the renewables portfolio standard in texas an early assessment texas has rapidly emerged as one of the leading wind power markets in the united states this development can be largely traced to a well designed and carefully implemented renewables portfolio standard rps the rps is a new policy mechanism that has received increasing attention as an attractive approach to support renewable power generation though replacing existing renewable energy policies with an as of yet untested approach in the rps is risky early experience from texas suggests that an rps can effectively spur renewables development and encourage competition among renewable energy producers initial rps targets in texas were well exceeded by the end of 2001 with 915 mw of wind installed in that year alone rps compliance costs appear negligible with new wind projects reportedly contracted for well under 3 us cent k wh in part as a result of a 1 7 us cent kwh production tax credit an outstanding wind resource and an rps that is sizable enough to drive project economies of scale obliged retail suppliers have been willing to enter into long term contracts with renewable generators reducing important risks for both the developer and the retail supplier finally the country s first comprehensive renewable energy certificate program has been put into place to monitor and track rps compliance c 2002 published by elsevier science ltd less

decentralized organizational learning an experimental investigation we experimentally study decentralized organizational learning our objective is to understand how learning members of an organization cope with the con founding effects of the simultaneous learning of others we test the predictions of a stylized rational agent model of organizational learning that provides sharp predictions as to how learning members of an organization might cope with the simultaneous learning of others as a function of fundamental variables e g firm size and the discount factor while the problem of learning while others are learning is quite difficult we find support for the comparative static predictions of the models unique symmetric equilibrium jel c72 d23 d83 if one s own actions are embedded in an ecology of the actions of many others who are simultaneously learning and changing it is not easy to understand what is going on the relationship between the actions of individuals in the organization and overall organiza tional performance is confounded by simultaneous learning of other actors

an experiment on the value of structural information in a 2 2 repeated game abstract in a repeated 2 2 cooperation game providing subjects with little information impedes cooperation providing subjects with little more information prior to playing the game leads to almost sure cooperation this result stands in contrast to predictions from adaptive as well as almost optimal learning rules

a two person game of information transmission we consider a statistical decision problem faced by a two player organization whose members may not agree on outcome evaluations and prior probabilities one player is specialized in gathering information and transmitting it to the other who takes the decision this process is modeled as a game qualitative properties of the equilibria are analyzed the impact of improving the quality of available information on the equilibrium welfares of the two individuals is studied better information generally may not improve welfare we give conditions under which it will

evolutionary stability in games of communication abstract this paper identifies evolutionarily stable outcomes in games in which one player has private information and the other takes a payoff relevant action the informed player can communicate at little cost outcomes satisfying a set valued evolutionary stability condition must exist and be efficient in common interest games when there is a small cost associated with using each message the outcome preferred by the informed player is stable the paper introduces a nonequilibrium set valued stability notion of entry resistant sets for games with partial common interest the no communication outcome is never an element of an entry resistant set journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d82

fiscal paradise foreign tax havens and american business the tax haven affiliates of american corporations account for more than 20 percent of u s foreign direct investment and nearly a third of the foreign profits of u s firms american companies report extraordinarily high profit rates on their tax haven investments in 1982 this behavior implies that the revenue maximizing tax rate for a typical haven is around 5 8 percent american and foreign investment in tax havens has an uncertain effect on u s tax revenue but since low tax rates encourage american companies to shift profits out of high tax foreign countries it is possible that low foreign tax rates ultimately enhance u s tax collections

do renewable electricity policies promote renewable electricity generation evidence from panel data using the poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimation technique this paper evaluates the effects of renewable electricity policies on renewable electricity generation using a large panel dataset that covers 122 countries over the period of 1980 2010 the results suggest that renewable electricity policies play a crucial role in promoting renewable electricity generation but their effectiveness is subject to diminishing returns as the number of policies increases there is also evidence that the effects of renewable electricity policies are more pronounced before 1996 as well as in developed and emerging market countries and the negative policy interaction effect fades with the stage of economic development lastly policy effectiveness varies by the type of renewable electricity policy and energy source only investment incentives and feed in tariffs are found to be effective in promoting the development of all types of renewable energy sources for electricity considered in this paper

meaning and credibility in cheap talk games i define neologism proofness a refinement of perfect bayesian equilibrium in cheap talk games it applies when players have a preexisting common language so that an unexpected message s literal meaning is clear and only credibility restricts communication i show that certain implausible equilibria are not neologism proof in some games no equilibrium is journal of economic literature classification numbers d83 d82 c73

signal jamming models of fraudulent misreporting and economic prospects an experimental investigation abstract this study uses experimental methodology to examine how the frequency and magnitude with which managers commit fraud varies with economic prospects boom middle and bust the experimental design is based on signal jamming equilibrium sje models of fraud in which managers make potentially inaccurate public reports and investors bid on shares under sje managers always exaggerate reports by a fixed amount up to the maximum possible report independent of the truth shareholders can perfectly correct managers reports except for the maximum possible report in contrast the results of the experiment show four robust deviations from sje predictions 1 managers exaggerate and shareholders correct reports according to dominated mixed strategies with probabilities significantly less than one 2 managers exaggerate more frequently and by more when outcomes are poor 3 shareholders adjust low reports by less than high reports and 4 shareholders correct relatively high reports by more in booms than busts even though managers reporting strategies are invariant to economic prospects

back to the future rethinking auctions for renewable electricity support abstract the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of two main types of instruments feed in tariffs and quotas with tradable green certificates have usually been compared in the literature on renewable electricity promotion due to negative past experiences with a third instrument auctions this instrument has been broadly dismissed in academics and until recently also in policy practice however and based on an in depth review of experiences with auction schemes for renewable electricity around the world this paper argues that some of the problems with auctions in the past can be mitigated with the appropriate design elements and that indeed auctions can play an important role in the future implementation of renewable electricity support instruments around the world the paper provides a proposal for the coherent integration of several design elements

the effect of feed in tariffs on renewable electricity generation an instrumental variables approach while carbon taxes and other market based instruments are widely regarded as optimal for climate mitigation political constraints have prevented governments from using them instead narrower instruments including the feed in tariff fit for renewable electricity generation have become popular however their causal effect on renewable electricity generation remains subject to uncertainty we use instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of fits on renewable electricity generation in 26 industrialized countries 1979 2005 we find that increasing the fit by one u s cent 2000 constant prices per kilowatt hour increases the percentage change in renewable electricity s share of the total by 0 11 points all else constant if a country implemented for a decade the sample mean fit of three u s cents the national share of renewable electricity would increase by 3 3 points which is more than the sample mean in addition to demonstrating that the fit is an effective way to increase renewable electricity generation our approach lays the foundation for future studies of the causal effects of renewable energy policies

combinations of support instruments for renewable electricity in europe a review abstract the aim of this paper is to review the combinations of res e support instruments in the european union eu using different sources of data it is shown that combinations are indeed a widespread phenomenon in the eu member states not much attention has been paid to the combinations of primary instruments with other secondary instruments for the same renewable energy technology it is found that the most frequent mixes of instruments are between feed in laws feed in tariffs and increasingly feed in premiums on the one hand and investment subsidies soft loans and tax incentives on the other in a broad sense the policy mix between primary and secondary instruments has experienced some changes over the last decade mostly related to changes in the primary instruments themselves exclusion i e ineligibility to apply for an instrument when the res e generator is already being financially supported by another instrument and explicit coordination of support under primary and secondary instruments do not seem to be common elements in these policy combinations

an experiment to evaluate bayesian learning of nash equilibrium play abstract we report on an experiment designed to evaluate the empirical implications of jordan s model of bayesian learning in games of incomplete information a finite example is constructed in which the model generates unique predictions of subjects choices in nearly all periods when the true game defined by players private information was one with a unique equilibrium in pure strategies the experimental subjects play converged to the equilibrium as jordan s theory predicts even when the subjects had not attained complete information about one another but when there were two pure strategy equilibria the theory s predictions were not consistent with observed behavior journal of economic literature classification numbers d83 c72 c92

fdi transfer pricing and the measurement of r d intensity abstract an important determinant of a region s attractiveness to foreign investors is its rate of corporation tax besides stimulating real economic activity low corporation tax rates also induce multinational corporations to shift profits into the jurisdiction frequently through the manipulation of transfer prices this practice can lead to a substantial distortion of output figures since national or sectoral r d intensities are usually measured relative to output transfer pricing also therefore distorts these measurements the present paper proposes a simple alternative measure of r d intensity implementation on irish data shows that the two approaches yield substantially different results

renewable generation and electricity prices taking stock and new evidence for germany and austria abstract economic theory predicts that the increase of renewable electricity production should reduce the price of electricity in the short run which is also known as the merit order effect although the merit order effect is only one of several consequences of renewable production on the electricity system it is crucial to determine its size for the economic evaluation of renewable energies in this paper we present a comprehensive overview of relevant past research results on the price effect of renewables additionally we conduct a new empirical analysis of the price effect of renewable production for the austrian german region a market that clearly qualifies for a merit order effect analysis given its characteristics based on the review and our own analysis we show that the merit order effect varies depending on the region and the assessment method chosen we also find that the size of this effect is less dispersed throughout different markets than previously suggested by the literature

analysing the impact of renewable energy regulation on retail electricity prices abstract retail electricity prices have substantially increased in the last decade in the european union eu as a result of different regulations raising the concern of policy makers the growth in the support costs for electricity from renewable energy sources res e has often been singled out as a main driver of the increase in these prices the aim of this paper is to analyse the degree of influence of res e promotion costs on the evolution of the retail price of electricity in the eu member states the analysis is carried out for households as well as for industry with the help of a panel data econometric model our results show that the impact of renewable energy promotion costs on retail electricity prices is positive and statistically significant although relatively small differences across consumer types can be observed an increase of 1 in those costs induces an average increase of only 0 023 in industrial retail prices and 0 008 in the residential retail prices this impact on retail prices is mediated by the type of support scheme which is adopted with price based support instruments showing a greater effect than quantity based ones

winners and losers from the privatization and regulation of utilities lessons from a general equilibrium model of argentina a computable general equilibrium cqe model is used to estimate the macroeconomic and distributional effects of the privatization and regulation of utilities in argentina begun in 1989 based on data available after the privatization that indicate different kinds of efficiency gains in electricity gas water and telecommunications both the privatization and effective regulation are estimated to yield significant macroeconomic benefits gains from the privatization accrue mainly to high income classes while gains from the effective regulation of newly privatized utilities accrue mainly to low income classes computable general equilibrium cge estimates of overall employment effects suggest that privatization was not a major contributor to the dramatic rise in unemployment in argentina between 1993 and 1995 this rise was more likely due to the tequila effect of an interest rate shock

dynamic incentives of environmental regulations the effects of alternative policy instruments on technology diffusion abstract we develop a framework for comparing empirically the effects of alternative environmental policy instruments on the diffusion of new technology market based and command and control approaches can he quantitatively compared by estimating the economic penalty that firms through their actions reveal to be associated with violation of standards in the context of concerns about global climate change we empirically examine the likely effects of pigouvian taxes technology adoption subsidies and technology standards we employ state level data on the diffusion of thermal insulation in new home construction comparing the effects of energy prices insulation cost and building codes

the renewable portfolio standard design considerations and an implementation survey renewables have social and environmental bene ts compared to conventional electricity sources but are rarely competitive on a strict nancial cost basis this is because conventional sources are sometimes subsidized their full pollution costs are ignored and renewables involve newer higher cost technologies whose relative costs will fall with commercialization governments use several mechanisms to support renewables including direct nancial support grants loans indirect support r d demonstrations reform of nancial costs of conventional sources subsidy removal pollution taxes and the renewable portfolio standard rps the rps requires a minimum share of electricity from renewable energy sources its use is spreading because it maintains an incentive for renewable producers to reduce costs links the regulated market outcome to an environmental target and reduces government involvement although it is too early to evaluate fully its e ectiveness the survey for this study explored implementation issues in three european countries nine us states and australia and found the following the rps target is usually set to have environmental bene ts without causing signi cant price increases cost caps are sometimes used most jurisdictions limit eligibility to gridconnected domestic renewables the rps is usually applied to producers rather than consumers and to energy output not capacity flexibility mechanisms are desired but a challenge to implement administration in the us and australia is by government with delegation to independent utility regulators while in europe it is more the responsibility of government everywhere the rps is applied alongside other mechanisms of renewables support 2001 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

the effect of feed in tariffs on the production cost and the landscape externalities of wind power generation in west saxony germany although wind power is currently the most efficient source of renewable energy the cost of wind electricity still exceeds the market price subsidies in the form of feed in tariffs fit have been introduced in many countries to support the expansion of wind power these tariffs are highly debated proponents say they are necessary to pave the way for decarbonising energy production opponents argue they prevent a welfare optimal energy supply thus in a case study we try to shed light on the welfare economic aspect of fit by combining spatial modelling and economic valuation of landscape externalities of wind turbines we show for the planning region west saxony germany that setting fit in a welfare optimal manner is a challenging task if set too high the production costs are overly increased lowering social welfare if set too low energy production targets may not be reached and or external costs are overly increased again lowering social welfare taking a closer look at the tariffs offered by the german renewable sources energy act we find for west saxony that the tariffs quite well meet economic welfare considerations one should note however that this finding might apply only to the present data set

experimental evidence on the evolution of the meaning of messages in sender receiver games an experiment this paper experimentally investigates the evolution of message meanings when talk is cheap we consider communication between a privately informed sender and a receiver when the sender s message does not affect payoffs directly sender receiver games introduced by jerry green and nancy stokey 1980 and vincent p crawford and joel sobel 1982 provide the simplest stylized environment in which communication is essential communication is the only way to link the receiver s action to the sender s private information in addition sender receiver games have been widely used to study communication in accounting economics finance and political science intuition strongly suggests that effective communication will evolve when the players interests are closely aligned however there is always a nash equilibrium in which the sender randomizes uniformly across all messages such babbling equilibria are proper roger b myerson 1978 blume 1994 and even strategic stability elon kohlberg and jeanfrancois mertens 1986 does not rule out uninformative equilibria in general in response a literature developed that formulates equilibrium selection criteria by appealing to the existence of a commonly understood language matthew rabin 1990 steven a matthews et al 1991 joseph farrell 1993 that can be used to formulate credible deviations from equilibrium unfortunately the selection criteria from this literature are frequently strong enough to remove all equilibria from consideration in addition these arguments are vulnerable to stiglitz s observation in koo cho and david m kreps 1987 that successful deviations from equilibrium may induce further deviations which in turn may undermine the credibility of the original deviations both problems can be avoided by a dynamic approach as in rabin and sobel 1996 we also adopt a dynamic perspective but do not require messages to have a priori meanings instead distinct meanings may emerge endogenously this is important for communication across cultures and for language change 2 we are guided by recent results of blume department of economics university of iowa iowa city ia 52242 dejong department of accounting university of iowa iowa city ia 52242 kim department of economics sung kyun kwan university seoul 110 745 korea sprinkle department of accounting university of wisconsin madison wi 53706 we thank joyce berg vince crawford robert forsythe joel horowitz deirdre mccloskey forrest nelson larry samuelson gene savin joel sobel and especially two anonymous referees for their advice and suggestions we benefitted from comments and discussions resulting from presentations at the 1994 summer meetings of the econometric society the 1996 social learning workshop at suny stony brook the io me gt workshop at the university of iowa the university of bonn the university of bielefeld the center for economic research at tilburg university ohio state university seoul national university and texas a m university we are grateful for financial support from the college of business administration at the university of iowa the ira b mcgladrey institute and the national science foundation

knowledge stocks knowledge flows and innovation evidence from matched patents and innovation panel data successful innovation depends on knowledge technological strategic and market related in this paper we explore the role and interaction of firms existing knowledge stocks and current knowledge flows in shaping innovation success the paper contributes to our understanding of the determinants of firms innovation outputs and provides new information on the relationship between knowledge stocks as measured by patents and innovation output indicators our analysis uses innovation panel data relating to plants internal knowledge creation external knowledge search and innovation outputs firm level patent data is matched with this plant level innovation panel data to provide a measure of firms knowledge stock two substantive conclusions follow first existing knowledge stocks have weak negative rather than positive impacts on firms innovation outputs reflecting potential core rigidities or negative path dependencies rather than the accumulation of competitive advantages second knowledge flows derived from internal investment and external search dominate the effect of existing knowledge stocks on innovation performance both results emphasize the importance of firms knowledge search strategies our results also re emphasize the potential issues which arise when using patents as a measure of innovation

adaptive learning models of consumer behavior abstract in a model of dynamic duopoly optimal price policies are characterized assuming consumers learn adaptively about the relative quality of the two products a contrast is made between belief based and reinforcement learning under reinforcement learning consumers can become locked into the habit of purchasing inferior goods such lock in permits the existence of multiple history dependent asymmetric steady states in which one firm dominates in contrast belief based learning rules must lead asymptotically to correct beliefs about the relative quality of the two brands and so in this case there is a unique steady state

cheap talk and the fed a theory of imprecise policy announcments this paper examines the problem faced by the federal reserve in announcing its private information about its future policies because it would like to manipulate expectations and pursue a time inconsistent policy the fed cannot reveal its policy objectives precisely and credibly it can however communicate some information about its goals through the cheap talk mechanism of vincent crawford and joel sobel making announcements that are imprecise and only giving ranges within which these goals may lie copyright 1989 by american economic association

policies and market factors driving wind power development in the united states abstract in the united states there has been substantial recent growth in wind energy generating capacity with growth averaging 24 percent annually during the past five years about 1700 mw of wind energy capacity was installed in 2001 while another 410 mw became operational in 2002 during 2003 development activity has remained strong with an estimated 1600 mw of capacity installed with this growth an increasing number of states are experiencing investment in wind energy projects currently about half of all states host at least one wind power project this paper explores the key factors at play in the 12 states in which a substantial amount of wind energy capacity has been developed or planned some of the factors that are examined include policy drivers such as renewable portfolio standards rps federal and state financial incentives as well as market drivers such as consumer demand for green power natural gas price volatility and wholesale market rules

learning and communication in sender receiver games an econometric investigation this paper compares the performance of stimulus response sr and belief based learning bbl using data from game theory experiments the environment extensive form games played in a population setting is novel in the empirical literature on learning in games both the sr and bbl models fit the data reasonably well in common interest games with history while the test results accept sr and reject bbl in games with no history and in all but one of the divergent interest games estimation is challenging since the likelihood function is not globally concave and the results may be subject to convergence bias

this is what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract many of the quarterly oil price increases observed since 1985 are corrections to even bigger oil price decreases the previous quarter when one looks at the net increase in oil prices over the year recent data are consistent with the historical correlation between oil shocks and recessions

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

foreign direct investment in industrial research in the pharmaceutical and electronics industries results from a survey of multinational firms abstract this paper examines motives location characteristics inter temporal characteristics and modes of entry for foreign direct investment fdi in research and development r d the paper is based on a detailed empirical survey of laboratory sites established by 32 large multinational companies domiciled in 5 countries findings indicate that fdi in r d has risen considerably over the last 40 years and that firms invest in r d sites abroad in order to augment their knowledge base or in order to exploit it the former motive leads to establishment of facilities primarily close to universities while the latter type leads to establishment of facilities close to existing manufacturing facilities and markets the paper also finds that greenfield investments are the dominant mode of entry and that firms establish multiple r d sites in their home countries before investing in such sites abroad

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

an ex post analysis of the effect of renewables and cogeneration on spanish electricity prices abstract growing concerns about climate change and energy dependence are driving specific policies to support renewable or more efficient energy sources such as cogeneration in many regions particularly in the production of electricity these policies have a non negligible cost and therefore a careful assessment of their impacts seems necessary in particular one of the most debated impacts is their effect on electricity prices for which there have been some ex ante studies but few ex post studies this article presents a full ex post empirical analysis by looking at use of technologies and hourly electricity prices for 2005 2009 in spain to study the effects that the introduction of renewable electricity and cogeneration has had on wholesale electricity prices it is particularly interesting to perform this study in spain where an active system of public support to renewables and cogeneration has led to a considerable expansion of these energy sources and electricity pricing is at the center of intense debate the paper reports that a marginal increase of 1 gwh of electricity production using renewables and cogeneration is associated with a reduction of almost 2 per mwh in electricity prices around 4 of the average price for the analyzed period

how much do european households pay for green energy abstract the price of electricity for european end users typically fell until development of wind and solar energy began but has increased since then we estimate the savings in co2 emissions due to solar and wind energy and calculate what end users pay per tonne co2 assuming that price increases since the introduction of solar and wind power are due to these types of energy these payments are in most cases well above even high and unlikely estimates of the cost of carbon and in some cases several times as high

feed in tariff vs renewable portfolio standard an empirical test of their relative effectiveness in promoting wind capacity development abstract this paper examines the relative effectiveness of feed in tariff fit and renewable portfolio standard rps in promoting wind capacity development using panel data conservative estimates suggest that on average across countries fit increases total wind capacity more than rps by a magnitude of about 1800 mw when using time variant policy indicators the difference between the two policies increases to nearly 2000 mw roughly 8 of 2009 cumulative capacity in germany as for annual wind capacity since 2005 this paper has found no significant difference between fit and rps it is also found that wind energy development responds to high electricity demand and high oil dependence

the impact of regulatory governance and privatization on electricity industry generation capacity in developing economies this article assesses whether a regulatory law and higher quality regulatory governance are associated with superior outcomes in the electricity industry the analysis for 28 developing economies over 1980 2001 draws on theoretical and empirical work on the impact of telecommunications regulators in developing economies controlling for privatization and competition and allowing for country specific fixed effects both regulatory law and higher quality regulatory governance are positively and significantly associated with higher per capita generation capacity this positive impact increases for more than 10 years as experience develops and regulatory reputation grows the results are robust to estimating alternative dynamic specifications including error correction models to inclusion of economy governance political risk indicators and to controlling for possible endogeneity biases the article concludes with a short discussion of causality in panel data modeling of governance models and the policy

do support systems for res e reduce eu ets driven electricity prices abstract support systems for electricity from renewable energy sources res e can reduce electricity prices which have also been influenced by a co2 emission trading scheme ets additional res e substitutes electricity from fossil fuels and thus co2 emissions are reduced the demand for emission reductions is lowered as a result the co2 price is also reduced consequently the wholesale price for electricity decreases however most res e support systems are financed via the electricity market which increases the retail electricity price an assessment for germany shows that retail electricity prices in the first trading period of the eu ets 2005 2007 are lowered by 2 6 euro mwh due to additional res e considering the complete eu the effect is substantially higher this paper describes the effect and the influence of different policy designs it develops an approach for assessing the effect and applies it for the case of germany and roughly estimates the effect for the eu

cheap talk coordination and evolutionary stability abstract asymmetric information games where the informed player can send a costless message sender receiver games typically have equilibria where meaningful communication occurs we therefore know such cheap talk can matter still even when there is no conflict of interest there are also equilibria where no information transmission occurs this paper shows that for a class of games with perfectly coinciding interests modeled as asymmetric contests where players are unsure of which role they will have only meaningful communication is evolutionarily stable journal of economic literature classification numbers c70 c72 d82

communication between rational agents abstract conventional game theoretic solution concepts never guarantee meaningful communication in cheap talk games i define a solution concept which does guarantee communication in some games i assume full rationality without imposing equilibrium conditions but add a natural behavioral assumption about how agents use language agents have a propensity to speak the truth and to believe others speak the truth but use the game s strategic incentives to check whether such behavior and beliefs are rational i also define and prove the existence of an equilibrium version of the concept and present examples where its predictions seem more natural than farrell s neologism proof equilibrium

learning mixed equilibria we study learning processes for finite strategic form games in which players use the history of past play to forecast play in the current period in a generalization of fictitious play we assume only that players asymptotically choose best responses to the historical frequencies of opponents past play this implies that if the stage game strategies converge the limit is a nash equilibrium in the basic model plays seems unlikely to converge to a mixed strategy equilibrium but such convergence is natural when the stage game is perturbed in the manner of harsanyi s purification theorem journal of economic literature classification number c72

state renewable energy electricity policies an empirical evaluation of effectiveness over the past decade state governments have emerged as us energy policy leaders across the country states are adopting policy instruments aimed at carbon mitigation and renewable energy deployment one of the most prevalent and innovative policy instruments is a renewable portfolio standard rps which seeks to increase the share of renewable energy electrification in the electricity market this analysis evaluates the effectiveness of state energy programs with an empirical investigation of the linkage between state rps policy implementation and the percentage of renewable energy electricity generation across states we use a variant of a standard fixed effects model referred to as a fixed effects vector decomposition with state level data from 1998 to 2006 results indicate that rps implementation is not a significant predictor of the percentage of renewable energy generation out of the total generation mix yet for each additional year that a state has an rps policy they are found to increase the total amount of renewable energy generation these findings reveal a potentially significant shortcoming of rps policies political institutions natural resource endowments deregulation gross state product per capita electricity use per person electricity price and the presence of regional rps policies are also found to be significantly related to renewable energy deployment

surviving the crisis foreign multinationals vs domestic firms starting from the observation that all firms in ireland foreign and domestic in manufacturing and services industries were hit by the crisis the paper asks whether there is a difference in the behaviour of foreign and domestic firms one hypothesis is that foreign multinationals are less linked into the irish economy so more likely to leave once the economy is hit by a negative shock the paper discusses background hypotheses before giving empirical evidence from firstly aggregate data and secondly firm level observations the analysis of the latter suggests that foreign firms are not more likely to leave during the crisis than irish firms some policy conclusions are offered in the paper