no free ride to zero emissions simulating a region s need to implement its own zero emissions vehicle zev mandate to achieve 2050 ghg targets abstract the adoption of zero emission vehicles zevs is limited by a variety of barriers some are region specific e g availability of charging infrastructure while others are global in nature e g battery prices where improvements spill over between regions this study explores regional spillover effects and ghg impacts of strong zev focused policy specifically the zev mandate in place in ten u s states zev states which requires automakers to sell a minimum amount of zevs each year we use a dynamic technology adoption model to simulate passenger vehicle sectors in north america focusing on the case of one small region british columbia covering 0 7 of the market as potentially free riding off of zev states policy covering 23 of the market results indicate that free ridership is not effective even with the zev mandate driving very high sales in zev states british columbia cannot achieve significant zev adoption without also implementing its own zev mandate further for british columbia to meet its 2050 ghg targets it may need a zev mandate in addition to complementary climate policies pushing zevs to account for 40 93 of new vehicle sales in 2050 in short regions seeking low carbon transportation likely need to implement their own stringent policies

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

beyond the short versus long accountability route dichotomy using multi track accountability pathways to study performance of rural water services in uganda summary performance of social service delivery is often linked with effective accountability accountability studies increasingly acknowledge that studying one type of accountability relation at a time is too restrictive our study aims to correct for this and explores the effectiveness of combinations of different accountability mechanisms we take the world development report s accountability triangle as a starting point and adapt it in three ways first we refine the long route to accountability into three tracks by differentiating between the three groups of demand side actors political accountability opposition citizen led and civil society led social accountability second for each track we take into account the demand and supply side and the availability of supply demand interfaces finally we adopt a holistic approach through the simultaneous incorporation of both the short and long with the different tracks routes to test its usefulness we use our refined accountability framework to study the accountability constellations and their link to performance in uganda s rural water sector building on qca our findings identify the long three track route supply interface all three demand actors and the citizen led social accountability route as viable routes to high water service performance in ugandan districts additionally a set of new hybrid accountability arrangements are identified while contrary to theoretical assumptions the short route clients to service providers does not prove effective

on the electrification of road transport learning rates and price forecasts for hybrid electric and battery electric vehicles abstract hybrid electric vehicles hevs and battery electric vehicles bevs are currently more expensive than conventional passenger cars but may become cheaper due to technological learning here we obtain insight into the prospects of future price decline by establishing ex post learning rates for hevs and ex ante price forecasts for hevs and bevs since 1997 hevs have shown a robust decline in their price and price differential at learning rates of 7 2 and 23 5 respectively by 2010 hevs were only 31 22 2010 kw 1 more expensive than conventional cars mass produced bevs are currently introduced into the market at prices of 479 171 2010 kw 1 which is 285 213 2010 kw 1 and 316 209 2010 kw 1 more expensive than hevs and conventional cars our forecast suggests that price breakeven with these vehicles may only be achieved by 2026 and 2032 when 50 and 80 million bevs respectively would have been produced worldwide we estimate that bevs may require until then global learning investments of 100 150 billion which is less than the global subsidies for fossil fuel consumption paid in 2009 these findings suggest that hevs including plug in hevs could become the dominant vehicle technology in the next two decades while bevs may require long term policy support

power struggle dispute and alliance over local resources analyzing democratic decentralization of natural resources through the lenses of africa inland fisheries summary this paper is based on a global review of fisheries decentralization programs co management in sub saharan africa partly challenging the current narrative but in line with experience in other sectors e g forestry the review shows that the outcomes of these decentralizations have not been systematically positive in most cases fisheries co management failed to improve governance but simply altered the distribution of power and responsibility amongst the different stakeholders in this new political landscape poorly designed reforms have enabled a variety of usual and new local actors to advance their own agendas often at the detriment of the direct end users fisherfolk

legitimizing research technology and innovation policies for transformative change combining insights from innovation systems and multi level perspective in a comprehensive failures framework abstract the recent policy debates about orientating research technology and innovation policy towards societal challenges rather than economic growth objectives only call for new lines of argumentation to systematically legitimize policy interventions while the multi level perspective on long term transitions has attracted quite some interest over the past years as a framework for dealing with long term processes of transformative change but the innovation systems approach is still the dominant perspective for devising innovation policy innovation systems approaches stress the importance of improving innovation capabilities of firms and the institutional settings to support them but they are less suited for dealing with the strategic challenges of transforming systems of innovation production and consumption and thus with long term challenges such as climate change or resource depletion it is therefore suggested to consider insights from transition studies more prominently in a policy framework that is based on the innovation systems approach and the associated notion of failures we propose a comprehensive framework that allows legitimizing and devising policies for transformative change that draws on a combination of market failures structural system failures and transformational system failures

picking winners modelling the costs of technology specific climate policy in the u s passenger vehicle sector abstract researchers debate the cost effectiveness of technology specific versus technology neutral climate policies but few quantify the differences using the case of low carbon vehicle technologies in the us passenger vehicle sector ethanol plug in electric and hydrogen we develop a technology adoption simulation model that represents increasing returns to adoption in both financial costs and consumer preferences representing uncertainty through monte carlo analysis we compare the policy costs tonne co2 out to 2050 of i a technology neutral carbon tax ii a somewhat neutral vehicle standard requiring low carbon vehicle sales but allowing competition among technologies and iii technology specific vehicle standards requiring sales of just one technology on average across simulations the carbon tax is twice as cost effective as the best vehicle standard in part because the tax more substantially affects vehicle use rates among the vehicle standards a technology specific standard that selects the right winner plug in electric vehicles is more cost effective than the neutral standard as it more quickly stimulates technology improvement however there is risk in a technology specific approach mistakenly forcing a loser technology hydrogen results in policy costs that are 2 to 5 times higher than other policies results can help policymakers trade off the costs and risks of different climate policy options

does commercialization undermine the benefits of decentralization for local services provision evidence from mexico s urban water and sanitation sector summary decentralization has been promoted as a means to better reflect citizen preferences and improve local services many developing countries decentralized and promoted neoliberal policies such as commercialization simultaneously leaving mayors with the responsibility of improving public services through self financing reforms this study evaluates experiences in three mexican cities to assess whether decentralization and commercialization practices have resulted in improved water and sanitation services it finds that commercialization has increased social conflict surrounding urban services provision and that local institutional constraints further undermine mayor s ability to adopt politically contentious policies the result has been stalled and uneven service improvements

a policy approach to the environmental impacts of technological lock in abstract the broadening spectrum of environmental problems the uncertainty regarding their scale and duration and their possible irreversibility in the context of the growing social preference for environmental quality make it necessary to undertake an ex ante approach to the link between productive activity and environmental quality this link lies in technology and the right approach is to understand how the process of technological change can lead towards sustainability the added value of evolutionary economics in the context of environmental policy resides mainly in the fact that it warns that certain inferior environmental technologies may be locked in to the economic system the results of our model show that it would be advisable to undertake policies expressly aimed at the process of sustainable technological change applying an ex ante precautionary approach in a way that is complementary to the conventional equilibrium oriented environmental policies the nature of these policies and how they might be implemented are questions we will address from this novel approach to the concept of sustainable development in short the main objectives of this paper are to understand more fully the dynamics of the process of technological change its role in sustainable development and to assess the implications of this dynamic approach to techno environmental policy to achieve these goals we have developed an agent based model abm using distributed artificial intelligence dai concepts drawn from the general methodology of social simulation

achieving california s 80 greenhouse gas reduction target in 2050 technology policy and scenario analysis using ca times energy economic systems model the ca times optimization model of the california energy system v1 5 is used to understand how california can meet the 2050 targets for greenhouse gas ghg emissions 80 below 1990 levels this model represents energy supply and demand sectors in california and simulates the technology and resource requirements needed to meet projected energy service demands the model includes assumptions on policy constraints as well as technology and resource costs and availability multiple scenarios are developed to analyze the changes and investments in low carbon electricity generation alternative fuels and advanced vehicles in transportation resource utilization and efficiency improvements across many sectors results show that major energy transformations are needed but that achieving the 80 reduction goal for california is possible at reasonable average carbon reduction cost 9 to 124 tonne co2e at 4 discount rate relative to a baseline scenario availability of low carbon resources such as nuclear power carbon capture and sequestration ccs biofuels wind and solar generation and demand reduction all serve to lower the mitigation costs but ccs is a key technology for achieving the lowest mitigation costs

technology learning for fuel cells an assessment of past and potential cost reductions abstract fuel cells have gained considerable interest as a means to efficiently convert the energy stored in gases like hydrogen and methane into electricity further developing fuel cells in order to reach cost safety and reliability levels at which their widespread use becomes feasible is an essential prerequisite for the potential establishment of a hydrogen economy a major factor currently obviating the extensive use of fuel cells is their relatively high costs at present we estimate these at about 1100 2005 kw for an 80 kw fuel cell system but notice that specific costs vary markedly with fuel cell system power capacity we analyze past fuel cell cost reductions for both individual manufacturers and the global market we determine learning curves with fairly high uncertainty ranges for three different types of fuel cell technology afc pafc and pemfc each manufactured by a different producer for pemfc technology we also calculate a global learning curve characterised by a learning rate of 21 with an error margin of 4 given their respective uncertainties this global learning rate value is in agreement with those we find for different manufacturers in contrast to some other new energy technologies r d still plays a major role in today s fuel cell improvement process and hence probably explains a substantial part of our observed cost reductions the remaining share of these cost reductions derives from learning by doing proper since learning by doing usually involves a learning rate of typically 20 the residual value for pure learning we find for fuel cells is relatively low in an ideal scenario for fuel cell technology we estimate a bottom line for specific 80 kw system manufacturing costs of 95 2005 kw although learning curves observed in the past constitute no guarantee for sustained cost reductions in the future when we assume global total learning at the pace calculated here as the only cost reduction mechanism this ultimate cost figure is reached after a large scale deployment about 10 times doubled with respect to the cumulative installed fuel cell capacity to date

returns to spending on agricultural extension the case of the national agricultural advisory services naads program of uganda the aim of this paper is to assess the direct and indirect impacts of the agricultural extension system of uganda the national agricultural advisory services naads program on household agricultural income data from two rounds of surveys of ugandan rural farm households conducted in 2004 and 2007 as well as different program evaluation methods and model specifications are used to estimate impacts and compute a rate of return the direct and indirect impact of the program is estimated at 37 95 and 27 55 increase in per capita agricultural gross revenue between 2004 and 2007 for households participating directly and indirectly in the program respectively compared to nonparticipants the rate of return on the program s expenditures is estimated at 8 49 the program has been relatively more effective among male headed larger and asset poor households as well as those taking up noncrop high value enterprises and living further away from financial services all weather roads and markets or located in the eastern and northern regions policy implications of the results are drawn

does greater accountability improve the quality of public service delivery evidence from uganda summary it is now widely realized that in many developing countries the low quality of public services and governance can limit the scope for poverty reduction and growth empirical micro level evidence on the scope for improved accountability to help reduce corruption and improve the quality with which critical public services are provided is however limited using a large data set from uganda to address this issue we find that household knowledge on how to report inappropriate behavior by bureaucrats and unsatisfactory quality of services does help to not only reduce the incidence of corruption but is also associated with significant improvements in service quality

balancing rural poverty reduction and citizen participation the contradictions of uganda s decentralization program abstract uganda s ambitious decentralization program is analyzed in terms of a dual mode system of local governance under a technocratic mode conditional funding from the center is earmarked for particular programs but with little local participation in contrast the patronage mode is an elaborate system for local bottom up planning but with limited resources which are largely consumed in administrative costs and political emoluments along with the spoils of a committee system controlling contracts and appointments these resources provide the means for building political alliances and loyalty in the absence of a culture of transparency and civic engagement to assure downward accountability it remains to be seen whether decentralization can promote both efficient service delivery and local empowerment simultaneously

trends in income and price elasticities of transport demand 1850 2010 the purpose of this paper is to estimate trends in income and price elasticities and to offer insights for the future growth in transport use with particular emphasis on the impact of energy and technological transitions the results indicate that income and price elasticities of passenger transport demand in the united kingdom were very large 3 1 and 1 5 respectively in the mid nineteenth century and declined since then in 2010 long run income and price elasticity of aggregate land transport demand were estimated to be 0 8 and 0 6 these trends suggest that future elasticities related to transport demand in developed economies may decline very gradually and in developing economies where elasticities are often larger they will probably decline more rapidly as the economies develop because of the declining trends in elasticities future energy and technological transitions are not likely to generate the growth rates in energy consumption that occurred following transitions in the nineteenth century nevertheless energy and technological transitions such as the car and the airplane appear to have delayed and probably will delay declining trends in income and price elasticity of aggregate land transport demand

improving behavioral realism in hybrid energy economy models using discrete choice studies of personal transportation decisions hybrid energy economy models combine top down and bottom up approaches to explore behaviorally realistic responses to technology focused policies this research uses empirically derived discrete choice models to inform key behavioral parameters in cims a hybrid model the discrete choice models are estimated for vehicle and commuting decisions from a survey of 1150 canadians with the choice models integrated into cims we simulate carbon taxes gasoline vehicle disincentives and single occupancy vehicle disincentives to show how different policy levers can motivate technological change we also use the empirical basis for the choice models to portray uncertainty in technological change costs and emissions

rural livelihoods and poverty reduction strategies in four african countries this paper compares and contrasts rural livelihoods in uganda kenya tanzania and malawi with a view to informing rural poverty reduction policies within poverty reduction strategy plans prsps low household incomes in rural areas of all countries are associated with low land and livestock holdings high reliance on food crop agriculture and low monetisation of the rural economy these adverse factors are in some instances made more difficult by land sub division at inheritance declining civil security in rural areas deteriorating access to proper agronomic advice and inputs and predatory taxation by decentralised district councils better off households are distinguished by virtuous spirals of accumulation typically involving diverse livestock ownership engagement in non farm self employment and diversity of on farm and non farm income sources lessons for prsps centre on the creation of a facilitating rather than blocking public sector environment for the multiplication of non farm enterprises seeking creative solutions to the spread of technical advice to farmers and examining critically the necessity for and impact of tax revenue collection by district councils on rural incomes and enterprise

blending top down federalism with bottom up engagement to reduce inequality in ethiopia donors increasingly fund interventions to counteract inequality in developing countries where they fear it can foment instability and undermine nation building efforts to succeed aid relies on the principle of upward accountability to donors but federalism shifts the accountability of subnational officials downward to regional and local voters what happens when aid agencies fund anti inequality programs in federal countries does federalism undermine aid does aid undermine federalism or can the political and fiscal relations that define a federal system resolve the contradiction internally this study explores this paradox via the promotion of basic services program in ethiopia the largest donor financed investment program in the world using an original panel database comprising the universe of ethiopian woredas districts the study finds that horizontal geographic inequality decreased substantially donor financed block grants to woredas increased the availability of primary education and health care services in the bottom 20 percent of woredas weaker evidence from household surveys suggests that vertical inequality across wealth groups within woredas also declined implying that individuals from the poorest households benefit disproportionately from increasing access to and utilization of such services the evidence suggests that by combining strong upward accountability over public investment with extensive citizen engagement on local issues ethiopia s federal system resolves the instrumental dissonance posed by aid funded programs to combat inequality in a federation

the gold standard in theory and history barry eichengreen ed new york methuen 1985 pp viii 280 11 95 isbn 0 416 39100 9

right target wrong mechanism agricultural modernization and poverty reduction in uganda summary household consumption surveys suggest that the downward trend in rural poverty indicators recorded in uganda during the 1990s has been reversed since 2000 this paper examines the ugandan government s strategy to reduce rural poverty the plan for modernization of agriculture pma it argues that while there appear few better choices of target for the pma than to improve incomes of the rural poor through increased agricultural productivity emphasis on decentralization as a mechanism for poverty reduction is misplaced in the current political context of uganda the paper considers what alternative mechanisms might better deliver reductions in rural poverty

making reform work institutions dispositions and the improving health of bangladesh we examine whether local governance can improve social development empirically using good and bad cases of public health outcomes in bangladesh we explore the institutional underpinnings of service provision digging down beneath the rules of the game to analyze the beliefs understandings and dispositions that drive social behavior changes in deep social attitudes led to improvements in social indicators regional variation in health outcomes is explained by the presence or absence of a dense web of relationships that enmeshed reformers in local systems of authority and legitimacy strengthening their actions and making local society more susceptible to change

did the united states transmit the great depression to the rest of the world this paper challenges the commonly held belief that the great depression was transmitted from the united states to the rest of the world the well known argument by milton friedman and anna schwartz 1963 is used as the reference point i argue that their description although intuitively plausible does not correspond well with the data during the depression years and afterwards there was an extensive analysis of the international financial situation a comprehensive analysis was provided by ragnar nurkse 1944 earlier writings do not in particular indict the united states but rather also blame france and several other countries for the financial crisis recent literature that deemphasize the role of the united states include peter temin 1976 and knut borchardt 1982 friedman and schwartz do not get into any lengthy international analysis yet draw far reaching conclusions about the united states and the rest of the world this paper does not attempt to estimate the relative roles of french gold accumulations the illiquidity of loans to germany the austrian banking crisis the british devaluation etc rather the analysis is confined to evaluating whether the united states transmitted the depression to the rest of the world through the channels discussed by friedman and schwartz i the friedman schwartz argument and how it can be evaluated

the neighbor effect simulating dynamics in consumer preferences for new vehicle technologies abstract understanding consumer behaviour is essential in designing policies that efficiently increase the uptake of clean technologies over the long run expert opinion or qualitative market analyses have tended to be the sources of this information however greater scrutiny on governments increasingly demands the use of reliable and credible evidence to support policy decisions while discrete choice research and modeling techniques have been applied to estimate consumer preferences for technologies these methods often assume static preferences this study builds on the application of discrete choice research and modeling to capture dynamics in consumer preferences we estimate canadians preferences for new vehicle technologies under different market assumptions using responses from two national surveys focused on hybrid gas electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles the results support the relevance of a range of vehicle attributes beyond the purchase price in shaping consumer preferences towards clean vehicle technologies they also corroborate our hypothesis that the degree of market penetration of clean vehicle technologies is an influence on people s preferences the neighbor effect finally our results provide behavioural parameters for the energy economy model cims which we use here to show the importance of including consumer preference dynamics when setting policies to encourage the uptake of clean technologies

aid growth and devolution summary this paper examines whether the degree of fiscal decentralization in aid receiving countries matters in explaining aid effectiveness the decentralization theorem predicts that the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness since local decision makers are better informed about local needs thereby decentralization may also have reverse effects e g through coordination problems excessive regulation administrative costs and local capture we use panel data for up to 60 countries and find that aid contributes to economic growth in centralized developing economies whereas it is less effective or even harmful in decentralized countries the cases of indonesia the philippines and uganda support our findings our results imply that donor countries should carefully consider how the two development instruments foreign aid and decentralization interact

the politics of staying poor exploring the political space for poverty reduction in uganda summary despite claims that uganda s recent success in poverty reduction has been significantly related to getting the politics right there are concerns that the poorest may not have benefited from this form of poverty reduction or the types of politics that have helped shape it employing the analytical framework of political space reveals that although some of the poorest groups are represented within the political system political discourse reveals a strong bias toward the economically active leaving the poorest excluded from poverty programs significantly there is an increasing divergence between the regime s political project of modernization and the international poverty agenda with important implications for the poorest