analysis of a solar and aerothermal plant combined with a conventional system in an esco model in chile abstract the work provides technical and economic feasibility studies for solar thermal and aerothermal energy systems for the production of sanitary hot water in large volumes in chile the proposed project is based in an energy service company model using a particular consumption profile a sensitivity model has been developed in order to design the aero solar thermal system and to obtain financial indicators the indicators were applied for both the company that evaluates the business opportunity and to their future customers also the model includes an analysis of the reduction of greenhouse emissions and its impact on the project s financial performance a dynamic sensitivity analysis was carried out in order to obtain a probability distribution for the financial results and its risk case analysis considered 16 solar collectors a heat pump of 32 kw for the use of aerothermal energy and a conventional boiler the set up allows to obtain an annual solar coverage of 14 meanwhile aerothermal coverage was around 70 and the contribution of the conventional system was 16 the participation of each subsystem was motivated by a purely financial decision as a result of the sensitivity analysis of the model on the one hand a net present value of 35 600 usd and an internal rate of return of 21 were reached for the client on the other hand the energy service company obtained a net present value of 9200 usd and an internal rate of return of 69 concerning risk results indicate that for the customer there exists a 88 probability to obtain a positive net present value and for the company this probability is about 70 obtaining generally positive results however sensitivity analysis indicates that there exists high elasticity in some relevant variables such as fuel prices and operational costs which could increase considerably risk to the project

returns to regionalism the past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in regional trade agreements with many policymakers and academics seeming to believe that these provide more than the traditional gains from trade this article examines several possible benefits that regional trade agreements may confer on their partners including credibility signaling bargaining power insurance and coordination it assesses the necessary conditions for each possible channel to work gives stylized examples of specific types of policy where the benefit might be applicable examines cases where the explanation might be relevant and discusses their overall plausibility it concludes by examining the north american free trade agreement and the europe agreements

returns to regionalism an analysis of nontraditional gains from regional trade agreements the past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in regional trade agreements with many policymakers and academics seeming to believe that these provide more than the traditional gains from trade this article examines several possible benefits that regional trade agreements may confer on their partners including credibility signaling bargaining power insurance and coordination it assesses the necessary conditions for each possible channel to work gives stylized examples of specific types of policy where the benefit might be applicable examines cases where the explanation might be relevant and discusses their overall plausibility it concludes by examining the north american free trade agreement and the europe agreements

disability discrimination in the italian rental housing market a field experiment with blind tenants i test discrimination against blind tenants assisted by guide dogs in the italian rental housing market by using fake application letters i compare three fictitious household tenants married couples married couples where the wife is blind and owns a guide dog and married couples where the normal sighted wife owns a normal dog i find that the households with a blind wife are invited less often to visit apartments they applied for because of the presence of their guide dog using the language of italian and e u laws this behavior is called indirect discrimination against disabled people this result is robust jel r21

the value of trade agreements in the presence of political pressures an argument often heard in favor of trade agreements is that by committing to free trade a government can credibly distance itself from domestic lobbies but several existing models of endogenous protection suggest that governments have no interest in foreclosing interest group pressures since governments derive rents from the political process we develop a small country model in which factors are sector specific in the short run but mobile in the long run we show that in this setting a government may be worse off in the political equilibrium than under commitment to free trade and hence it may value a trade agreement

resistance to reform status quo bias in the presence of individual specific uncertainty comment why do governments so often fail to adopt policies which economists consider to be efficiency enhancing our answer to this question relies on uncertainty regarding the distribution of gains and losses from reform we show that there is a bias towards the status quo and hence against efficiency enhancing reforms whenever some of the individual gainers and losers from reform cannot be identified beforehand there are reforms which once adopted will receive adequate political support but would have failed to carry the day ex ante the argument does not rely on risk aversion irrationality or hysteresis due to sunk costs jel d72 f13 why do governments so often fail to adopt policies that economists consider to be efficiency enhancing this is one of the fundamental questions of political economy the answer usually relies on what may be

review of us esco industry market trends an empirical analysis of project data abstract this comprehensive empirical analysis of us energy service company esco industry trends and performance employs two parallel analytical approaches a survey of firms to estimate total industry size and a database of 1500 esco projects from which we report target markets and typical project characteristics energy savings and customer economics we estimate that industry investment for energy efficiency related services reached us 2 billion in 2000 following a decade of strong growth esco activity is concentrated in states with high economic activity and strong policy support typical projects save 150 200 mj m2 year and are cost effective with median benefit cost ratios of 1 6 and 2 1 for institutional and private sector projects the median simple payback time spt is 7 years among institutional customers 3 years is typical in the private sector reliance on dsm incentives has decreased since 1995 preliminary evidence suggests that state enabling policies have boosted the industry in medium sized states escos have proven resilient in the face of restructuring and will probably shift toward selling energy solutions with energy efficiency part of a package we conclude that appropriate policy support both financial and non financial can jump start a viable private sector energy efficiency services industry that targets large institutional and commercial industrial customers

a field experiment of discrimination in the norwegian housing market gender class and ethnicity we test for gender class and ethnic discrimination in the norwegian rental housing market by using fake application letters females individuals with high job status and ethnic norwegians are more likely to receive positive responses for example being an arabic man and working in a warehouse is associated with a 25 percentage point lower probability of receiving a positive response when showing interest in an apartment as compared to an ethnically norwegian female economist we conclude that gender class and ethnic discrimination do exist in the norwegian housing market and ethnic discrimination seems to be the most prevalent form of discrimination jel r21

opening up international trade with eastern europe trade with eastern europe carl b hamilton and l alan winters previous economic policy in the soviet union and eastern europe sought to restrict international trade with market economies hence liberalization and reform should now lead to a huge increase in such trade this will have a major impact both on the reforming economies and on their new trade partners first we develop an empirical model of trade flows between existing market economies and use this to forecast long run trade flows as the former soviet union and eastern europe are reabsorbed into the world economy second we provide a more detailed analysis of one key sector agricultural trade we compare and contrast three regime changes reform in the east admission of the east to the ec cap and worldwide success on agricultural liberalization in the gatt third we adduce evidence of high quality human capital in eastern europe and argue that this will tend to confer a comparative advantage in quite sophisticated products we conclude by stressing that since trade cannot be permanently and profoundly unbalanced western market economies can enjoy potential gains from trade only if they allow market access to emergent producers from the former soviet union and eastern europe

do landlords discriminate in the rental housing market evidence from an internet field experiment in us cities abstract this paper tests for racial discrimination in the rental housing market using matched pair audits conducted via e mail for rental units advertised on line we reveal home seekers race to landlords by sending e mails from names with a high likelihood of association with either whites or african americans generally discrimination occurs against african american names however when the content of the e mail messages insinuates home seekers with high social class discrimination is non existent racial discrimination is more severe in neighborhoods that are near tipping points in racial composition and for units that are part of a larger building

from volatility to value analysing and managing financial and performance risk in energy savings projects abstract many energy related investments are made without a clear financial understanding of their values risks and volatilities in the face of this uncertainty the investor such as a building owner or an energy service company will often choose to implement only the most certain and thus limited energy efficiency measures conversely commodities traders and other sophisticated investors accustomed to evaluating investments on a value risk and volatility basis often overlook energy efficiency investments because risk and volatility information are not provided fortunately energy efficiency investments easily lend themselves to such analysis using tools similar to those applied to supply side risk management accurate and robust analysis demands a high level of understanding of the physical aspects of energy efficiency which enables the translation of physical performance data into the language of investment with a risk management analysis framework in place the two groups energy efficiency experts and investment decision makers can exchange the information they need to expand investment in demand side energy projects in this article we first present the case for financial risk analysis in energy efficiency in the buildings sector we then describe techniques and examples of how to identify quantify and manage risk finally we describe emerging market based opportunities in risk management for energy efficiency

the determinants of cross border equity flows abstract we explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross border equity flows between 14 countries 1989 1996 we show that a gravity model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions gross transaction flows depend on market size in source and destination country as well as trading costs in which both information and the transaction technology play a role distance proxies some information costs and other variables explicitly represent information transmission an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors and the efficiency of transactions the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive once we control for the informational friction we broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings

are emily and greg more employable than lakisha and jamal a field experiment on labor market discrimination we study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help wanted ads in boston and chicago newspapers to manipulate perceived race resumes are randomly assigned african american or white sounding names white names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for white names than for african american ones the racial gap is uniform across occupation industry and employer size we also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the u s labor market jel j71 j64

catalysing the energy service market the role of intermediaries the uk market for energy service contracts is expanding owing in part to the emergence of intermediaries for those contracts in different parts of the public sector these intermediaries combine a legal framework for establishing contracts with an organisational framework that facilitates contract negotiation and execution this paper examines the nature and operation of these intermediaries in more detail including their achievements to date and their similarities and differences it uses ideas from transaction cost economics to develop a theoretical model of the contracting decision and shows how intermediary organisations can lower the transaction costs incurred by both clients and contractors thereby increasing the viability of contracting the paper argues that intermediaries can play an important role in expanding the market for energy service contracts and hence in delivering cost effective energy efficiency improvements throughout the public sector

can discrimination in the housing market be reduced by increasing the information about the applicants we investigate how increasing the information about applicants affects discrimination in the rental housing market we let four fictitious applicants two with typical arab muslim names and two with typical swedish names use application letters containing different amounts of information to apply for apartments over the internet in sweden the arab muslim applicants received fewer responses from the landlords than did the swedish applicants all of the applicants gained by providing more information about themselves but the amount of discrimination against the arab muslim applicants remained unchanged indicating that increasing the amount of information about the applicants will not reduce discrimination

field experiments of discrimination in the market place controlled experiments using matched pairs of bogus transactors to test for discrimination in the marketplace have been conducted for over 30 years and have extended across 10 countries significant persistent and pervasive levels of discrimination have been found against non whites and women in labour housing and product markets rates of employment discrimination against non whites in excess of 25 have been measured in australia europe and north america a small number of experiments have also investigated employment discrimination against the disabled in britain and the netherlands and against older applicants in the united states

trade capital and the transition in central europe the potential for export oriented growth and the impact of official capital injections is assessed for five central european countries in the years 1990 2000 by means of a neoclassical simulation model export growth is essential for the transition to a market oriented economy and the recovery of central europe implying the need for trade liberalization by both the east and the west if this condition is being met satisfactory gdp growth rates appear possible even without external financial support

an institutional approach to cross national distance cross national distance is a key concept in the field of management previous research has conceptualized and measured cross national differences mostly in terms of dyadic cultural distance and has used the euclidean approach to measuring it in contrast our goal is to disaggregate the construct of distance by proposing a set of multidimensional measures including economic financial political administrative cultural demographic knowledge and global connectedness as well as geographic distance we ground our analysis and choice of empirical dimensions on institutional theories of national business governance and innovation systems in order to overcome the methodological limitations of the euclidean approach we calculate dyadic distances using the mahalanobis method which is scale invariant and takes into consideration the variance covariance matrix we empirically analyze four different foreign expansion choices of us companies to illustrate the importance of disaggregating the distance construct and the usefulness of our distance calculations which we make freely available to managers and scholars

waves of international banking integration a tale of regional differences abstract we propose an original measure of international banking integration based on gravity equations and a spline function on a panel of 14 countries and their 186 partners between 1999 and 2012 contrary to the conventional wisdom we uncover that 1 the international banking integration outside the euro area has been tenaciously increasing since 1999 and has even strengthened after the crisis 2 in contrast the international banking integration of the euro area has been cyclical since 1999 with a peak in 2006 and a complete reversal since then 3 this decline is not a correction of previous overshooting but a marked disintegration 4 outside the euro area the level of income does not affect the shape of banking integration

from eea to eu economic consequences for the efta countries abstract the paper surveys and evaluates the economic consequences for austria finland norway and sweden of becoming members of the eu that are the least difficult to quantify namely transfers to and from the eu budget changes in agricultural policy and changes in trade barriers it concludes that the net effect of this subset of economic consequences is small or negligible for all candidate members

analysis of esco activities using country indicators energy service companies escos are private sector instruments that offer energy emission improvement energy saving energy efficiency energy conservation emission reduction projects in the developed and in some developing countries literature reveals that energy emission improvements of countries may be related to their innovation and r d activity levels in this work we use a literature data on the activities and the sectors targeted by escos in 38 countries summarized in terms of the age of esco market aem number of esco companies ne and total value of esco projects ve along with the global innovation index gii data of the countries we investigate the relationships among the esco indicators eis aem ne ve sectors targeted by escos and the country indicators cis gii and per capita gdp energy consumption co2 emission we observe noteworthy dependencies between the eis and cis using the simple trend equations we estimate the missing ves in the original data we also project as a hint for the size and orientation of the upcoming turkish esco market the set of eis and the distribution of the sectors that are likely to be targeted by escos in turkey

the choice of energy saving modes for an energy intensive manufacturer considering non energy benefits in practice energy intensive manufacturers have two main options when improving their energy efficiency design and implement energy efficiency projects on their own we call this self saving or enter into an energy performance contracting epc which mainly includes shared savings and guaranteed savings in this paper we will discuss an energy intensive manufacturer facing self saving and shared savings options and how this manufacturer chooses the optimal energy saving mode when non energy benefits are considered we only consider costs and profit as non energy benefits and formulate an optimization model of self saving and a stackelberg game model of shared savings from our model analysis when considering only energy savings we find that the optimal unit savings has a monotonic impact on the optimal profit of the manufacturer our results indicate that the manufacturer will prefer the second option to the first when the investment cost factor ratio of the energy service company esco to the manufacturer is small otherwise the manufacturer will prefer the first to the second furthermore when considering non energy benefits we find that the results change in some cases

regionalism in a multilateral world recent regional initiatives have been addressed from a vinerian perspective of trade creation and trade diversion this is true of both policy oriented economists who tend to be critical of the initiatives and theorists who have added dynamic and gametheoretic elements to the vinerian structure this paper describes the stylized facts of much recent regional integration and develops an alternative model the analysis suggests that regional integration far from threatening multilateral liberalism may in fact be a direct consequence of the success of past multilateralism and an added guarantee for its survival

evolution of the u s energy service company industry market size and project performance from 1990 2008 lbnl xxxx e rnest o rlando l awrence b erkeley n ational l aboratory evolution of the u s energy service company industry market size and project performance from 1990 2008 peter h larsen charles a goldman and andrew satchwell environmental energy technologies division may 2012 pre print of article submitted for publication to energy policy the work described in this report was funded by the u s department of energy s office of energy efficiency and renewable energy weatherization and intergovernmental program and the permitting siting and analysis division of the office of electricity delivery and energy reliability under contract no de ac02 05ch11231

international migration capital mobility and transitional dynamics much of recent thinking on the problems of the central and east european countries ceecs centres on how long it will take them to catch up to oecd economies and how various policies will hasten or hinder the transition this paper using a highly stylized framework focuses on a quite different set of issues how the nature of the transition can effect the nature of the long run equilibrium the mechanism we focus on is factor mobility and factor complementarity excerpt

discrimination in the rental housing market a field experiment on the internet this paper presents a field experiment on discrimination in the housing market using the internet as a research platform the procedure involved our creating three fictitious persons with distinct

trade reorientation and recovery in transition economies how do we define transition and when can we say that transition to a market economy is complete here we suggest that one way of addressing this issue is to analyse current economic data and ask whether in ignorance of the past we can identify countries in central and eastern europe as being somehow different from comparable western market economies in this paper we focus on international trade and argue that several indicators such as the geographical structure of trade and the undervaluation of the exchange rate cannot distinguish the more advanced countries in central and eastern europe we also seek to explain how the reorientation of trade towards the west has been achieved and in particular assess whether improvements on design and quality are a prerequisite for export expansion copyright 1997 by oxford university press