energy engenderment an industrialized perspective assessing the importance of engaging women in residential energy consumption management abstract this study assesses gender role and participation in energy utilization at the residential household level in an advanced industrial country setting two hundred and twenty one 221 standardized surveys of single family residential households in san antonio texas the seventh largest city in the united states of america are collected and used as a test case the objective is to highlight the role of women in improving household energy efficiency by coupling the behavioral and analytical sciences studies such as this one provide better insight for the effective deployment of targeted energy efficiency programs that can benefit both households and municipalities while reducing impact on environmental resources study conclusions highlight 80 higher per capita consumption in female dominant households versus male dominant households p 0 000 driven by approximately double the gas consumption in female headed households p 0 002 and 54 more electric usage p 0 004 the higher use in female dominant homes is examined through the socio demographic impacts of education income vintage of home occupied and size of home occupied the theoretical framework and test case presented in this study promote the need for market segmented energy efficiency initiatives that better engage women in energy demand side management in industrialized populated cities

designing and rating an area yield crop insurance contract this article documents the design and rate making procedures used in the development of the group risk plan grp the new federal crop insurance product that insures based on area yield the authors of this article worked closely with personnel in the federal crop insurance corporation and others in developing methodological and practical constraints needed in implementing a workable area yield contract grp indemnity payments are made based on percentage shortfalls in actual county yields relative to a forecasted yield historical county yield data are used to develop forecasted yields and premium rates

regional electricity generation and employment in uk regions abstractregional electricity generation and employment in uk regions regional studies a number of electricity generation technologies reduce carbon emissions but with different economic and employment effects partly consequent on how far generation capacity supports regional supply chains in devolved regions these issues are important because of the role given to renewable electricity generation in economic development strategies this paper analyses the regional employment supported by different electricity generation technologies illustrating trade offs between generation scale and employment intensity and shows that the regional employment supported under all pathways is modest compared with the regional economic scale the policy implications are investigated

promotion policies for renewable energy and their effects in taiwan abstract taiwan is an interesting case in bioenergy development and its government has employed several subsidies to promote bioenergy such as released land compensation and energy crop subsidies however how farmers respond to these economic incentives is not clear the study employs the concept of big data by incorporating data on the input output of crop production demand elasticities international trade and tariffs processing technologies commodity prices and energy prices for more than 85 of taiwanese agricultural and forest commodities the study first utilizes a mathematical programming model to examine the effectiveness of these policies in terms of bioenergy production and ghg greenhouse gas emissions reduction and then applies the dynamic structural equation model to analyze the interactions among important input and output factors such as social welfare energy prices bioenergy production ghg emissions and co 2 trade prices the results show that 1 the ghg price is more effective than the coal price in the sense of reducing the ethanol production 2 the gasoline price has a negative impact on contemporary electricity production while the coal and ghg prices have positive impacts 3 current ethanol production has a negative influence on current ghg emissions reductions and 4 the gasoline price coal price ghg price and ghg emissions reductions have a significant positive impact on contemporary welfare

vehicle scrappage and gasoline policy abstract we estimate the sensitivity of scrap decisions to changes in used car values and show how this scrap elasticity produces emissions leakage under fuel efficiency standards a process known as the gruenspecht effect we first estimate the effect of gasoline prices on used vehicle values and scrappage of vehicles with different fuel economies we then estimate the scrap elasticity itself which we find to be 0 7 when applied in a model of fuel economy standards 13 16 percent of the expected fuel savings leak away through the used vehicle market this effect rivals or exceeds the importance of the often cited mileage rebound effect jel h23 l62 l78 q35 q38 q48 q58

public prioritisation of energy affordability in the uk much research has focused on the so called energy trilemma i e three leading energy policy issues energy security affordability and climate change mitigation whilst substantial understanding exists of why people support climate friendly energy policies little is known about why they think affordability is important particularly what leads members of the public to identify this policy goal as more important than other objectives here we examine this question via a nationally representative survey of 2441 uk residents and demonstrate that concerns about personal costs explain a small amount of variation in the prioritisation of affordability as an energy policy goal a range of other factors also significantly contribute one such factor is beliefs about who is responsible for energy transitions these findings suggest policy actions to address affordability concerns should go beyond energy prices and include additional considerations such as distributive justice and equality

public preferences for investments in renewable energy production and energy efficiency abstract in this paper we investigate the choices citizens make when asked to express willingness to support a proposed energy policy and are then compelled to allocate the program funds to either renewable energy or energy efficiency in a survey study based on a random sample of residents of the state of maine usa we find that citizens have preferences for specific types of renewable energy but these preferences do not yield significantly different allocation of investment funds between renewable energy and energy efficiency we find that preferences are generally consistent regardless of presentation of options i e limited ordering effects our results also indicate that personal characteristics that are understudied in the energy literature including promotion prevention focus and social fiscal leanings influence both willingness to support energy policies and also their allocation of fund choices but in different ways this suggests the importance of including multiple options in energy policy proposals and that targeted messages regarding the components of such policies is key for optimal communication

an expected indemnity approach to the measurement of moral hazard in crop insurance a definition of moral hazard in multiple peril crop insurance is proposed that focuses on expected indemnities rather than input use five years of production and insurance data for a panel of kansas wheat farms is used to empirically test for this type of moral hazard results suggest that moral hazard affects multiple peril crop insurance indemnities in poor production years but that no significant moral hazard occurs in years when growing conditions are favorable

energy comes home the growth in private energy consumption is an increasing problem in western countries from an environmental point of view this consumption has to be reduced on the basis of two norwegian case studies this article discusses private energy consumption and possibilities for reduction with a special focus on the home it argues against a rational economic view of the consumer and emphasizes the significance of a more subtle understanding of private energy use the article approaches the challenges of reducing private energy consumption by analysing the domestication of the home and discusses everyday life activities as well as the phenomenon of rebuilding and redecorating by using the concept of domestication the article challenges the linear understanding of technological as well as behavioural change private energy consumption is part of a complex network and it is necessary to understand this network in order to achieve a more permanent reduction

modeling conditional yield densities given the increasing interest in agricultural risk many have sought improved methods to characterize conditional crop yield densities while most have postulated the beta as a flexible alternative to the normal others have chosen nonparametric methods unfortunately yield data tends not to be sufficiently abundant to invalidate many reasonable parametric models this is problematic because conclusions from economic analyses which require estimated conditional yield densities tend not to be invariant to the modeling assumption we propose a semiparametric estimator that because of its theoretical properties and our simulation results enables one to empirically proceed with a higher degree of confidence copyright 2003 oxford university press

forty years of oil price fluctuations why the price of oil may still surprise us it has been forty years since the oil crisis of 1973 74 this crisis has been one of the defining economic events of the 1970s and has shaped how many economists think about oil price shocks in recent years a large literature on the economic determinants of oil price fluctuations has emerged drawing on this literature we first provide an overview of the causes of all major oil price fluctuations between 1973 and 2014 we then discuss why oil price fluctuations remain difficult to predict despite economists improved understanding of oil markets unexpected oil price fluctuations are commonly referred to as oil price shocks we document that in practice consumers policymakers financial market participants and economists may have different oil price expectations and that what may be surprising to some need not be equally surprising to others

consumer demand for green power and energy efficiency abstract this article examines reported willingness to pay for electric utility investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency resources using the results of deliberative polls conducted by electric utilities in texas 1 age education and salary tend to affect reported willingness to pay for utility investments in these resources intensive exposure to information about energy resource issues led to an increase in the number of respondents interested in paying a modest premium to support investments in both renewable energy resources and energy efficiency however average reported premiums actually declined following the polls as very high outlier responses moved to more reasonable values following the polls these results support the contention that informed dialogue about energy alternatives will result in broader interest in providing a modest level of support for these resources

energy security and renewable energy deployment in the eu liaisons dangereuses or virtuous circle abstract a large body of literature estimates the effect of energy security drivers on renewable energy deployment using import dependence as a proxy for energy security which is an approach that ignores the potential effect of other energy security strategies such as the diversification of energy sources using panel data for the energy sector across 21 eu member states we investigate the effect of different energy security concepts on the development of renewable energies we compare the results of applying different energy security indicators including the ones used in eu energy policymaking unlike previous studies this study reports a long term relationship between energy security and renewable deployment our findings suggest that the relationship between energy security policies and renewable energy sources res deployment is far from straightforward and depends on the chosen energy security strategy which is usually linked to different energy security conceptualizations our primary findings confirm i that res deployment is a consequence of a combination of energy security strategies including environmental concerns rather than being solely caused by a shift towards more sustainable energy policies and ii that among the different energy security strategies the diversification of energy sources through renewable energy deployment is a more coherent strategy than using res to reduce dependency

testing the stochastic structure of production a flexible moment based approach conventional production function specifications are shown to impose restrictions on the probability distribution of output that cannot be tested with the conventional models these restrictions have important implications for firm behavior under uncertainty a flexible representation of a firm s stochastic technology is developed based on the moments of the probability distribution of output these moments are a unique representation of the technology and are functions of inputs large sample estimators are developed for a linear moment model that is sufficiently flexible to test the restrictions implied by conventional production function specifications the flexible moment based approach is applied to milk production data the first three moments of output are statistically significant functions of inputs the cross moment restrictions implied by conventional models are rejected

are u s corn and soybeans becoming more drought tolerant an objective drought index that measures the dry and hot conditions adversely affecting crop yields is used in a regression analysis to test whether corn and soybeans have become more drought tolerant results indicate that corn yield losses whether measured in quantity terms or as a percentage of mean yield have decreased the null hypothesis that the absolute level of soybean yield losses due to drought has not changed cannot be rejected but yield losses in percentage terms have decreased over time because drought is the primary cause of yield loss in the u s crop insurance program and because u s crop insurance rates assume that percentage of yield losses are constant over time these results indicate that u s crop insurance rates in the corn belt are too high

has technology increased agricultural yield risk evidence from the crop insurance biotech endorsement the conventional wisdom that technological advances in seed breeding and genetic modification of corn traits have lowered yield risk has recently been challenged by research that argues that the converse is true the implications of this research have been applied to models of climate change and have led to the conclusion that these advances have actually increased agronomic risk such that climate change is asserted to raise important concerns regarding the stability and viability of agricultural output in the future in a large body of empirical work the argument is based upon assertions that corn yields have become more sensitive to weather stresses this increased sensitivity has coincided with the introduction of a variety of genetically engineered ge crops in the 1990s and 2000s we use corn yields and data from the us federal crop insurance program to evaluate these claims an initial examination of yield responses to droughts in 1988 and 2012 suggests more robust yields in the latter period in spite of very comparable weather stresses we next consider side by side data collected under the biotech endorsement be to the federal crop insurance program between 2008 and 2011 this endorsement provided substantial discounts for growers using certain ge hybrids reflecting policymakers beliefs that these hybrids had lower yield risk we find that risk as measured by the rate of indemnities paid per units insured was significantly lower for crops insured under the be we also find that the difference in risk tends to be greater when growing conditions are less favorable

heterogeneity and distributional form of farm level yields representing farm level crop yield heterogeneity and distributional form is critical for risk and crop insuranceresearch moststudieshaveusedcountydata understatingbothsystematicandrandomvariation comparison of systematic versus random intra county variation is lacking few studies compare the various distributional forms that have been proposed this study utilizes the extensive potential of government farm level crop insurance data results show that systematic intra county variation is surprisingly strong a newly applied reverse lognormal distribution is preferred when county wide variation is removed but the normal distribution fits surprisingly well in the crop insurance relevant percentiles when county wide variation is not removed representing and accounting for both spatial and temporal heterogeneity is a major problem in agricultural economics and policy analysis due to the fact that most data are aggregated to at least the county level e g gardner and kramer 1986 just and pope 1999 both systematic and random components of crop yields are major factors in intra county farm level heterogeneity that are critical for modeling risk producer behavior and crop insurance participation most studies have either used aggregate at least county level data or relied on relatively few farm level observations the former makes results primarily illustrative while the latter limits statistical significance this article characterizes intra county crop yield heterogeneity both spatially and temporally with the most extensive dataset utilized to date and evaluates a broader set of parametric distributional possibilities than previously

the impact of clean energy investments on the greek economy an input output analysis 2010 2020 the aim of this paper is twofold first to calculate the green energy investments by industrial sector that greece would need in order to satisfy a number of energy and environmental targets adopted in the context of the european commission s energy and climate change package and second to calculate the macro economic impacts of these green investments on production and employment in the greek economy to this end the input output analysis has been exploited for estimating the direct indirect and induced macroeconomic effects associated with the implementation of selected energy conservation measures the promotion of renewable energy technologies etc our findings show that the required investments would reach the amount of 47 9 billion over the period 2010 2020 these investments will result in an average annual increase of the national product by 9 4 billion creating simultaneously 108 000 full time equivalent jobs for the entire period under consideration the employment generated per 1 million investment is relatively higher in energy saving projects in buildings and transport in comparison with the development of res in power generation sector

are crop yields normally distributed the evidence for nonnormality of crop yields is reassessed three methodological problems are identified in typical yield distribution analyses i misspecification of the nonrandom components of yield distributions ii missreporting of statistical significance and iii use of aggregate timeseries ats data to represent farm level yield distributions one or more of these problems infect virtually all evidence against normality to date the positive contribution of the article is a set of principles that must be followed in any valid investigation of yield normality

u s consumer attitudes and expectations about energy understanding public perceptions of energy is important for informing energy related business research and policy strategies to this end a new u s consumer survey probes core attitudes about the reliability affordability and environmental impact of energy appended quarterly to the long running monthly survey of 500 households that produces the index of consumer sentiment this instrument inherits the sample design and statistical rigor of that household economic survey first year results yield several notable findings home energy bills are viewed as unaffordable if they were to double for consumers in the lower income tercile but only if they were to triple for consumers in the upper income tercile regarding the cost increases deemed unaffordable consumers report much greater sensitivity to higher gasoline prices than to higher home energy bills moreover consumers express at least as much concern about the environmental impact of energy as they do about its affordability a result that shows some regional variation but which holds across income brackets several other findings are of likely interest to energy researchers and policymakers and the unique data series generated by this survey will enable deeper analyses of attitudinally related energy topics as time goes on

forecasting job creation from renewable energy deployment through a value chain approach abstract this paper introduces a new approach to the study of the socioeconomic impact of renewable technologies through the analysis of the reinforcing effects of the expansion of this industry and the specific characteristics of the employment along the value chain the method proposed is based on the collection critical analysis and presentation of the results obtained using primary information sources the model design includes contributions extracted from a prior analysis of the existing assessment methods to lessen the uncertainty of the job ratios often used in these types of analysis one factor to be taken into account is the high degree of development in the sector and above all the maturity of the technology considered from the point of view of the industry fabric the economy of scale and technological development actually influences the human resources needs sometimes increasing the demand for professionals within the scope of r d and sometimes reducing jobs in the manufacturing industry which is gradually applying processes with a greater degree of automation the influence of these experience curves is different for every single stage of the value chain trade balance of technologies is also crucial for local employment generation an analytical model was developed based on the above assumptions and applied to the spanish pv industry this industry has been playing a leading role in the expansion of renewable energy and offers a high potential towards the short term development of the smart grids in this country this model represents very well the history of the spanish pv industry reflected through the evolution of the jobs and is shown to be the foundation of a methodology for prospective studies in the social and economic impacts of renewables

concerned consumption global warming changing household domestication of energy this is the authors accepted and refereed manuscript to the article licensed under a creative commons attribution non commercial no derivatives license locked until 2018 11 01

assessing the impact of framing on the comparative favourability of nuclear power as an electricity generating option in the uk in 2007 the uk government s public consultation on the future of nuclear power courted much criticism three studies were conducted to assess whether key arguments used by government within this consultation might have influenced public opinion about the technology participants first read a passage of text that made salient certain positive climate change mitigation increased energy security or negative nuclear waste aspects of the nuclear debate participants then completed a task that required them to create an electricity mix for the uk by varying the contributions made by each of five energy sources coal gas nuclear renewables and electric import study 1 seemed to indicate that pitching the debate in terms of climate change mitigation was effective in increasing endorsement of nuclear power the results of studies 2 and 3 however contested this conclusion suggesting that these arguments were having little direct impact upon participants preferences for nuclear power the results of these studies hold implications for uk energy policy and attitude assessment and can contribute to the understanding of how the arguments used by government in the 2007 consultation might have influenced public opinion

payment limitations and acreage decisions under risk aversion a simulation approach payment limits have played an important role in u s farm policy deliberations for the last thirty years current limits are largely nonbinding proposals to strengthen and enforce limits are currently in discussion we evaluate the likely effects of such proposals on acreage for corn soybeans wheat cotton and rice in several important producing states our results generally indicate that payment limits are unlikely to significantly affect acreage in most cases exceptions occur for cotton and rice where the probability that limits would be binding is much greater and thus more likely to affect production copyright 2009 oxford university press

the impact of weather on crop yield distribution in taiwan some new evidence from panel data models and implications for crop insurance this study examines the impact of weather on the yields of seven major crops in taiwan based on pooled panel data for 15 prefectures over the 1977 1996 period the unit root tests and maximum likelihood methods involving a panel data model are explored to obtain reliable estimates the uncertain yield outcome is incorporated into a discrete stochastic programming model to address a comparison between sector analysis with and without considerations of a crop insurance policy under different climate change scenarios simulation results suggest that crop insurance may stabilize revenues and protect farmers from exposures to increasing weather related risk

crop insurance valuation under alternative yield distributions considerable disagreement exists about the most appropriate characterization of farm level yield distributions yet the economic importance of alternative yield distribution specifications on crop insurance valuation has not been well documented the results of this study demonstrate that large differences in expected payouts from popular crop insurance products can arise solely from the parameterization chosen to represent yield distributions the results suggest that the frequently unexamined yield distribution specification may lead to economically significant errors in crop insurance policy rating and assessment of expected payouts from policies

average crop revenue election a revenue based alternative to price based commodity payment programs this article develops a stochastic model of the average crop revenue election acre program which offers revenue based commodity payments under the 2008 farm act our analysis shows that adding acre revenue payments to gross revenue reduces downside revenue risk for corn wheat and soybean farmers in 2009 on average by 16 21 and 23 respectively results indicate that farms with higher expected yields and lower variance of yields tend to benefit the most from acre integrating federal crop insurance with acre lowers insurance premiums from 10 to 40 depending on the crop and location

exploring public perceptions of energy security risks in the uk along with climate change and affordability concerns about energy security are key drivers behind proposals for major energy system change in the uk and numerous other countries unlike climate change we know very little about how the public thinks and feels about this aspect of sustainability and energy policy beyond engaging critically with conceptual and theoretical discussions empirical data from two surveys cardiff postal survey n 520 online uk survey n 499 using a ten item energy security scale are presented and discussed here we show that aspects of energy security are certainly of concern to the uk public with particularly high concern around dependence on fossil fuels imports and relatively lower expressed concern for actual disruption of energy supply however public concerns around energy security are only emerging and likely to change depending on the context in which it is discussed e g in comparison to climate change in addition findings from public interviews are used to further contextualise the survey findings showing unfamiliarity among the uk public with regards to the term energy security we discuss implications and further work that would be useful for understanding public perceptions in more depth

demand information and spot price information supply chains trading in spot markets abstract this paper investigates the effect of information updating on the members of a two stage supply chain in the presence of spot market the supplier decides the contract price new information becomes available as time progresses the manufacturer updates his belief on demand and or spot price and subsequently decides the contract quantity the demand and spot price are correlated thus the new demand information also updates the belief on the spot price and vice versa we model the problem with an information updating stackelberg game and derive unique equilibrium strategies previous studies have considered only the demand information and concluded that improved demand information always benefits the supplier by contrast we demonstrate that improved demand information benefits both the supplier and manufacturer if the correlation coefficient between the two uncertainties has a small positive value and benefits the manufacturer but hurts the supplier otherwise moreover superior spot price information benefits only the manufacturer and always hurts the supplier surprisingly superior information fails to improve the performance of the supply chain and only changes the allocation of the profits between the supplier and manufacturer our findings likewise provide insights into when the supplier intends to use the contract channel and which type of information updating facility or expertise to invest in if a choice must be made

an empirical analysis of the demand for multiple peril crop insurance knowledge of factors affecting farmer purchases of crop insurance is essential for evaluating the soundness and profitability of crop insurance programs despite this importance the demand for crop insurance has received limited empirical attention the present paper reports on an empirical assessment of the demand for crop insurance by iowa corn producers adverse selection in the insured pool suggests that producers with differing levels of loss risk have different demand elasticities loss risk is included in the empirical analysis and is found to influence the elasticity of demand results show average demand elasticities of about 0 32 for relative insured acres and 0 73 for liability per planted acre implications for the actuarial soundness of the industry are provided

are crop yields normally distributed a reexamination this article demonstrates that normality test procedures that include individual detrending of short term panel data can severely reduce the power of normality tests and strongly bias normality tests in a type ii direction an alternative error component implicit detrending procedure is suggested that demonstrates higher power for the distributions examined both procedures are applied to a large data set with normality of yield residuals being rejected assuming normality is shown to reduce potential premium rates for a large number of producers in an existing crop insurance product

copula based models of systemic risk in u s agriculture implications for crop insurance and reinsurance contracts the federal crop insurance program has been a major fixture of u s agricultural policy since the 1930s and continues to grow in size and importance indeed it now represents the most prominent farm policy instrument accounting for more government spending than any other farm commodity program the 2014 farm bill further expanded the crop insurance program and introduced a number of new county level revenue insurance plans in 2013 over 123 billion in crop value was insured under the program crop revenue insurance first introduced in the 1990s now accounts for nearly 70 of the total liability in the program the available plans cover losses that result from a revenue shortfall that can be triggered by multiple dependent sources of risk either low prices low yields or a combination of both the actuarial practices currently applied when rating these plans essentially involve the application of a gaussian copula model to the pricing of dependent risks we evaluate the suitability of this assumption by considering a number of alternative copula models in particular we use combinations of pair wise copulas of conditional distributions to model multiple sources of risk we find that this approach is generally preferred by model fitting criteria in the applications considered here we demonstrate that alternative approaches to modeling dependencies in a portfolio of risks may have significant implications for premium rates in crop insurance

asymmetry partial moments and production risk partial moment functions are proposed as a flexible way to characterize and estimate asymmetric effects of inputs on output distributions methods for econometric estimation of partial moment functions and tests for input symmetry and location scale distributions are presented a monte carlo study demonstrates properties of proposed tests a study of ecuadorian potato production illustrates the methods hypotheses of input symmetry and location scale are rejected a risk value model based on partial moments implies that fertilizer is risk increasing and fungicides and labor are risk reducing in potato production whereas an expected utility model based on full moments has the opposite implications

federal crop insurance and the disincentive to adapt to extreme heat economic damages associated with climate change in the united states have been studied in the burgeoning climate economics literature covering various sectors for example most of the predicted damages from climate change in the united states come from the increased frequency of extreme heat houser et al 2014 warming leads to fewer cold and more hot days the reduction in cold days is generally beneficial but the increase in very hot days more than offsets these benefits due to an asymmetric relationship where the magnitude of the sensitivity to extreme heat is much larger than to extreme cold in the agricultural sector the damaging effects of temperature increases above roughly 85o f are an order of magnitude larger than the beneficial effects below the threshold schlenker and roberts 2009 government programs may both enable or potentially distort societal adaptation behavior yet empirical evidence about the effectiveness of governmental programs and whether they aid

testing day s conjecture that more nitrogen decreases crop yield skewness whilecontroversysurroundsskewnessattributesoftypicalyielddistributions abetterunderstandingis importantforagriculturalpolicyassessmentandforcrop insuranceratesetting day 1965 conjectured that crop yield skewness declines with an increase in nitrogen use at low levels but not at higher levels employing four corn yield experimental plot datasets we investigate the conjecture by introducing a a flexible bayesian extension of the just pope technology to incorporate skewness and b a quantilebased measure of skewness shift bayesian estimation provides strong evidence in favor of negative skewnessatcommercialnitrogenratesandforday sconjecture therewasweakerevidenceinfavorof positively skewed cotton yield and little evidence in favor of the conjecture the results are confirmed by the quantile based measure we also find evidence that skewness becomes more negative upon moving from corn after corn to corn after soybean

consumers willingness to pay for renewable and nuclear energy a comparative analysis between the us and japan abstract this paper examines consumers willingness to pay for nuclear and renewable electricity as two alternatives to fossil fuels for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions we conduct a choice experiment of consumer stated preferences on the basis of an online survey in four us states and japan after the fukushima nuclear plant accident first the results suggest that us consumers willingness to pay for a 1 decrease in greenhouse gas emissions is 0 31 per month which is similar to the results for the us a decade ago japanese consumers show a slightly lower willingness to pay of 0 26 per month second the average consumer in both countries expresses a negative preference for increases in nuclear power in the fuel mix to a greater extent in japan third renewable energy sources were endorsed by both us and japanese consumers who show a willingness to pay 0 71 and 0 31 per month for a 1 increase in the use of renewable source energy this study also examines the differences in respondents characteristics approximately 60 of the us respondents who did not change their perception concerning the use of nuclear energy subsequent to the fukushima nuclear crisis have almost no preference for variation in nuclear power which is in stark contrast to the japanese respondents opposition to nuclear energy

nuclear power climate change and energy security exploring british public attitudes public attitudes towards nuclear power in the uk have historically been deeply divided but as concern about climate change and energy security has exerted an increasing influence on british energy policy nuclear power has been reframed as a low carbon technology previous research has suggested that a significant proportion of people may reluctantly accept nuclear power as a means of addressing the greater threat of climate change drawing on the results of a national british survey n 1822 the current study found that attitudes towards nuclear remain divided with only a minority expressing unconditional acceptance in general people who expressed greater concern about climate change and energy security and possessed higher environmental values were less likely to favour nuclear power however when nuclear power was given an explicit reluctant acceptance framing allowing people to express their dislike for nuclear power alongside their conditional support concerns about climate change and energy security became positive predictors of support for nuclear power these findings suggest that concern about climate change and energy security will only increase acceptance of nuclear power under limited circumstances specifically once other preferred options have been exhausted

more than mean effects modeling the effect of climate on the higher order moments of crop yields this article proposes the use of moment functions and maximum entropy techniques as a flexible approach for estimating conditional crop yield distributions we present a moment based model that extends previous approaches and is easily estimated using standard econometric estimators predicted moments under alternative regimes are used as constraints in a maximum entropy framework to analyze the distributional impacts of switching regimes an empirical application for arkansas mississippi and texas upland cotton demonstrates how climate and irrigation affect the shape of the yield distribution and allows us to illustrate several advantages of our moment based maximum entropy approach

nonparametric estimation of crop yield distributions implications for rating group risk crop insurance contracts we use nonparametric density estimation procedures to evaluate county level crop yield distributions implications for rating area yield crop insurance contracts are discussed the procedures developed are used to measure yield risk and calculate insurance premium rates for wheat and barley in the 1995 96 group risk program

the cost of fuel economy in the indian passenger vehicle market to investigate how fuel economy is valued in the indian car market we compute the cost to indian consumers of purchasing a more fuel efficient vehicle and compare it to the benefit of lower fuel costs over the life of the vehicle we estimate hedonic price functions for four market segments petrol hatchbacks diesel hatchbacks petrol sedans and diesel sedans to compute 95 confidence intervals for the marginal cost to the consumer for an increase in fuel economy we find that the associated present value of fuel savings falls within the 95 confidence interval for most specifications in all market segments for the years 2002 through 2006 thus we fail to consistently reject the hypothesis that consumers appropriately value fuel economy

climate and agricultural risk measuring the effect of enso on u s crop insurance predictive models of climatic phenomena can aid in insurance program design and decision making extreme weather outcomes have been linked to the el nino southern oscillation enso which globally impacts agricultural production this study demonstrates that extreme enso events alter cotton yield distributions in the southeastern united states these impacts translate into economically meaningful effects on crop insurance premium rates commercial insurers can use publicly available information to determine if government set premium rates are mispriced and in turn extract economic rents via the federally mandated standard reinsurance agreement by ceding underpriced policies in el nino and la nina years we find that private insurance companies can reduce paid indemnities by 10 15 on average

u s soybean yields estimation and forecasting with nonsymmetric disturbances national average soybean yields are skewed with a relatively high chance of low yields maximum likelihood estimates support this hypothesis revised forecasts which account for skewed yields are positioned higher than forecasts based on the illusion of a symmetric distribution also yield instability has been increasing steadily the standard deviation of the soybean yield distribution is twenty five percent higher in the late 1980s than it was in the early 1970s

energy consumption by gender in some european countries household total energy use has been estimated in numerous studies in recent decades and differences have mainly been explained by levels of income expenditure studies of gender consumption patterns show that men eat more meat than women and drive longer distances potentially leading to higher total energy use by men in this study we calculated the total energy use for male and female consumption patterns in four european countries germany norway greece and sweden by studying single households significant differences in total energy use were found in two countries greece and sweden the largest differences found between men and women were for travel and eating out alcohol and tobacco where men used much more energy than women we suggest that these findings are policy relevant for the eu which aims to mainstream gender issues into all activities and to lower its total energy use

public attitudes towards renewable energy technologies in norway the role of party preferences abstract transition to a sustainable society requires large scale conversion of the energy system to new renewable non fossil sources of energy this presupposes public support for new technologies which means the public must deal with challenges in terms of placement area requirements ecological degradation and price developments this paper discusses how citizens view renewable energy technologies it analyses responses to representative surveys of the norwegian population on the desirability of various energy technologies such as hydroelectric dams onshore and offshore wind energy bioenergy plants and for contrast gas plants with and without carbon capture and storage our main focus is on the influence of party political preference on views of renewable energy we find that the sometimes lukewarm enthusiasm for renewable energy technologies cannot be fully explained by existing theories and that political party preference has a larger impact on energy technology attitudes than previously believed

real time forecasting regional tourism with business sentiment surveys abstract this study provides evidence that supply side soft information retrieved from business surveys is effective in real time forecasting of hotel arrivals at the regional level we assess the effect of including business sentiment indicators in commonly used naive specifications and structural time series models using residuals and predictive diagnostics we find that both the goodness of fit and the forecasting accuracy of the augmented models are superior to those of the baseline models whence the opportunity to extend to the tourism sector the surveys on the business sentiment currently realized by the provincial chambers of commerce for the manufacturing sector allowing an effective and timely managing of local tourism market where official information is likely to be either lacking or poor in quality

what do we learn from the weather the new climate economy literature a rapidly growing body of research applies panel methods to examine how temperature precipitation and windstorms influence economic outcomes these studies focus on changes in weather realizations over time within a given spatial area and demonstrate impacts on agricultural output industrial output labor productivity energy demand health conflict and economic growth among other outcomes by harnessing exogenous variation over time within a given spatial unit these studies help credibly identify i the breadth of channels linking weather and the economy ii heterogeneous treatment effects across different types of locations and iii nonlinear effects of weather variables this paper reviews the new literature with two purposes first we summarize recent work providing a guide to its methodologies datasets and findings second we consider applications of the new literature including insights for the damage function within models that seek to assess the potential economic effects of future climate change jel c51 d72 o13 q51 q54

warming temperatures will likely induce higher premium rates and government outlays for the u s crop insurance program likely climate change impacts include damages to agricultural production resulting from increased exposure to extreme heat considerable uncertainty remains regarding impacts on crop insurance programs we utilize a panel of u s corn yield data to predict the effect of warming temperatures on the mean and variance of yields as well as crop insurance premium rates and producer subsidies while we focus on corn we demonstrate that the subsidy impacts are likely to carry over to other major program crops we find that warming decreases mean yields and increases yield risk on average which results in higher premium rates under a 1 c warming scenario we find that premium rates at the 90 coverage level will increase by 39 on average however there is considerable statistical uncertainty around this average as the 95 confidence interval spans from 22 to 61 we also find evidence of extensive cross sectional differences as the county level rate impacts range from a 10 reduction to a 63 increase results indicate that exposure to extreme heat and changes in the coefficient of variation are large drivers of the impacts under the 1 c warming scenario we find that annual subsidy payments for the crop insurance program could increase by as much as 1 5 billion representing a 22 increase relative to current levels this estimate increases to 3 7 billion 57 under a 2 c warming scenario our results correspond to a very specific counterfactual the marginal effect of warming temperatures under current technology production and crop insurance enrollments these impacts are shown to be smaller than the forecasted impacts under a commonly used end of century general circulation model for even the most optimistic co emissions projection

the role of income in energy consumption behaviour evidence from french households data the main purpose of this paper is to characterise quantitatively the impact of income on household energy consumption in the residential and transport sectors starting from the data collected in a paper survey we analyse the extent of the constraint experienced by households in terms of equipment purchasing behaviour and daily energy consumption this analysis shows that the least well off households are particularly constrained since the share of their budget represented by these energy services is very large 15 25 and this corresponds to a level of energy service well below that of the better off households the case of space heating shows a factor of 2 in terms of level of comfort achieved between the extreme 10 percentiles these households also face a strong capital constraint for equipment purchases this leads either to a large increase in the required rate of return or to a reduction in the proportion of households that are prepared to replace their equipment earlier the least well off households are thus doubly constrained since it is more difficult for them to invest in our opinion it is crucial to take into account this observation in the context of political measures aimed at reducing households co2 emissions

economic analysis of flat plate solar collectors fpscs a solution to the unemployment problem in the city of eskisehir abstract this study performs a regional economic analysis of solar energy systems in eskisehir turkey that focuses on production and utilization of fpscs the data is obtained from a locally conducted survey and used for practical estimations both the survey findings and the theoretical predictions give close results and they sustain each other under the condition of free market considering profit maximization to produce 30 fpscs per day in optimum conditions 30 workers would be employed per shift if a company can meet the market demand 450 000 000 turkish liras tl 1 2 85tl with current prices of revenue will be earned from the production of 300 000 fpscs in 30 years are displayed on the other hand this renewable energy system has some costs however once it has been set up the system will produce many ecological advantages that more than offset its costs these effects benefit both the local region in which the system is established and the environment on a global scale in addition the process of collecting and utilizing solar energy can be used together with recycling systems to generate advantages for a local economy and can also benefit the global economy by solving unemployment problems by creating employment opportunities

factors influencing renewable electricity consumption in china abstract renewable energy is an important factor in achieving a low carbon economic development path in china this paper investigates the factors influencing renewable electricity consumption in china specifically the factors that influence the share of renewable electricity in total electricity consumption in china is investigated using data from 1980 to 2011 and employing the johansen cointegration technique and vector error correction model the result of the analysis shows that there is a long run relationship between renewable electricity consumption and gdp per capita trade openness foreign direct investment financial development and share of fossil fuel in energy consumption economic development and financial development promotes renewable electricity consumption while foreign direct investment trade openness and the lobby of conventional energy sources undermine the share of renewables in total electricity consumption in china while the effects of shocks to the other variables appear to die out over time the lobby effect is persistent and explosive the results also show that there is a uni directional short run causality from financial development to renewable electricity consumption and from renewable electricity consumption to trade openness the chinese government should pursue policies that not only increase the amount of renewable electricity but also increase the share of renewables in total electricity consumption

differing cultures of energy security an international comparison of public perceptions this study reviews how energy users perceive the importance of energy security dimensions it asks how does the sense of energy security vary with culture its primary source of data is a summary of survey distributed in eight languages to almost 2500 respondents in brazil china denmark germany india kazakhstan japan papua new guinea saudi arabia singapore and the united states it utilizes an energy literacy test in denmark as a secondary data tool the survey results are used to test nine hypotheses about national economic political professional and epistemic cultures the study concludes by affirming the complexity of energy security as a cultural topic by emphasizing how answers among respondents tended to converge more than diverge and by calling for further research

is there a viable market for area based crop insurance the performance of area yield insurance and farm level multiple peril crop insurance is analyzed for cotton and soybean production in georgia and south carolina the analysis improves on many previous studies by utilizing actual farm level yield data and by comparing the two types of insurance products not only for actuarially fair premium rates but also for actual unsubsidized and subsidized premium rates results suggest that even in heterogeneous production regions area yield insurance may be a viable alternative to farm level insurance when premium rates for farm level insurance contain large positive wedges

what do consumers believe about future gasoline prices a full understanding of how gasoline prices affect consumer behavior frequently requires information on how consumers forecast future gasoline prices we provide the first evidence on the nature of these forecasts by analyzing two decades of data on gasoline price expectations from the michigan survey of consumers we find that average consumer beliefs are typically indistinguishable from a no change forecast justifying an assumption commonly made in the literature on consumer valuation of energy efficiency we also provide evidence on circumstances in which consumer forecasts are likely to deviate from no change and on significant cross consumer forecast heterogeneity

green jobs economic impacts of renewable energy in germany abstract the labor market implications of large investment into renewable energy re are analyzed in this text although a growing re industry can be observed in germany the overall effect of large increases of re based electricity and heat generating technologies on the german economy require a careful model based analysis the applied model panta rhei has been used among others to evaluate the german energy concept in 2010 it takes positive and negative impacts of re into account the paper shows the overall effects under different assumptions for fossil fuel prices domestic installations and international trade the results are sensitive to assumptions on the development of re world markets and german exports to these markets almost all of these scenarios exhibit positive net employment effects under medium assumptions net employment of re expansion will reach around 150 thousand in 2030 only with assumptions for german re exports below today s level net impacts are slightly negative gross employment will increase from 340 thousand in 2009 to between 500 and 600 thousand in 2030

energy consumption cultural background and payment structure in order to reduce the ecological footprint of households and mitigate anthropogenic climate change policy makers need to understand which incentives drive household energy consumption economists tend to rely solely on financial instruments but these might have unintended consequences on energy consumption through non economic channels according to what we call the hackett lutzenhiser hypothesis the relation between households cultural background and their energy consumption differs under different payment structures the electricity consumption of households in the netherlands is categorized according to two different payment structures unit metered where households pay for their private electricity consumption and master metered where electricity costs are lump sum included in the rent our findings show that the range of variation in electricity consumption across cultural backgrounds is lower among unit metered than among master metered households in line with the hackett lutzenhiser hypothesis the policy implication is that consumers preferences cannot be simply taken as given as is customary in standard economic models but interact with the structure of financial incentives taxes and subsidies or fixed and flexible rates in energy bills not only change relative prices but may also interact with people s preferences

rate making for farm level crop insurance implications for adverse selection this research identifies two problems in the new federal crop insurance that may cause adverse selection a the relationship between rate making and expected yields for individual farmers and b the bias introduced in coverage protection when trends are not used to establish expected yields a theoretical investigation using the normality assumption demonstrates the potential severity of these problems and empirical results from farm level data lend further support as crop insurance changes to individualized methods of protection these issues will be particularly important for developing rates

implications for the energy policy derived from the relation between the cultural dimensions of hofstede s model and the consumption of renewable energies abstract this paper aims to determine the relation between national culture and the consumption of renewable energies in several european countries according to the renewable energy directive of the european commission there have been set common goals for the share of consumption of renewable energies in the european union but each country is responsible for the action plan to achieve these targets these targets have been set based on the initial values of the renewable energies and on the natural resources of each country cultural aspects and energy consumption patterns have not been taken in consideration for the analysis of the willingness and motivation of consumers to switch towards renewable energies in this paper a panel data analysis has been carried out in order to measure the relation between hofstede s cultural dimensions and the share of renewable energies in final consumption the results show a highly significant relation between the masculinity index and the share of renewable energies and an acceptable relation for the long term orientation index the energy policy of the european union and of its countries should consider the cultural characteristics in the development of the national action plans for the implementation of renewable energies

renewable energy and employment in germany abstract the positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependency of energy imports are indisputable however one persistent problem for the german economy has been its high level of unemployment in the recent past therefore any policy strategy will be measured also by its net impact on the labor market the paper describes the results of a study that models this impact and is novel within three respects firstly an input output vector for the renewable energy sector was developed based on the results of more than 1000 interviews with an extensive questionnaire secondly gross and net effect of two different policy scenarios for germany until 2030 were calculated and thirdly the approach varies from earlier studies by its explicit modeling of export and foreign trade effects

forecasting gasoline prices using consumer surveys this paper analyzes the predictive power of a new data set of consumer gasoline price forecasts taken from the michigan survey of consumers msc msc data generally perform as well as a no change forecast in predicting future gasoline prices and they substantially out perform the no change forecast during the recent economic crisis during which time they track futures market prices finally the cross respondent dispersion of the msc forecasts increases substantially during the economic crisis paralleling the large increase in price volatility at this time

fuel consumption and gasoline prices the role of assortative matching between households and automobiles abstract analyses of policies to reduce gasoline consumption have focused on two effects a compositional effect on the fuel economy of the automotive fleet and a utilization effect on how much people drive however the literature has missed a third effect a matching effect in which policies change how high utilization households are matched to fuel efficient vehicles in equilibrium we show that higher gas prices should lead to stronger assortative matching empirical estimates using us micro level data are consistent with this hypothesis we find a 0 50 increase in the gas tax would reduce us gas consumption by 0 8 through the matching effect alone bringing annual environmental benefits of about 1 7 billion

a review on implementation strategies for demand side management dsm in kuwait through incentive based demand response programs abstract since the export of fossil fuel is the backbone of kuwait s economy the enormous upsurge in the internal fuel consumption creates anguish and bane at present 46 of the internal fossil fuel consumption is used for electricity generation the increase in fuel consumption hurled kuwait as one of the highest per capita electricity consuming as well as co 2 emitting countries in the world consumers pay only 6 of the production cost of electricity the government subsidizes the balance which is one of the major reasons behind the high electricity consumption in the country any reduction in electricity consumption can positively reflect on both per capita electricity consumption and co 2 emission additionally the saved fossil fuel can be exported to generate revenue to support the country s economy worldwide demand side management dsm is considered as an effective tool to curtail electricity demand the objective of this review paper is to explore the available literature to find out the most suitable dsm measures to control the growth of per capita electricity consumption in kuwait after conducting a detailed strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats swot analysis it is concluded that incentive based demand response programs can be considered as one of the most suitable solutions to address this problem

on technological change in crop yields technological changes in agriculture tend to alter the mass associated with segments or components of the yield distribution as opposed to simply shifting the entire distribution upwards we propose modeling crop yields using mixtures with embedded trend functions to account for potentially different rates of technological change in different components of the yield distribution by doing so we can test some interesting and previously untested hypotheses about the data generating process of yields for example 1 is the rate of technological change equivalent across components and 2 are the probabilities of components constant over time our results technological change is not equivalent across components and probabilities tend not to have changed significantly over time have implications for modeling yields we find estimated conditional yield densities are quite different when unique trend functions are embedded inside the mixture components versus estimating the same mixture with detrended data also we prove different rates of technological change in different components lead to nonconstant variance with respect to time i e heteroscedasticity we present two applications of the proposed yield model the first application considers climate determinants of component membership where our results are consistent with the literature for climate determinants of yields the second application compares the proposed yield model to usda s current rating methodology for area yield crop insurance contracts and finds the proposed model may lead to more accurate rates

ranking crop yield models using out of sample likelihood functions there has been considerable debate regarding which probability distribution best represents crop yields this study ranks six yield densities based on their out of sample forecasting performance the forecasting ability for each density was ranked according to its likelihood function value when observed at out of sample observations results show that a semiparametric model offered by goodwin and ker best forecasts county average yields

toward a theory of agricultural insurance in this paper we develop a theory of crop insurance we start by reaffirming the risk spreading role of competitive crop insurance markets it is argued however that once the problems of imperfect information are recognized a competitive crop insurance market may not exist at all two candidates present themselves first is market insurance with the public sector as a source of costly information gathering and dissemination and second is the direct provision of crop insurance by the public sector we focus on the latter and develop a model of public insurance as a decentralized plan where the farmer determines factor utilization taking the insurance contract as given in turn the insurance agency taking factor utilization as determined by the farmer chooses the optimal contract so as to maximize the value of aggregate output in the economy

an analysis of the impact of climate change on crop yields and yield variability this paper develops an econometric model of stochastic production functions to quantify the impacts of climatic variables on the mean variance and covariance of crop yields the estimates of the production function parameters and their elasticities are utilized to analyse the impacts of the projected climate change on agriculture the results show that the climate change will have modest effects on the mean crop yields but will significantly reduce the variance and covariance for most of the crops considered the results have implications for allocations of agricultural land among crops and for crop production mix

estimation of mixture models using cross validation optimization implications for crop yield distribution modeling a critical issue in identifying an appropriate characterization of crop yield distributions is that the best fitting distribution in an in sample framework is not necessarily the best choice out of sample this study provides a methodology for estimating flexible and efficient mixture models using cross validation that alleviates many of these associated model selection issues the method is illustrated in an application to the rating of group risk insurance products results indicate that nonparametric models often fit best in sample but are inefficient and consistently overstate true rates and vice versa for parametric models the proposed model provides unbiased rates and also has desirable efficiency properties

spatial pattern of yield distributions implications for crop insurance crop insurance is similar to flood and hurricane insurance in that spatially correlated weather tends to cause violations of the independence assumption ideally one would seek to pool uncorrelated risk drawn from the same distribution in crop insurance this article proposes a testing procedure for the cross sectional pooling of group units and empirically analyzes whether the proposed test improves out of sample rating performance we utilize a balanced panel of u s county level corn yields for 510 counties and the results of an out of sample crop insurance rating performance exercise provide economic significance to the proposed pooling methodology and results

conceptualizing energy security abstract energy security 1 is one of the main targets of energy policy however the term has not been clearly defined which makes it hard to measure and difficult to balance against other policy objectives we review the multitude of definitions of energy security they can be characterized according to the sources of risk the scope of the impacts and the severity filters in the form of the speed size sustention spread singularity and sureness of impacts using a stylized case study for three european countries we illustrate how the selection of conceptual boundaries along these dimensions determines the outcome this can be avoided by more clearly separating between security of supply and other policy objectives this leads us to the definition of energy security as the continuity of energy supplies relative to demand

willingness to pay for green electricity in korea a contingent valuation study abstract green electricity is energy that is generated from renewable energy sources such as solar power wind power small scale hydroelectric power tidal power and biomass power these sources mostly do not produce pollutants and are considered environmentally friendly however considering the current state of technology they are more costly government should take visible actions to compensate for the increased production costs this paper attempts to apply a contingent valuation cv method to obtain at least a preliminary evaluation of the benefits that ensue from the introduction of the policy that raises the percentage of green electricity consumption from 0 2 of the total electricity supply to 7 by 2011 overall the cv survey was successful in eliciting the willingness to pay wtp for green electricity considering that the cv method operated within respondents abilities to answer and the wtp estimates were statistically significant the monthly mean wtp estimates from parametric and non parametric methods were krw 1681 usd 1 8 and krw 2072 usd 2 2 respectively the estimates of the annual benefits to relevant residents amounted to krw 150 5 billion usd 157 5 million and krw 185 6 billion usd 194 2 million respectively

bayesian estimation of possibly similar yield densities implications for rating crop insurance contracts the agricultural act of 2014 solidified insurance as the cornerstone of u s agricultural policy the congressional budget office 2014 estimates that this act will increase spending on agricultural insurance programs by 5 7 billion to a total of 89 8 billion over the next decade in light of the sizable resources directed toward these programs accurate rating of insurance contracts is of the utmost importance to producers private insurance companies and the federal government unlike most forms of insurance agricultural insurance is plagued by a paucity of spatially correlated data a novel interpretation of bayesian model averaging is used to estimate a set of possibly similar densities that offers greater efficiency if the set of densities are similar while seemingly not losing any if the set of densities are dissimilar simulations indicate that finite sample performance in particular small sample performance is quite promising the proposed approach does not require knowledge of the form or extent of any possible similarities is relatively easy to implement admits correlated data and can be used with either parametric or nonparametric estimators we use the proposed approach to estimate u s crop insurance premium rates for area type programs and develop a test to evaluate its efficacy an out of sample game between private insurance companies and the federal government highlights the policy implications for a variety of crop state combinations consistent with the simulation results the performance of the proposed approach with respect to rating area type insurance in particular small sample performance remains quite promising

a survey of energy policy priorities in the united states energy supply security economics and the environment security environment and economic concerns are commonly identified as three major objectives of energy policy state and federal governments have set aggressive targets for carbon emissions reductions and for alternative fuel use and increased vehicle efficiency to reduce petroleum consumption moreover jobs creation and gdp growth are often cited as key drivers for energy policies previous studies on energy policy decision making have examined the process for developing and evaluating options using multi criteria decision analysis tools in addition energy opinion polls have either elicited preferences between two goals or whether the public supports a specific policy action in this article we report results from a survey of 884 members of professional membership organizations on how the u s should prioritize energy policy across the goals of energy supply security environment and climate and economics and job creation the majority favor policymaking that is balanced across all three security and economic concerns increase with age for male respondents whereas environment is the highest priority for females regardless of age unlike previous surveys that target the general public and focus on a particular objective or technology these results provide an example of eliciting a portfolio allocation across multiple energy policy goals from targeted constituents

predicting gasoline prices using michigan survey data abstract this study investigates the predictive power of michigan surveys of consumers msc data for gasoline prices specifically we utilize the msc data on both expected inflation and consumer sentiment to construct a vector autoregressive var model for forecasting gasoline prices for 2003 2014 our findings indicate that the var forecasts are superior to the comparable benchmark forecasts obtained from a univariate integrated moving average ma model in terms of both predictive information content and directional accuracy as such we conclude that the msc data on both expected inflation and consumer sentiment have significant predictive information for gasoline prices further inspection reveals that the var forecasts are particularly accurate for the period since 2008 reinforcing the notion that consumers are economically rational

the precarious consensus on the importance of energy security contrasting views between swiss energy users and experts abstract consented visions of a secure energy system are a driving force for energy policies and projects but while there used to exist a fairly uniform understanding of energy security in recent years competing visions have emerged examples include autarchic regional energy systems and highly integrated international ones each of these follows its own energy security logic this paper explores linkages between individuals understanding of energy security and their preferences for different energy visions comparing energy users and experts it draws from two consecutive studies in switzerland the first is a series of 12 qualitative interviews among energy system experts who reveal a strong preference for an integrated energy system that is based on high quality infrastructure this stands in contrast to the countries predominant paradigm of independence which is not only present in the public discourse but also in national energy policies the second study is an online survey that finds differences between energy users n 194 and experts n 98 understanding of energy security experts tend to see energy security primarily as the absence of supply disruptions whereas energy users tend to take a long term perspective and to include additional aspects in their considerations such as environmental concerns thus the societal consensus on the importance of energy security is a precarious one conflicts about the meaning of energy security can strip the concept of its power to be a building block of societal energy visions decision makers in policy and the energy sector therefore need to be aware that a shared understanding of energy security cannot be taken for granted they should also recognize energy security as a strong argument for promoting renewables however it will not suffice to refer to a specific renewable project as beneficial for energy security conveying its benefits from an energy security perspective requires knowledge of key actors understandings of this complex concept

relaxing heteroscedasticity assumptions in area yield crop insurance rating this article focuses on the effect of differing heteroscedasticity assumptions on derived premium rates of area yield crop insurance tests of the proportional and absolute heteroscedasticity assumptions are conducted using both in sample and out of sample measures our results suggest that arbitrarily imposing a specific form of heteroscedasticity or homoscedasticity in insurance rate calculations limits actuarial soundness our results have practical implications for the federal crop insurance programs as we reject the traditional rating assumptions for many cotton regions and lower yielding higher risk corn and soybean counties but not in the heart of the cornbelt copyright 2011 oxford university press

off farm work technical efficiency and rice production risk in taiwan this article investigates the differences in yield production production efficiency and yield risk for farmers both with and without off farm work using a nationwide survey of rice farmers in taiwan we estimate two stochastic production frontier models that accommodate technical inefficiency and production risk simultaneously for farmers both with and without off farm work the stochastic dominance criterion is then applied to compare the differences in the distributions of the estimated technical efficiency and yield risk between groups the empirical results indicate that these two groups of farmers use resources in different ways and off farm work is not necessarily associated with lower technical efficiency for farmers in the lower percentiles of the efficiency distribution those with off farm work are more efficient than their counterparts without off farm work in addition farmers with off farm work face higher production risk and this result is robust for the entire distribution