marketers designing strategies to increase referrals and reduce customer acquisition costs they also provide insights into the diffusion process of environmentally friendly technologies

search with learning understanding asymmetric price adjustments in many retail markets prices rise faster than they fall we develop a model of search with learning to explain this phenomenon of asymmetric price adjustments by extending our static game analysis to the dynamic setting we demonstrate that asymmetric price adjustments arise naturally when a positive cost shock occurs all the searchers immediately learn the true state the search intensity and hence the prices fully adjust in the next period when a negative cost shock occurs it takes longer for nonsearchers to learn the true state and the search intensity increases gradually leading to slow falling of prices

empirical studies of gasoline retailing a guide to the literature abstract this paper surveys the empirical literature on gasoline retailing which has been growing rapidly over the last three decades possibly in response to antitrust and regulatory concerns and increased availability of pricing data studies of both pricing and non price decision variables are considered in general it is found that crude oil prices are the primary driver of national price movements over time however market structure has been identified as playing a role in price dynamics equilibrium selection and price differentials across markets and stations the economic literature emphasizes the importance of heterogeneity across stations and coordination problems faced by retailers several directions for future work are suggested including the development of theory and demand estimation using high frequency station level data

do rockets rise faster and feathers fall slower in an atmosphere of local market power evidence from the retail gasoline market this study explores the possibility that local market power influences the observed asymmetric relationship between changes in wholesale gasoline costs and changes in retail gasoline prices i exploit an original data set of weekly gas station prices in southern california from september 2002 to may 2003 and take advantage of detailed station and local market level characteristics to determine the extent to which geographic and product differentiation influence price response asymmetry i find that brand identity proximity to rival stations and local market features and demographics each influence a station s predicted price response asymmetry

pass through and consumer search an empirical analysis retail price pass through is one of the most important issues facing manufacturers of consumer packaged goods although retailers tend to pass higher wholesale prices through to consumers quickly and completely they often do not pass on trade promotions currently asymmetric pass through is commonly thought to result from retailers exercise of market power alternatively it may be because of consumer search behavior and retailers competitive response we test this theory using a panel threshold asymmetric error correction model applied to wholesale and retail scanner data for ready to eat cereal for a number of retailers in the los angeles metropolitan market we find that consumer search behavior contributes significantly to imperfect pass through by allowing pass through to depend on market power and consumer search costs we find results that are contrary to the conventional wisdom namely market power causes retail prices to fall quickly and rise slowly whereas consumer search behavior causes retail prices to rise quickly and fall slowly precisely the rockets and feathers phenomenon

price dynamics in a vertical sector the case of butter we develop a reduced form model of price transmission in a vertical sector allowing for refined asymmetric contemporaneous and lagged own and cross price effects under time varying volatility the model is used to investigate the wholesale retail price dynamics in the u s butter market the analysis documents the nature of nonlinear price dynamics in a vertical sector it finds strong evidence of asymmetric retail price responses both in the short term and the longer term but only weak evidence of asymmetric wholesale price responses asymmetric retail responses play a major role in generating a skewed distribution of butter prices the empirical results indicate the presence of imperfect competition at the retail level

estimating the price of tradable permits for greenhouse gas emissions in 2008 12 abstract many attempts have been made recently to predict the prices of tradable permits for greenhouse gas ghg emissions in the first commitment period of the kyoto protocol 2008 12 in this paper we attempt to refine these price estimates based on i the results of economic models and identification of factors which influence prices but are not fully reflected in the models ii lessons from price forecasting experience in the us sulfur dioxide market and iii current price data from the nascent international market for ghg permits we expect ghg permit prices to be at the lower end of the broad spectrum of existing predictions this implies among other things that resource transfers to developing countries associated with emissions trading will be relatively low nevertheless even a modest price will have a significant influence on the decisions of consumers and investors in energy markets around the world

marginal tax reform externalities and income distribution the paper examines welfare improving and revenue neutral directions marginal policy reforms for an economy with nonidentical individuals and an externality that has a feedback effect on the consumption of taxed goods it considers three types of policy instruments the indirect taxes the uniform poll transfer and public abatement this extends the framework set up by ahmad and stern 1984 bovenberg and de mooij 1994 and schob 1996 the theoretical model is illustrated for a specific externality namely congestion caused by peak car transport

a new product growth for model consumer durables this article originally appeared in management science january 1969 volume 15 number 5 pp 215 227 published by the institute of management sciences a growth model for the timing of initial purchase of new products is developed and tested empirically against data for eleven consumer durables the basic assumption of the model is that the timing of a consumer s initial purchase is related to the number of previous buyers a behavioral rationale for the model is offered in terms of innovative and imitative behavior the model yields good predictions of the sales peak and the timing of the peak when applied to historical data a long range forecast is developed for the sales of color television sets

the market for tradable ghg permits under the kyoto protocol a survey of model studies abstract this paper gathers results from 25 models of the market for tradable greenhouse gas ghg emission permits under the kyoto protocol due to diverging projections of emissions growth and different modeling approaches the model results differ substantially the average market volume is approximately 17 and 33 billion usd under global trading and annex b trading respectively including non carbon ghg lowers compliance costs and permit prices in the absence of the us permit demand roughly equals hot air from the former soviet union these countries can increase their revenues from selling permits by restricting supply which raises the permit price

coal nuclear and renewable energy policies in germany from the 1950s to the energiewende over the last 50 years german energy policy has ranged from strong enthusiasm for both coal and nuclear energy to deep skepticism the most dramatic changes with respect to energy policies have occurred as a response to nuclear accidents yet the accidental and unintended effects of coal policies are also important in influencing the trajectory the newly emerging climate debate prevented the coal industry from acting as a substitute for the diminishing share of nuclear power in 2011 the conservative government announced the energiewende energy transformation and decided to reduce the amount of fossil fuels from 80 of the energy supply to 20 by 2050 however while the verdict on nuclear was unequivocal with a final phase out date of 2022 the share of coal in the electricity market did not decrease and the amount of carbon dioxide released into the air slightly increased from 2011 to 2013 there are growing conflicts over the immediate costs and practicalities of coal replacement consequently the future of coal in germany is still relatively open and contested

asymmetric cost pass through empirical evidence on the role of market power search and menu costs abstract we estimate cost pass through rates based on data for store level retail prices and wholesale costs for up to 90 different brands of milk sold in 327 retail stores across germany the abundance of the data allows us to identify heterogeneity in pass through across retailers and relate it to underlying explanatory factors such as retailer market power measures of consumer search and menu costs results from a threshold error correction process clearly provide empirical support for the rockets and feathers phenomenon prices increase more quickly than they decrease in contrast to much of the existing literature which explains the rockets and feathers phenomenon as a result of retailers exercising market power we find the opposite result the degree of asymmetry in prices is negatively related to market power decreases with the lerner index our measure of cross product search costs does not account for observable differences in asymmetric cost pass through rates between products the rockets and feathers observation is better explained by product specific differences in menu costs mistake costs and costs associated with stock outs which can lead to a loss of consumer goodwill

solar photovoltaic power plants in five top oil producing countries in middle east a case study in iran abstract in recent years the challenges of environmental issues sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels increasing energy demand decreasing the profitability of fossil fuels extracted from readily available reservoirs shale formations and tight sands and unsteady and unpredictable energy prices have forced oil producing countries to turn their attention to renewable energies most of these countries are located on the world s solar belt and have an excellent solar availability with an average of 300 320 days of bright sunshine throughout a year there is as a result growing attention to solar energy and especially to the photovoltaics pvs therefore a tremendous progress is witnessed in technology as well as economy through the blooming of new markets in the past few decades the considerable progress in the application of pvs in oil producing countries is closely dependent upon the development of suitable policies and strategies due to the existence of high electricity subsidies and low tariffs of the governments in this context this paper aims to pursue the current progress in pvs in major oil producing countries located around the persian gulf and to discuss the recent advances in the prospective policy of iran as a case study the obtained results show that a minimum of 20 increase in annual electricity rate would guarantee benefit from investments in the pvs power plants under the current economic situation of iran subsequently this study investigates the optimal approaches for the development of the application of pvs in oil producing countries

fixed feed in tariff versus premium a review of the current spanish system a b s t r a c t since 1998 the spanish government established a feed in system where res e generators could choose between two alternatives fixed feed in tariff and premium nowadays all res e 1 can be sold in the electricity market getting an additional premium except for solar photovoltaic one important novelty established in 2007 is a cap and floor system for facilities under the premium option the aim of this paper is to analyze and compare these two alternative options fixed fit and premiums which coexist at the same time in spain describe the evolution of both systems and evaluate its performance the introduction of this support system in spain led to very good results in terms of res e deployment the main advantage of the premium option is that it is a scheme integrated in the electricity market one disadvantage is that it can occasionally lead to overcompensation one way to try to avoid it is to set a cap value in order to evaluate the performance of this dual support system not only res e deployment has been assessed but also the policy stability the adequacy of res e production to the electricity demand pattern and the changes in the investors behaviour

sticky prices inventories and market power in wholesale gasoline markets a model with costly adjustment of production and costly inventories implies that wholesale gasoline prices will respond with a lag to crude oil cost shocks unlike explanations that rely upon menu costs imperfect information or long term buyer seller relationships this model predicts that futures prices for gasoline will adjust incompletely to crude oil price shocks that occur close to the expiration date of the futures contract we test and confirm this implication examining wholesale price responses in 188 gasoline markets we also find that firms with market power adjust prices more slowly than do competitive firms consistent with the model

symmetric or asymmetric oil prices a meta analysis approach the analysis of price asymmetries in the gasoline market is one of the most widely studied in energy economics however the great variation in the outcomes reported makes the drawing of any definitive conclusions difficult given this situation a meta analysis serves as an excellent tool to discover which characteristics of the various markets analyzed and which specific features of these studies might account for these differences in adopting such an approach this paper shows how the particular segment of the industry analyzed the characteristics of the data the years under review the type of publication and the introduction of control variables might explain this heterogeneity in results the paper concludes on these grounds that increased competition may significantly reduce the possibility of occurrence of asymmetric behavior these results should be taken into consideration therefore in future studies of asymmetries in the oil industry

prices rise faster than they fall output prices tend to respond faster to input increases than to decreases this tendency is found in more than two of every three markets examined it is found as frequently in producer goods markets as in consumer goods markets in both kinds of markets the asymmetric response to cost shocks is substantial and durable on average the immediate response to a positive cost shock is at least twice the response to a negative shock and that difference is sustained for at least five to eight months unlike past studies which documented similar asymmetries in selected markets gasoline agricultural products etc this one uses large samples of diverse products 77 consumer and 165 producer goods accordingly the results suggest a gap in an essential part of economic theory as a start on filling this gap the study finds no asymmetry in the resonse of an individual decision maker a supermarket chain to its costs but it finds above average asymmetry where a cost shock is filtered through a fragmented w

structural estimation of the effect of out of stocks we develop a structural demand model that endogenously captures the effect of out of stocks on customer choice by simulating a time varying set of available alternatives our estimation method uses store level data on sales and partial information on product availability our model allows for flexible substitution patterns which are based on utility maximization principles and can accommodate categorical and continuous product characteristics the methodology can be applied to data from multiple markets and in categories with a relatively large number of alternatives slow moving products and frequent out of stocks unlike many existing approaches in addition we illustrate how the model can be used to assist the decisions of a store manager in two ways first we show how to quantify the lost sales induced by out of stock products second we provide insights on the financial consequences of out of stocks and suggest price promotion policies that can be used to help mitigate their negative economic impact which run counter to simple commonly used heuristics

retail gasoline price dynamics and local market power using monthly data from the 48 contiguous states except nevada for the 1988 2002 period it is shown that retail gasoline prices respond faster to wholesale price increases than to equivalent wholesale price decreases moreover markets with high average retail wholesale margins experience a slower adjustment and a more asymmetric response since gasoline is the only variable input average margins in a state likely reflect the degree of retail market power this suggests that sticky prices and response asymmetries in the gasoline market are at least partially a consequence of retail market power

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

environmental and economic analysis of building integrated photovoltaic systems in italian regions abstract solar energy is a form of renewable energy that can be used to combat climate change through an environmentally accepted energy supply policy with support from both private and public consumers there are numerous factors contributing to the definition of the economic and environmental performance of solar energy investments such as average annual irradiation consumers consumption feed in tariff incentive system energy portfolio emissions produced by the photovoltaic system rated power of the individual modules disposable income of the investor availability of surface for the installation of the photovoltaic panels and mission that characterise the project environmental maximisation economic maximisation or self sufficiency of the system during the first year given the particular geographical position of italy the economic profitability and environmental impact of such system were estimated first on the provincial scale and then on the regional scale to delineate the general characteristics that are not caused by a single scenario the indicators used include the following net present value npv internal rate of return irr discounted payback period dpbp discounted aggregate cost benefit ratio bcr and reduction of emissions of carbon dioxide ercd the ultimate objective of the paper is to define the number of photovoltaic pv systems necessary to reach the target of renewable energy production in the above settings a general scenario appropriate to achieve this goal as well as implementing the total wealth generated by this framework and the reduction of co2 emissions resulting from the implementation of that plan will be examined the indicators used are total net present value per capita and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions per capita

solar feed in tariffs in a post grid parity world the role of risk investor diversity and business models over the past decade feed in tariffs have spurred significant deployment of solar photovoltaics in germany and other countries with recent cost trends several countries are approaching retail grid parity some policymakers conclude that now is the time to remove feed in tariffs as grid parity creates a self sustaining market where economically rational investors will invest even in the absence of government incentives recent experience in key european solar markets however shows that with the advent of grid parity and the reduction of feed in tariffs investment in new solar capacity has decreased rather than increased making it questionable whether low carbon energy policy targets will be reached we conduct a cross case study analysis of three pv markets germany italy and switzerland to investigate the role of feed in tariffs for the near and post grid parity stages of diffusion accounting for investor diversity and distinguishing between implications for revenue based and savings based business models we find that recent market trends are strongly driven by increased levels of risk especially policy risk and exposure to revenue risk we therefore suggest that relatively frugal but stable policy environments may be conducive to further growth of investment in photovoltaics and minimize cost to society

analysis of the policy effects of downstream feed in tariff on china s solar photovoltaic industry abstract the chinese government initiated the feed in tariff fit policy for downstream power generation in august 2013 the effectiveness of the downstream fit policy has attracted the attention of academia and government using the quarterly data of listed solar pv companies between 2009 and 2015 this paper provides an empirical analysis regarding the effects of the downstream fit policy we find that 1 the fit policy has significantly enhanced the inventory turnover of listed pv firms and improved their profitability 2 the fit policy has significant effects on the inventory turnover of midstream companies and mixed industry chain companies mainly engaged in downstream operations 3 fit policy is more favorable towards increasing the inventory turnover of private enterprises our results indicate that the fit policy can have substantial effects on the sustainable development of china s solar photovoltaic industry

optimal tax and public investment rules for congestion type of externalities optimal government policy is considered in a second best framework where consumers and producers cause an externality of the congestion type and income distribution issues are taken into account the theoretical results of the optimal tax literature are adapted using the concept of the net social pigouvian tax an illustrative age model uncovers the relative importance of its components the model demonstrates that the level of the externality tax does not depend strongly on distribution concerns as reoptimization of the other taxes ensures that the income distribution objective is reached the model also allows us to study the interaction between externality taxes and public abatement

asymmetry in farm retail price transmission for major dairy products an econometric model is used to estimate the net relationship between changes in the farm level price of milk and changes in the retail prices of four major dairy products fluid milk butter cheese and ice cream results indicate that the farm retail price transmission process in the dairy sector is asymmetric retail dairy product prices adjust more rapidly and more fully to increases in the farm price of milk than to decreases the role in pricing asymmetry of retail demand versus farm supply shifts is tested via a chow type test asymmetry is tested using the houck procedure for estimating nonreversible functions

a review on promoting share of renewable energy by green trading mechanisms in power system abstract in order to promote the development of renewable energy power generation many countries have issued corresponding policies meanwhile some green trading mechanisms have been implemented in power industry and this paper has mainly presented a review on promoting share of renewable energy by green trading mechanisms in power system with a focus on promotion effects of three mechanisms feed in tariff renewable portfolio standard and emission trading scheme apart from a review summaries comparisons and an outlook for future study are also presented our review suggests that feed in tariff and renewable portfolio standard can effectively increase the share of renewable energy power and lead to renewable resource diversity in addition emission trading also provides stimulus for development of renewable energy besides mitigation of carbon emission

effects of large scale penetration of renewables the italian case in the years 2008 2015 abstract italy has experienced a revolution in the electricity production mix in the years 2008 2015 when a large scale deployment of intermittent renewables caused a high volatility of electricity prices stopped the investments in both fossil and renewable power plants and caused a high degree of uncertainty in matching electricity demand and supply the current legislation gives renewable energy the priority of dispatchment producing a significant decrease of the operational hours of all kinds of power plants which caused economic problems to utilities that had started investments in new high efficiency combined cycles before 2008 and reduced the overall efficiency of fossil fired power generation in order to restore the opportunities for further investments in renewable energy systems it is very important to develop long term policies and interventions to improve the capacity to balance the electricity demand and supply

do gasoline prices respond asymmetrically to crude oil price changes the authors test and confirm that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases than to decreases in crude oil prices among the possible sources of this asymmetry are production inventory adjustment lags and market power of some sellers by analyzing price transmission at different points in the distribution chain the authors attempt to shed light on these theories spot prices for generic gasoline show asymmetry in responding to crude oil price changes which may reflect inventory adjustment effects asymmetry also appears in the response of retail prices to wholesale price changes possibly indicating short run market power among retailers

how feed in remuneration design shapes residential pv prosumer paradigms as part of their clean technology and decarbonization strategies numerous countries have introduced feed in remuneration fir schemes to spur the deployment of solar photovoltaics pv however in the light of rising retail electricity prices and falling costs for rooftop solar installations in recent years policy makers and regulators face the difficult task of deciding when and how these schemes should be amended or phased out to understand how such actions might shape the role of residential solar and the resulting economics in a changing electricity system we study how the design of fir schemes affects optimal pv system sizes to illustrate our approach we draw on empirical data on the fir policies of net metering and feed in tariffs from california and germany between 2005 and 2016 using a techno economic model and a conceptual framework we show that fir design and its interplay with retail electricity prices and pv system costs jointly determine whether residential pv installations are economic how they are sized and which prosumer paradigms they spur our analysis holds numerous implications for policy makers and advisors responsible for redesigning or adapting existing fir mechanisms as well as for the stakeholders of an emerging ecosystem based on residential solar pv

double dividend with involuntary unemployment efficiency and intergenerational equity this paper analyzes the double dividend and distributional issues within an overlapping generations model framework with involuntary unemployment we characterize the necessary conditions needed to obtain a double dividend when the revenue of the environmental tax is recycled by a variation of the labor tax rate we show that an employment dividend may occur without any efficiency dividend and that the young generation is not always harmed by the fiscal reform even without any intergenerational transfers therefore three dividends environmental efficiency and intergenerational equity can occur simultaneously

pollution taxes and revenue recycling abstract discussions of environmental policy and the tax system have emphasized the value of pollution tax revenues which can be used to reduce other tax distortions in the economy however by raising private marginal production costs environmental taxes also tend to reduce gdp and exacerbate the welfare costs of conventional taxes for environmental taxes in consumption goods industries the net welfare change from these two effects is negative unless this good is a relatively weak substitute for leisure an estimate for the optimal pollution tax with full revenue recycling is 63 to 78 of marginal environmental damages

running to keep in the same place consumer choice as a game of status if individuals care about their status defined as their rank in the distribution of consumption of one positional good then the consumer s problem is strategic as her utility depends on the consumption choices of others in the symmetric nash equilibrium each individual spends an inefficiently high amount on the status good using techniques from auction theory we analyze the effects of exogenous changes in the distribution of income in a richer society almost all individuals spend more on conspicuous consumption and individual utility is lower at each income level in a more equal society the poor are worse off

feed in tariffs combined with capital subsidies for promoting the adoption of residential photovoltaic systems abstract both feed in tariffs fits and capital subsidies have been widely employed to promote the adoption of renewable energy technologies this study sheds light on the combined use of fits and capital subsidies the purpose of the study is to clarify their optimal combinations in order to encourage households to adopt photovoltaic pv systems the study develops a microeconomic model embodying the idea of two part tariffs the most important findings concern the combination that maximizes social welfare if fits are applied to the total pv electricity generated they should be set at the avoided cost per unit of pv electricity and capital subsidies should be used to control the number of adopters whereas if fits are applied to only surplus pv electricity the previous principle is distorted however a numerical example suggests that the distortion has little effect on the maximized social welfare and thus it makes little difference whether fits are applied to all pv electricity or just the surplus pv electricity the findings may also be applied to the adoption of wind power generation systems and to adoption by businesses

energy taxation and the double dividend effect in taiwan s energy conservation policy an empirical study using a computable general equilibrium model abstract faced with pressure from greenhouse gas reductions and energy price hikes the taiwan government is in the process of developing an energy tax regime to reflect environmental external costs and effectively curb energy consumption as well as mitigate co2 emissions through an adequate pricing system this study utilizes a cge model to simulate and analyze the economic impacts of the draft energy tax bill and its complementary fiscal measures under the assumption of tax revenue neutrality the use of energy tax revenue generated for the purpose of reducing income tax is the best choice with double dividend effects since it will effectively stimulate domestic consumption and investment and consequently mitigate the negative impacts of the distortionary tax regime the double dividend effect is less significant however when the supplementary measures being used are for government expenditure nevertheless all supplementary measures have effectively reduced energy consumption which means they have delivered at least the first dividend in the sense of co2 emissions control it has been verified in this study that having adequate public finance policy measures is the key to realizing the double dividend effect

the doping effect of italian feed in tariffs on the pv market abstract in less than six years italy has become one of the leading markets for pv power plants and one of the countries in the world with the largest number of installations and installed peak power such a quick and large growth is due to a series of feed in tariff schemes that have been uncapped until 2012 as a matter of fact any size or any number of pv power plants could be installed during a period of three years since the feed in tariffs are not paid by national taxes but are charged on the electricity bills italian energy users are now due to pay each year a surcharge of 9 billion euros on their energy bills this paper aims at discussing this development by highlighting the benefits but also some significant drawbacks that the application of uncontrolled feed in tariffs has produced

integration of renewable energy sources in southeast europe a review of incentive mechanisms and feasibility of investments abstract incentivizing development and deployment of renewable energy sources res but also other low carbon technologies lct has been a successful way of promoting new technologies by creating a feasible investment case and making them competitive with traditional energy sources although different incentive mechanisms exist feed in tariffs have shown to be the best model for accelerating lct development guaranteeing producers preferential prices for the produced electricity over a period of time and enabling them access to the power network to sell inject produced electricity due to these benefits feed in tariff models are the most common model for stimulating res integration in southeast europe the paper reviews the current state of preferential tariffs for res in countries of southeast europe while some countries already have significant installed res capacity others are still in the planning stage the review shows that the amount of installed capacity of a specific technology has a strong impact on the support for the future projects for same technology this comprehensive review of legislative development supporting res as well as technologies preferred in different countries of the region is supported with feasibility assessment of investing in res using the example of two different technology projects wind and photovoltaic analysing the impact of the current tariffs on the return on investment for each country of the region

business as usual a consumer search theory of sticky prices and asymmetric price adjustment abstract empirical evidence suggests that prices are sticky with respect to cost changes moreover prices respond more rapidly to cost increases than to cost decreases we develop a search theoretic model which is consistent with this evidence and allows for additional testable predictions our results are based on the assumption that buyers do not observe the sellers costs but know that cost changes are positively correlated across sellers in equilibrium a change in price is likely to induce consumer search which explains sticky prices moreover the signal conveyed by a price decrease is different from the signal conveyed by a price increase which explains asymmetry in price adjustment

asymmetric consumer learning and inventory competition we develop a model of consumer learning and choice behavior in response to uncertain service in the marketplace learning could be asymmetric that is consumers may associate different weights with positive and negative experiences under this consumer model we characterize the steady state distribution of demand for retailers given that each retailer holds a constant in stock service level we then consider a noncooperative game in steady state between two retailers competing on the basis of their service levels the demand distributions of retailers in this game are modeled using a multiplicative aggregate market share model in which the mean demands are obtained from the steady state results for individual purchases but the model is simplified in other respects for tractability our model yields a unique pure strategy nash equilibrium we show that asymmetry in consumer learning has a significant impact on the optimal service levels market shares and profits of the retailers when retailers have different costs it also determines the extent of competitive advantage enjoyed by the lower cost retailer

assessing the strength and effectiveness of renewable electricity feed in tariffs in european union countries in the last two decades feed in tariffs fit have emerged as one of the most popular policies for supporting renewable electricity res e generation a few studies have assessed the effectiveness of res e policies but most ignore policy design features and market characteristics e g electricity price and production cost that influence policy strength we employ 1992 2008 panel data to conduct the first econometric analysis of the effectiveness of fit policies in promoting solar photovoltaic pv and onshore wind power development in 26 european union countries we develop a new indicator for fit strength that captures variability in tariff size contract duration digression rate and electricity price and production cost to estimate the resulting return on investment we regress this indicator on added res e capacity using a fixed effects specification and find that fit policies have driven solar pv development in the eu however this effect is overstated without controlling for country characteristics and is concealed without accounting for policy design we do not find robust evidence that fit policies have driven wind power development overall we show that the interaction of policy design electricity price and electricity production cost is a more important determinant of res e development than policy enactment alone

altruistic dynamic pricing with customer regret altruistic dynamic pricing with customer regret a model is considered in which firms internalize the costly regret that consumers experience when prices change unexpectedly this regret is greater when prices change by more and this can explain why the actual size of price increases for firms with rigid prices is less sensitive to inflation than in models with fixed costs of changing prices regret costs of this form also lead to more variable price changes than fixed costs do last the practice of announcing price increases in advance is easier to rationalize with regret concerns by consumers than with more standard approaches to price rigidity

market structure determinants of national brand private label price differences of manufactured food products reply this paper estimates the relationships between market structure and the lerner index of monopoly constructed from price data on processed food products sold through grocery stores a theoretical model of a differentiated oligopoly specifies two determinants of price cost margins the herfindahl hirschman index of seller concentration adjusted for the elasticity of demand and the industry advertising to sales ratio the results indicate that the three principal determinants of price cost margin variation in order of their impacts are advertising intensity elasticity of demand and concentration previous structure performance studies that did not incorporate the elasticity of demand were probably misspecified

the magnitude of menu costs direct evidence from large u s supermarket chains we use store level data to document the exact process of changing prices and to directly measure menu costs at five multistore supermarket chains we show that changing prices in these establishments is a complex process requiring dozens of steps and a nontrivial amount of resources the menu costs average 105 887 year per store comprising 0 70 percent of revenues 35 2 percent of net margins and 0 52 price change these menu costs may be forming a barrier to price changes specifically 1 a supermarket chain facing higher menu costs due to item pricing laws that require a separate price tag on each item changes prices two and one half times less frequently than the other four chains 2 within this chain the prices of products exempt from the law are changed over three times more frequently than the products subject to the law in principle fixed costs of changing prices can be observed and measured in practice such costs take disparate forms in different firms and we have no data on their magnitude so the theory can be tested at best indirectly at worst not at all alan blinder 1991 p 90

when can carbon abatement policies increase welfare the fundamental role of distorted factor markets abstract this paper employs analytical and numerical models to assess the welfare effects of a revenue neutral carbon tax and nonauctioned carbon emissions permits taking into account preexisting tax distortions in factor markets the presence of preexisting taxes significantly raises the general equilibrium costs of both policies this cost increase is much greater under emissions permits since this policy does not generate revenues to reduce distortionary taxes under our central estimates emissions permits cannot increase welfare unless environmental damages exceed about 18 per ton of carbon in contrast an appropriately scaled carbon tax is welfare improving so long as environmental damages are positive

sociodynamic modeling of small scale pv adoption and insights on future expansion without feed in tariffs abstract understanding complex phenomena such as energy transitions which bear technical economic and social dimensions requires a multi directional approach expansion of the solar energy in the energy mix of a country is similarly complex as its decentralized nature brings about a necessity of public approval and trust besides its economics we therefore develop a combined socio economic model which is based on the sociodynamics framework for the household level adoption of photovoltaics pv we apply the model to the cases of german and italian pv expansion and make a retrospective analysis regarding their dynamics in order to identify the importance of various factors such as the profitability and the public opinion throughout their expansion timeline we then project our model for the german pv expansion onto the near future and investigate the requirement of feed in tariffs to maintain the expansion targets under various scenarios results of our projection point at the importance of the self consumption of pv electricity an average self consumption ratio higher than 25 makes a phase out of feed in tariffs by 2030 possible whereas 50 self consumption renders the feed in tariff regulation obsolete even in today s economic conditions

econometric models of asymmetric price transmission abstract in this paper we review the existing empirical literature on price asymmetries in commodities providing a way to classify and compare different studies that are highly heterogeneous in terms of econometric models type of asymmetries and empirical findings relative to the previous literature this paper is novel in several respects first it presents a detailed and updated survey of the existing empirical contributions on price asymmetries in the transmission mechanism linking input prices to output prices second this paper presents an extension of the traditional distinction between long run and short run asymmetries to new categories of asymmetries such as contemporaneous impact distributed lag effect cumulated impact reaction time equilibrium and momentum equilibrium adjustment path regime effect regime equilibrium adjustment path each empirical study is then critically discussed in the light of this new classification of asymmetries third this paper evaluates the relative merits of the most popular econometric models for price asymmetries namely autoregressive distributed lags partial adjustments error correction models regime switching and vector autoregressive models finally we use the meta regression analysis to investigate whether the results of asymmetry tests are not model invariant and find which additional factors systematically influence the rejection of the null hypothesis of symmetric price adjustment the main results of our survey can be summarized as follows i each econometric model is specialized to capture a subset of asymmetries ii each asymmetry is better investigated by a subset of econometric models iii the general significance of the f test for asymmetric price transmission depends mainly on characteristics of the data dynamic specification of the econometric model and market characteristics overall our empirical findings confirm that asymmetry in all its forms is very likely to occur in a wide range of markets and econometric models

altruistic dynamic pricing with customer regret a model is considered in which firms internalize the costly regret that consumers experience when prices change unexpectedly this regret is greater when prices change by more and this can explain why the actual size of price increases for firms with rigid prices is less sensitive to inflation than in models with fixed costs of changing prices regret costs of this form also lead to more variable price changes than fixed costs do last the practice of announcing price increases in advance is easier to rationalize with regret concerns by consumers than with more standard approaches to price rigidity

reflections on the double dividend debate we survey the history of carbon taxation the range of market based instruments mbis of environmental control and the state of the double dividend debate in order to suggest directions for future research into mbis returning mbi revenues as lower distortionary taxes rather than as lump sums raises aggregate welfare but we favour mbis which raise little or no revenue for reasons of political acceptability to interest groups at the same time the overall case for any environmental improvement is weaker because of general equilibrium interactions with prior distortionary taxes research seems most necessary on quantifying the efficiency benefits of market control of heterogeneous polluters the benefits of environmental improvement the tax interaction effect and the various information costs of an mbi all on a case by case basis for different pollutants and places

an assessment of the greek incentives scheme for photovoltaics abstract after two years of elaboration a new legislation was enacted in 2006 in greece providing an appealing feed in tariff fit scheme for photovoltaics pvs the response of the market was immediate with more than 7947 licenses having been submitted in less than 2 years time the effectiveness however of an incentives scheme cannot be judged solely by the response of prospective investors aim of this paper is to present and discuss a quantitative assessment of this newly introduced fit law in greece with respect to its attractiveness to investors its effectiveness towards launching a new market its cost efficiency and its ability to lift non economic barriers that led to significant delays in the diffusion of res over the last 10 years

the efficiency value of effluent tax revenues the concept of the efficiency value of effluent tax revenues is developed it is defined as the reduction in excess burden resulting from the substitution of these revenues for current or future resource distorting tax revenues such as those raised from federal corporate and personal income taxes the annual efficiency value of revenues raised by national effluent taxes on two major air pollutants is estimated to range from 0 63 to 3 05 billion if substituted for federal personal income tax revenue and from 1 to 4 87 billion if substituted for corporate income tax revenue expressed in 1982 dollars thus previous estimates of the efficiency gain from substitution of an effluent tax scheme for current pollution regulation policy have been too low because the efficiency value of the tax revenues has been excluded

the distributional implications of a carbon tax in ireland we study the effects of carbon tax and revenue recycling across the income distribution in the republic of ireland in absolute terms a carbon tax of 20 tco2 would cost the poorest households less than 3 week and the richest households more than 4 week a carbon tax is regressive therefore however if the tax revenue is used to increase social benefits and tax credits households across the income distribution can be made better off without exhausting the total carbon tax revenue

optimal environmental taxation in the presence of other taxes general equilibrium analyses this paper examines the optimal setting of environmental taxes in economies where other distortionary taxes are present we employ analytical and numerical models to explore the degree to which in a second best economy optimal environmental tax rates differ from the rates implied by the pigovian principle according to which the optimal tax rate equals the marginal environmental damages both models indicate contrary to what several analysts have suggested that the optimal tax rate on emissions of a given pollutant is generally less than the rate supported by the pigovian principle moreover the optimal rate is lower the larger are the distortions posed by ordinary taxes numerical results indicate that previous studies may have seriously overstated the size of the optimal carbon tax by disregarding pre existing taxes this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a review of governmental support instruments channeling pv market growth in the flanders region of belgium 2006 2013 abstract how did a country in the middle of western europe starting almost from scratch reach the european top 3 in terms of solar pv capacity in five years and what were the costs we provide a systematic chronological review of the different governmental support instruments that drove the exponential growth of the solar energy market in the flanders region of belgium and calculate their relative contributions the results of the economic calculations show that green electricity certificates had by far the greatest effect on both the rise and stagnation of the market costing about 1 5 billion euro only for 2006 2013 the long term societal costs of such growth proved to be even higher 6 7 billion for 2014 2031 and unevenly distributed with residents paying the highest price via their energy bills companies continuously adapted their organizations to enact the available support instruments counter intuitively the substantial support shifted the attention of companies to the larger systems even though the incentive for investment in pv was lower than for the smaller systems

the impact of shopbot use on prices and price dispersion evidence from online book retailing abstract internet price search tools notably shopbots have reduced consumers search costs for price and product characteristics while a variety of analytic models predict that increased consumer search will lower price levels among competing retailers there is no consensus in the literature as to how price dispersion will change with increased consumer search moreover there are no papers that have empirically tested these predictions using direct observation of variation in shopbot use over time this paper examines the impact of changes in shopbot use over time on pricing behavior in the internet book market we do this by combining price and clickstream data collected from august 1999 to july 2001 a period of rapid expansion in shopbot use we find that a 1 increase in shopbot use is correlated with a 0 41 decrease in price levels and a 1 1 decrease in price dispersion

adoption of residential solar power under uncertainty implications for renewable energy incentives abstract many incentives at the state and federal level exist for household adoption of renewable energy like solar photovoltaic pv panels despite generous financial incentives the adoption rate is low we use the option value framework which takes into account the benefit of delaying investment in response to uncertainty to examine the decision by households to invest in solar pv using a simulation model we determine optimal adoption times critical values of discounted benefits and adoption rates over time for solar pv investments using data from massachusetts we find that the option value multiplier is 1 6 which implies that the discounted value of benefits from solar pv needs to exceed installation cost by 60 for investment to occur without any policies median adoption time is eight years longer under the option value decision rule compared to the net present value decision rule where households equate discounted benefits to installation cost rebates and other financial incentives decrease adoption time but their effect is attenuated if households apply the option value decision rule to solar pv investments results suggest that policies that reduce the uncertainty in returns from solar pv investments would be most effective at incentivizing adoption

competition and product quality in the supermarket industry this article analyzes the effect of competition on a supermarket firm s incentive to provide product quality in the supermarket industry product availability is an important measure of quality using u s consumer price index microdata to track inventory shortfalls i find that stores facing more intense competition have fewer shortfalls competition from walmart the most significant shock to industry market structure in half a century decreased shortfalls among large chains by about a third the risk that customers will switch stores appears to provide competitors with a strong incentive to invest in product quality

price transmission and asymmetric adjustment in the spanish dairy sector asymmetric threshold vector error correction models are applied to monthly price data to analyse price relationships and patterns of transmission among farm and retail markets for a variety of dairy products in spain the results suggest that asymmetries affect a conspicuous part of the raw milk processed in spain implications for the organizational structure of spanish dairy markets are offered

sectoral effects of a green tax reform in portugal abstract economic downturn coupled with serious and persisting environmental problems require a new regulation system to tackle these problems the portuguese government created the commission for the green tax reform in 2014 following the guidelines of the european union in the sense that fiscal policy should contribute to public budget consolidation and sustainable growth the commission was commissioned to propose a simplification of taxation in order to promote economic competitiveness environmental sustainability and the efficient use of resources the aim of this paper is to present the results from one of the teams that have contributed to the commission for the green tax reform we have followed the european commission guidelines in order to simulate a green tax reform with a static general equilibrium model and aligned to the political context we found that i it is possible to enjoy a positive double dividend ii to achieve improvements in the energy trade balance and energy independence and iii to reduce the energy intensity of the portuguese economy

substituting pollution taxation for general taxation some implications for efficiency in pollutions taxation abstract earlier papers have recognized that nonenvironmental benefits will be realized if pollution taxes are substituted for other taxes which impose efficiency losses on society the purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of these nonenvironmental benefits for the design of an efficient pollution tax it is found that the efficient tax may be higher or lower than that conventionally defined as optimal and that the net benefit from unrestrained pollution can have important implications for the size of the tax

consequences of environmental tax reform for involuntary unemployment and welfare we investigate the welfare effects of environmental tax reform i e raising environmental taxes and using the proceeds to reduce distortionary taxes on labour the framework of analysis is a small open economy with involuntary unemployment due to a rigid consumer wage environmental tax reform boosts not only environmental quality but also employment if substitution between labour and resources is easy the production share of the fixed factor is large and the initial tax rates on resources and profits are small if the initial tax system is sub optimal with a negligible tax on resources profits rise as well

reevaluating the first and the second dividends of environmental tax reforms abstract there is increasing global interest in market based climate change policies following the last elections in the united states in this context an exxon mobil chief executive came out in favour of a carbon tax this paper is concerned with the welfare analysis of environmental tax reforms etr and takes up the claims for the need of an unambiguous and operative definition of the double dividend both for empirical purposes and political advisement in this paper we contest the usual definition of the second dividend and its assimilation to an efficiency dividend we propose alternative definitions by suggesting a different splitting of the total welfare variation between the first and the second dividend in order to isolate the efficiency effects of the etr the new definitions become clearly understandable and easy for economic and policy interpretation concepts like weak and strong double dividend turn out to be unnecessary finally we analyze etr for the us economy to illustrate the advantages of the proposed definitions for policy implementation