disability and poverty in vietnam disability is significantly correlated with poverty in vietnam according to data from the 2006 vietnam household living standards survey especially when the extra costs of living with a disability are taken into account this disability poverty link is also associated with lower educational attainment an important factor in determining poverty and productive economic activity in general both for household based businesses and wage employment not taking into account these associations and the extra costs of disability will make some poor disabled people invisible in poverty statistics and impede efforts to reduce poverty

determining appropriate feed in tariff rates to promote biomass to electricity generation in eastern ontario canada abstract on site data collection interviews and financial models were used to determine the feed in tariff fit rate required to encourage investment in the generation of electricity from currently unused biomass from the eastern ontario forest industry a financial model was adapted and run to determine the net present value internal rate of return and payback period associated with a 15 mw biomass to electricity facility the analysis suggests that ontario should consider a stronger incentive than the recently offered cdn 0 13 kw 1 h 1 for biomass to electricity if no customer for heat generated from the plant can be found fit rates between cdn 0 17 0 22 kw 1 h 1 are necessary to achieve a 15 internal rate of return and a simple payback of approximately 5 yr achieving a price of cdn 0 013 kw 1 of thermal output still requires elevated fit rates between cdn 0 15 0 21 kw 1 h 1 to meet economic performance criteria other barriers particularly regulations regarding the use of operating engineers in steam plants should also be addressed to facilitate development of biomass to electricity without these changes it is likely that biomass will be significantly under used and will not contribute to the renewable energy goals of ontario

how important is the capacity of local governments for improvements in welfare evidence from decentralised uganda abstract decentralisation is often claimed to be effective for improvements in welfare and hence the reduction of poverty but empirical evidence is scarce this paper seeks to gain further insights into the relationship between decentralisation and welfare by investigating the role of local governments capacity for household consumption and school enrolment in uganda using household survey data it finds suggestive evidence that both household consumption and school enrolment are positively related with the level of capacity of district governments

financing renewable energy infrastructure formulation pricing and impact of a carbon revenue bond abstract renewable energy systems depend on large financial incentives to compete with conventional generation methods market based incentives including state level rec markets and international carbon markets have been proposed as solutions to increase renewable energy investment in this paper we introduce and formulate a carbon revenue bond a financing tool to complement environmental credit markets to encourage renewable energy investment to illustrate its use we value the bond by predicting future revenue using stochastic processes after analyzing historical price data three illustrative examples are presented for renewable energy development in three different markets europe australia and new jersey our findings reveal that the sale of a carbon revenue bond with a ten year maturity can finance a significant portion of a project s initial cost

the importance of comprehensiveness in renewable electricity and energy efficiency policy based on extensive research interviews and supplemented with a review of the academic literature this article assesses the best way to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency it begins by briefly laying out why government intervention is needed and then details the four most favored policy mechanisms identified by participants eliminating subsidies for conventional and mature electricity technologies pricing electricity accurately passing a national feed in tariff and implementing a nationwide systems benefit fund to raise public awareness protect lower income households and administer demand side management programs drawing mostly from case studies in the united states the article also discusses why these policy mechanisms must be implemented comprehensively not individually if the barriers to renewables and energy efficiency are to be overcome

modeling determinants of poverty in mauritania abstract this paper presents a brief descriptive summary of poverty in mauritania as revealed by household survey data for 1990 and then uses regression analysis to study the determinants of living standards and hence poverty the latter is conducted at the level of broadly defined socioeconomic groups using an econometric technique which also models the selection of households into socioeconomic groups household characteristics are used as explanatory variables including demographic education and sector specific variables by controlling for many factors multivariate analysis enables a clearer understanding of the nature and determinants of poverty than can be obtained from examination of summary poverty indices

an analysis of childhood malnutrition in rural india role of gender income and other household characteristics there are controversies regarding the role of individual and household characteristics in childhood nutritional status measured by anthropometric indicators using a nutrition index based on weight for age of children in rural india the paper re examines this issue ordered probit estimates of nutritional status suggest female literacy improves the nutritional status of boys at the cost of girls while higher per capita current income improves that of both boys and girls though the impact is higher for boys however effect of income is not robust when we use instruments of longer run income but more income and literacy give more ways to discriminate between boys and girls

on measuring child costs with applications to poor countries the theoretical basis for measuring child costs is discussed and detailed consideration is given to two straightforward procedures for calculation engel s food share method and rothbarth s adult good method each of these methods embodies different definitions of child costs so that the same empirical evidence can generate quite different estimates depending on the method used it is shown that true costs are generally overstated by engel s method and understated by rothbarth s procedure although the latter unlike the former can provide a sensible starting point for cost measurement our estimates from sri lankan and indonesian data suggest that children cost their parents about 30 40 percent of what they spend on themselves

impact of deployment of renewable portfolio standard on the electricity price in the state of illinois and implications on policies abstract the renewable portfolio standard rps of the state of illinois specifies a schedule for the fraction of electricity produced from wind to be phased in through 2025 the price of electricity due to implementation of rps in order to achieve a six year payback on investment on new wind farms was estimated for six scenarios that examined the effect of electricity consumption growth rate production tax credit of 0 022 kw h or unrestricted investment tax credit of 30 and projected changes in installed project costs in all cases the electricity price was found to be dominated by the installed project cost capital cost thus any policy that affects the capital cost directly or indirectly would have a significant effect on the electricity price whereas investment tax credit has a direct effect policies that encourage technology improvement and improve transmission lines would have a similar effect of lowering the capital cost carbon tax on the other hand would increase the electricity price to the consumers although it offers other benefits

on the quantification of the network capacity deferral value of distributed generation this paper presents an approach to the quantification of the distribution network capacity deferral value of distributed generation dg besides different technical benefits such as reliability and power quality improvement there are a number of economic benefits related to dg the most important of which being the end user electricity bill reduction capability however since the onset of the implementation of these technologies the potential of dg to defer investments on distribution wires and transformers was soon realized to the point that non wire solutions are now considered as an alternative to network upgrades in this work a first approximation to the capacity deferral benefits brought about by dg is obtained such approach can be the starting point towards the development of a framework of credits to the owners of dg that fully and fairly recognize the deferral benefits provided to the utility the financial performance of investments on these important technologies can be then improved thus broadening dg as a viable market alternative for customers and utilities

education and technical efficiency in small farm production differences in technical efficiency are observed as differences in the physical output produced from a given bundle of physical inputs these differences are not considered in the traditional theory of the firm wherein the output resulting from a particular input bundle is specified as the maximum possible according to the latest technology presupposing technical efficiency the theory of the firm concentrates on allocative efficiency on the choice of the particular input bundle that maximizes profit given prices and the technically efficient production function the best utilization of any particular input combination according to henderson and quandt is a technical not an economic problem 1 economic theory notwithstanding empirical studies of production must take into account differences in the utilization of inputs since in the real world producers are not all equally efficient it is conceptually convenient to divide the output variation observed over a number of firms into two parts one that stems from variation in physical inputs and another that reflects differences in technical efficiency timmer has developed an approach by which to compare the technical efficiency of firms using linear programming he determines the function that relates physical inputs to output for the most efficient of a sample of firms in other words he finds the production surface that is the envelope of all the observation points he calls this function the technical frontier the relative tech

electricity generation from renewables in the united states resource potential current usage technical status challenges strategies policies and future directions abstract in order to secure the energy future and protect the environment the u s is looking for renewable resources to meet the increasing energy demands for its electricity sector which accounts for 40 of total u s energy consumption in 2011 the overall aim of this article is to summarize the possible approaches that can be used to improve and optimize the utilization of renewables for electricity generation in the united states first an overview is presented about the resource potential current usage and technical status of electricity generation from renewables in the united states second a number of economic operational regulatory sustainability and technical challenges that are likely to be encountered are identified third strategies are outlined that can be used to minimize costs deal with the spatial nature of renewables smooth temporal variations associated with intermittency and achieve successful integration of electricity generated from renewable resources into the u s power grid fourth a sustainability assessment framework for renewable resource deployment for electricity generation in the u s is discussed the framework considers multiple criteria including cost environmental and social impacts thus giving a comprehensive assessment of each renewable energy resource for electricity generation in the united states fifth the current u s renewable energy policy is analyzed and rigorous recommendations are made for optimizing future u s renewable energy policy that can permanently induce a long term sustainable shift towards electricity generation from renewables finally directions for future research are highlighted

strategic choices for renewable energy investment conceptual framework and opportunities for further research this paper introduces the special issue on strategic choices for renewable energy investment which is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in st gallen switzerland in february 2010 substantial private investment is needed if public policy objectives to increase the share of renewable energy and prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change are to be achieved the aim of this paper and the entire special issue is to draw scholarly attention to the processes underlying strategic choices for renewable energy investment and how they are influenced by energy policy we disentangle the role of risk return perceptions portfolio effects and path dependence in explaining energy investment decisions and suggest that the heterogeneous universe of investors requires a segmentation of policies the paper outlines some of the rich opportunities for further research in this emerging area

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

the effects of male and female labor supply on commodity demands we examine the effects of male and female labor supply on household demands and present a simple and robust test for the separability of commodity demands from labor supply using data on individual households from six years of the uk fes we estimate a demand system for seven goods which includes hours and participation dummies as conditioning variables allowance is made for the possible endogeneity of these conditioning labor supply variables we find that separability is rejected furthermore we present evidence that ignoring the effects of labor supply leads to bias in the parameter estimates

distributional effects of maize self sufficiency in zimbabwe implications for pricing and trade policy abstract maize self sufficiency has normally been an explicit policy goal throughout eastern and southern africa because of the perception that it could be achieved at prices below import parity and that it contributes to rural income growth however this analysis based on household survey data from zimbabwe and the results of an econometrically based simulation model indicates that a pricing policy geared towards maize self sufficiency would mainly benefit a small set of well off farmers and require either greater subsidies or higher prices to consumers many of whom are low income rural farmers in low rainfall areas the broader implications of this analysis are that even if the producer price needed for self sufficiency is below import parity the pursuit of food self sufficiency may inflate food costs and exacerbate rural and urban food insecurity compared to a self rellance policy involving imports

what has happened to the urban population in cote d ivoire since the 1980s an analysis of monetary poverty and deprivation over 15 years of household data abstract this article investigates the evolution of urban poverty in its various dimensions in cote d ivoire since the 1980s the robustness of the results is checked using dominance criteria an econometric analysis of poverty complements the analysis the study shows that the dynamic of poverty in terms of existence conditions can significantly differ from that of monetary poverty as was the case in the 1980s monetary poverty increased strongly in the 1990s in spite of a return to sustained growth following the devaluation of the cfa franc poverty in terms of existence conditions rose less before the adjustment and even decreased afterward

prices and unit values in poverty measurement and tax reform analysis researchers often use unit values household expenditures on a commodity divided by the quantity purchased as proxies for market prices when calculating poverty lines and estimating consumer demand equations such proxies are often needed because community price surveys in developing economies are either absent or suffer quality problems however using unit values may result in biases due to measurement error and quality effects in a household survey experiment information on prices was obtained in three ways from unit values from a market price survey and from the opinions of householders who were shown pictures of items and asked to report the local price the three sets of price data are used to calculate poverty lines estimate price elasticities and analyze marginal tax reforms there are substantial biases when unit values are used as a proxy for market price even when sophisticated correction methods are applied performance was better for the price opinions of household members the results highlight the importance of price collection methods and the need to consider the wider costs of having potentially unreliable community level price data

natural disasters household welfare and resilience evidence from rural vietnam summary the study uses commune fixed effects regressions to estimate the effect of natural disasters on welfare and poverty of rural households in vietnam and subsequently examines household and community characteristics that can strengthen resilience of households to natural disasters we find that all the three disaster types considered in this study including storms floods and droughts have negative effects on household income and expenditure households in communes with higher mean expenditure and more equal expenditure distribution are more resilient to natural disasters access to micro credit internal remittances and social allowances can help households strengthen the resilience to natural disasters

state level renewable electricity policies and reductions in carbon emissions abstract a wide range of renewable electricity policies has been adopted at the state level in the united states but to date there has been no large scale empirical assessment of the effect of these policies on carbon emissions such an assessment is important because scholars have pointed out that increases in renewable electricity will not necessarily lead to declines in carbon emissions we examine the effects of a range of policies across 39 states we find significant and robust decreases in carbon emissions associated with the introduction of public benefit funds a form of carbon tax adopted by 19 states to date our aim in this paper is not to provide a final judgment on these policies many of which may not have been in place long enough to show strong effects but to shift the attention of the research community away from proximate measures such as increases in clean electricity generation and onto measurement of lower carbon emissions

investigating the determinants of household welfare in cote d ivoire to predict the effect of economic policies on household welfare one should first understand which characteristics of households and of the localities in which they live enable them to raise their welfare levels this paper outlines a simple procedure for investigating the determinants of household welfare and demonstrates its use with recent data from cote d ivoire despite the relative simplicity much information is obtained from its use on cross sectional survey data results specific to cote d ivoire include high low returns to education in urban rural areas high benefits from cocoa land relative to coffee land a significant impact on economic welfare from the availability of medical services and no apparent benefits from agricultural extension services

assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies the non combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature the indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology availability of renewable sources efficiency of energy conversion land requirements water consumption and social impacts the cost of electricity greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source the social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development it was found that wind power is the most sustainable followed by hydropower photovoltaic and then geothermal wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs

forecasts scenarios visions backcasts and roadmaps to the hydrogen economy a review of the hydrogen futures literature scenarios roadmaps and similar foresight methods are used to cope with uncertainty in areas with long planning horizons such as energy policy and research into the future of hydrogen energy has been no exception such studies can play an important role in the development of shared visions of the future creating powerful expectations of the potential of emerging technologies and mobilising resources necessary for their realisation this paper reviews the hydrogen futures literature using a six fold typology to map the state of the art of scenario construction the paper then explores the expectations embodied in the literature through the answers it provides to questions about the future of hydrogen what are the drivers barriers and challenges facing the development of a hydrogen economy what are the key technological building blocks required in what kinds of futures does hydrogen become important what does a hydrogen economy look like how and when does it evolve and what does it achieve the literature describes a diverse range of possible futures from decentralised systems based upon the small scale renewables through to centralised systems reliant on nuclear energy or carbon sequestration there is a broad consensus that the hydrogen economy emerges only slowly if all under business as usual scenarios rapid transitions to hydrogen occur only under conditions of strong governmental support combined with or as a result of major discontinuities such as shifts in society s environmental values game changing technological breakthroughs or rapid increases in the oil price or speed and intensity of climate change

poverty in egypt modeling and policy simulations abstract poverty profiles are a useful way of summarizing information on the levels of poverty and the characteristics of the poor in a society but they are limited by the bivariate nature of their informational content using the 1997 egypt integrated household survey eihs this article estimates models of household consumption in the first stage and then predicts poverty rates corresponding to changes in potential policy variables the key results of the study point to the important instrumental role of education parental background land redistribution and access to health facilities in alleviating poverty in egypt

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

the politics of renewable energy policies the case of feed in tariffs in ontario canada designing and implementing a renewable energy policy involves political decisions and actors yet most research on renewable energy policies comparatively evaluates instruments from an economic or technical perspective this paper presents a case study of ontario s feed in tariff policies between 1997 and 2012 to analyze how the political process affects renewable energy policy design and implementation ontario s policy although initially successful has met with increasing resistance over time the case reveals key political tensions that arise during implementation first high level support for a policy does not necessarily translate into widespread public support particularly for local deployment second the government often struggles under asymmetric information during price setting which may weaken the policy s legitimacy with the public due to higher costs third there is an unacknowledged tension that governments must navigate between policy stability to spur investment and adaptive policymaking to improve policy design fourth when multiple jurisdictions pursue the same policies simultaneously international political conflict over jobs and innovation may occur these implementation tensions result from political choices during policy design and present underappreciated challenges to transforming the electricity system governments need to critically recognize the political dimension of renewable energy policies to secure sustained political support

evaluating the effects of optimally distributed public programs child health and family planning interventions this paper develops and tests an optimizing model determining the distribution of family planning and health subsidies across heterogeneous households and assesses the biases in cross area estimates of the health effects of such subsidies due to public resource optimization the model incorporates both health externalities and the endogenous response of the size of the recipient population to program subsidies longitudinal data describing child health and publicly provided family planning and health programs in 20 barrios in laguna province in the philippines are used to estimate the effects of such programs on child health and the relationships between the distribution of the programs and preprogram health levels the impact of a program on a particular childs health status is viewed as dependent upon the childs length of exposure to the program a basic feature of the model is the presence of health externalities which is shown to be sufficient along with plausible features of household behavior to make selective subsidization of fertility control either alone or in combination with health investment subsidies pareto efficient the model suggests that subsidization of fertility control is likely to be pareto efficient in the presence of health or human capital externalities when human capital and family size are gross substitutes and or when any per child human capital subsidies may substitute for direct subsidies to health investment and an equalizing distribution of the subsidies the highest family planning subsidies to the lowest health recipient households is efficient when both health and family planning subsidies are used fertility control subsidies minimize the subsidy burden for donors and are highest when total subsidy expenditures per child are greatest