credit constraints and the phenomenon of child labor abstract this paper develops an overlapping generations general equilibrium model where inefficient child labor arises due to credit constraints it derives a positive relationship between inequality in the distribution of income and the incidence of child labor looking at policy implications it shows how trade sanctions against countries using child labor may fail to reduce the incidence of child labor it discusses some alternative policies to reduce the incidence of child labor

remittance effects on child labour evidence from burkina faso abstractthis article explores the effects of remittance receipt on child labour in an african context we focus on burkina faso a country with a high prevalence of child labour and a high rate of migration given the complex relationship between remittance receipt and household time allocation decisions we instrument remittances using economic conditions in remittance sending countries and explore heterogeneous effects across different types of potential remitters while remittances have no significant effect on child labour on average transfers reduce child labour in long term migrant households for whom the disruptive effect of migration is no longer felt we find no gender difference but remittances seem to affect mainly the labour market participation of younger children

barriers to energy efficiency a comparison across the german commercial and services sector abstract based on a large sample for the german commercial and services sector this paper econometrically assesses the relevance of various types of barriers to energy efficiency at the sectoral level and across fifteen sub sectors the results at the level of entire sectors suggest that the lack of information about energy consumption patterns and about energy efficiency measures lack of staff time priority setting within organizations and in particular the investor user dilemma are all relevant barriers allowing for sector specific differences in the relevance of these individual barriers yields a more heterogeneous picture the numbers and types of relevant barriers vary across sub sectors and the majority of sub sectors are subject to relatively few barriers the statistically most significant barriers are found for the sub sector of public administrations these findings are robust independent of whether the definition of an organization s energy efficiency performance includes only measures that have actually been realized or also those that are being planned for planned projects however organizations appear to underestimate internal priority setting as a barrier to energy efficiency

child labor and agricultural shocks this paper examines the relationship between household income shocks and child labor in particular we investigate the extent to which transitory income shocks lead to increases in child labor and whether household asset holdings mitigate the effects of these shocks using data from a household panel survey in tanzania we find that both relationships are significant we investigate mechanisms that could account for these results including buffer stocks and borrowing

white certificate schemes economic analysis and interactions with the eu ets this paper examines the economic environmental and distributional impacts of an idealised tradable white certificate twc scheme and shows how the impacts are modified when the scheme operates in parallel with the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets it uses simple graphical techniques to assess whether a twc scheme will increase decrease or have an ambiguous effect on electricity demand wholesale and retail electricity prices carbon emissions and investment in energy efficiency paying particular attention to the interpretation of additionality

bridging the industrial energy efficiency gap assessing the evidence from the italian white certificate scheme the italian white certificate scheme is the main national policy instrument to incentivise energy efficiency of the industrial sector with savings from white certificates amounting to 2 of italy s 2012 primary energy consumption the mechanism sets binding energy saving targets on electricity and gas distributors with at least 50 000 clients and includes a voluntary opt in model for participation from other parties this paper investigates and assesses the elements of the scheme that help overcome several barriers to deliver industrial energy efficiency results from a survey conducted among leading experts indicate that the italian system provides a strong financial incentive to energy efficiency investments covering a significant share of investment costs and thus reducing payback time moreover the scheme fosters the development of energy service companies escos which are key to developing installing and arranging finance for projects on the ground in conjunction with other policies the mechanism also raises awareness of energy efficiency investment opportunities thus helping overcome the market failure of insufficient information core challenges remain including tackling regulatory uncertainty and improving access to finance

child labor and schooling responses to anticipated income in south africa abstract forward looking unconstrained households make child labor and schooling decisions considering their permanent income and weighing the relative returns to child time in various potential activities the timing of anticipated changes in income should have no effect on child labor and schooling in a setting where households can borrow against permanent income however this study documents large increases in schooling attendance and declines in total hours worked when black south african families become eligible for fully anticipatable social pension income as an explanation the data are most consistent with liquidity constraints for black elder males forcing rural families into less schooling for boys than they would choose absent the constraint perhaps because of schooling costs

the economics of energy service contracts energy service contracting can provide a cost effective route to overcoming barriers to energy efficiency energy service contracts allow the client to reduce operating costs transfer risk and concentrate attention on core activities however the energy services model may only be appropriate for a subset of energy services and energy using organisations a challenge for both business strategy and public policy is to identify those situations in which energy service contracting is most likely to be appropriate and the conditions under which it is most likely to succeed energy service contracting is a form of outsourcing it will only be chosen where the expected reduction in the production cost of supplying energy services can more than offset the transaction cost of negotiating and managing the relationship with the energy service provider production costs will be determined by a combination of the physical characteristics of the energy system and the technical efficiency of the relevant organisational arrangements including economies of scale and specialisation transaction costs in turn will be determined by the complexity of the energy service the specificity of the investments made by the contractor the competitiveness of the energy services market and the relevant legal financial and regulatory rules this paper develops these ideas into a general framework that may be used to assess the feasibility of energy service contracting in different circumstances the framework leads to a number of hypotheses that are suitable for empirical test

where to place the saving obligation energy end users or suppliers abstract obligations to save energy differentiate among other features by obliged parties these are obligations on energy suppliers and energy end users supplier obligations have been introduced in north america europe and australia under supplier obligations energy suppliers have to comply with mandatory energy saving targets and thus they implement directly or via third parties energy efficiency projects on their clients premises or they decide to trade certified project savings if this option is envisaged by their obligation scheme in several emerging schemes such as the uk carbon reduction commitment crc energy efficiency scheme the tokyo emission trading scheme or the perform achieve and trade pat scheme in india the obligation to reduce energy consumption is placed on large end users directly and end users are allowed to trade emissions allowances or energy saving certificates the paper starts with presenting these two conceptually different ways for introducing energy saving obligations then it analyses advantages and disadvantages of end users obligations compared to suppliers obligations the preliminary conclusion of the paper is that supplier obligations seem to be well suited for the residential sector but end user saving obligations may offer advantages when it comes to the industrial and commercial sectors

how much market do market based instruments create an analysis for the case of white certificates in the context of economic instruments for more energy efficiency and climate protection tradable certificates have been investigated for renewable energy and for a number of emissions in contrast tradable energy efficiency or white certificates have only lately been considered as a market based tool to foster energy efficiency as compared to standards and labelling for example theoretically there is little doubt about the advantages in practice however some fundamental problems arise critical issues are the design of an efficient artificial market for white certificates its compatibility with the european emissions trading system the identification of a suitable target group for an energy efficiency obligation and the measurement of energy savings as compared to a reference use of energy we use the theoretical framework of transaction cost economics to elaborate these issues we conclude that transaction costs and investment specificity will restrict markets for white certificates in practise long term contracts rather than spot trade will be the prevailing form of governance for energy efficiency investments

the impact of income and non income shocks on child labor evidence from a panel survey of tanzania summary this paper investigates the impact of income and non income shocks on child labor using a model in which the household maximizes utility from consumption as well as human capital development of the child we also investigate if access to credit and household assets act as buffers against transitory shocks our results indicate significant effects of agricultural shocks on the child s overall work hours and agricultural work hours with higher effects for boys crop shocks also have significant adverse effects on school attendance with girls experiencing a more than 70 increase in the probability of quitting schooling the results also indicate that access to a bank account has a buffering effect on the impact of shocks on child hunger having a bank account reduces both male child labor and household work hours of a girl child while assets reduce working hours of girls we do not find it having a significant effect on boys we also do not see assets to act as a buffer against shocks

markets for energy efficiency exploring the implications of an eu wide tradable white certificate scheme recent developments in european energy policy reveal an increasing interest in implementing the so called tradable white certificate twc schemes to improve energy efficiency based on three evaluation criteria cost effectiveness environmental effectiveness and distributional equity this paper analyses the implications of implementing a european wide twc scheme targeting the household and commercial sectors using a bottom up model quantitative results show significant cost effective potentials for improvements ca 1400 twh in cumulative energy savings by 2020 with the household sector gas and space heating representing most of the twc supply in terms of eligible sector fuel and energy service demand respectively if a single market price of negative externalities is considered a societal costeffective potential of energy savings above 30 compared to the baseline is observed in environmental terms the resulting greenhouse gas emission reductions are around 200mt co2 eq by 2010 representing nearly 60 of the eu kyoto target from the qualitative perspective several embedded ancillary benefits are identified e g employment generation improved comfort level reduced fuel poverty security of energy supply whereas an eu wide twc increases liquidity and reduces the risks ofmarket power autarky compliance strategies may be expected in order to capture co benefits nationally cross subsidies could occur due to investment recovery mechanisms and there is a risk that effects may be regressive for low income households assumptions undertaken by the modelling approach strongly indicate that high effectiveness of other policy instruments is needed for an eu wide twc scheme to be cost effective less

is child labor inefficient we build a model of child labor and study its implications for welfare we assume that there is a trade off between child labor and the accumulation of human capital even if parents are altruistic and child labor is socially inefficient it may arise in equilibrium because parents fail to fully internalize its negative effects this occurs when bequests are zero or when capital markets are imperfect we also study the effects of a simple ban on child labor and derive conditions under which it may be pareto improving in general equilibrium we show that the implications of child labor for fertility are ambiguous

market imperfections and child labor summary this article looks into the relationship between market imperfections and child labor a rural household model shows that households with medium sized plots may increase child labor when the labor market improves contrary to the others we estimate the relationship between child labor and various measures of market imperfections in madagascar controlling for a large set of village characteristics and district fixed effects on average market imperfections increase child labor but the effects are heterogenous by land ownership and consistent with the model an improvement of markets is associated to a decrease in child labor which is suggestive of new policies to fight against child labor

energy supplier obligations and white certificate schemes comparative analysis of experiences in the european union abstract a number of member states of the european union eu have introduced market based policy portfolios based on quantified energy savings obligations on energy distributors or suppliers possibly coupled with certification of project based energy savings via white certificates and the option to trade the certificates or obligations the paper provides an up to date review and analysis of results to date of white certificate schemes in the eu in the eu supplier obligations and white certificate schemes have delivered larger savings than originally expected with obliged companies exceeding targets and in some cases at cost below what policy makers have anticipated supplier obligations foster the uptake of standardised energy efficiency actions often targeting smaller energy users residential sector lowering the transaction costs and contributing to market transformation the role of certificate trading is more ambiguous trading can bring benefits where the target is set sufficiently high with respect to the energy saving potential in the sectors covered theoretically trading may be better suited for broader systems with comprehensive coverage but even in smaller schemes trading may reduce the transaction costs of compliance for obliged actors without sufficient expertise on end use energy efficiency yet trading increases the administrative cost ratio of energy saving obligations

peasant household behaviour with missing markets some paradoxes explained a model of peasant household behavior under varying degrees of household specific food and labor market failures is constructed to show that these structural features can explain several well known patterns of peasant response which have often been attributed to peculiar motives presumed specific to peasants the model explains sluggish response to cash crops prices and high instability in perceived food and labor scarcities the key role of manufactured consumer goods prices in stimulating peasants effort in cash crops production the effectiveness of taxation as opposed to incentives in stimulating cash crops production and the key role of technological change in food production to enhance cash crop production results are obtained analytically in the case of one market failure and by numerical simulation with more than one

risk financial markets and human capital in a developing country this paper explores the link between financial market incompleteness and human capital accumulation we examine how child school attendance responds to seasonal fluctuations in the income of agrarian households using panel data from rural india to pinpoint market imperfections we study responses to aggregate and idiosyncratic as well as to anticipated and unanticipated income shocks our main finding is that seasonal fluctuations in school attendance are a form of self insurance but one which does not result in a substantial loss of human capital on average

the lack of loan aversion among canadian high school students evidence is presented on the factors that influence take up for postsecondary education financing loans or grants for high school students results show several factors influence the students decisions about taking loans or grants but the most prominent influence was the price of educational subsidy a total of 1 248 high school students across canada participated prices for the grants and loans overlapped substantially in order to more clearly distinguish the impact of loan aversion on the decision to take up financial assistance to pursue pse the study featured paid experimental decisions ranging from 25 to 700 in cash and from 500 to 4 000 in education financing a numeracy assessment a student survey and a parental telephone survey the targeted sample included at risk high school students low ses levels first nations and first generation students participants were marginally sensitive to the form of financing grant or loan with no evidence of systematic loan aversion being detected resume notre etude experimentale montre que plusieurs facteurs influencent les decisions des etudiants au sujet de prendre des prets et ou d accepter des bourses pour financer leurs etudes par ailleurs l influence la plus importante est le prix en dollars des subventions a l education 1 248 eleves canadiens du secondaire ont participe a l etude l etude a comporte des decisions experimentales payees de 25 a 700 en especes et de 500 a 4 000 en financement de leur education une evaluation de leur niveau de numeratie une enquete aupres des etudiants et un sondage telephonique parental l echantillon cible inclus les eleves a risque du secondaire du milieu socioeconomique faible les premieres nations et les etudiants de premiere generation les decisions binaires remunerees impliquant un arbitrage entre des dollars et divers types d aide financiere nous ont permis de generer un cout par dollar du financement de l education bourses prets melanges de prets et de bourses les couts pour les bourses et pour les prets se chevauchent suffisamment pour permettre de distinguer l existence d une aversion au pret d etudes les participants ont ete legerement influences par la forme de financement subvention ou pret mais aucune preuve d aversion pour les prets n a ete decelee

will trade sanctions reduce child labour the role of credit markets abstract we examine the interaction between credit markets trade sanctions and the incidence of child labour in a two good two period model with unequally wealthy households both poverty and poor education quality inter alia are important determinants of child labour the incidence of child labour decreases as we move from the case of borrowing constraints to the case in which poor households can borrow freely from rich ones and then to the case of perfect international credit markets trade sanctions can increase child labour especially among poor households a possibility that decreases as their access to credit improves

children and their parents labor supply evidence from exogenous variation in family size although theoretical models of labor supply and the family are well developed there are few credible estimates of key empirical relationships in the work family nexus this study uses a new instrumental variable the sex composition of the first two births in families with at least two children to estimate the effect of additional children on parents labor supply in the united states instrumental variables estimates using the sex mix are substantial but smaller than the corresponding ordinary least squares ols estimates moreover unlike the ols estimates the female labor supply effects estimated using sex mix instruments appear to be absent among more educated women and women with high wage husbands we also find that married women who have a third child reduce their labor supply by as much as women in the full sample while there is no relationship between wives child bearing and husbands labor supply excerpt

school attendance child labor and local labor market fluctuations in urban brazil abstract while the income poverty effect on child labor is long established as a main determinant of child labor there is a growing body of literature considering the pull of the labor market this paper demonstrates that after controlling for household characteristics employment rates for 14 16 year old boys and girls in urban brazil increase as local labor market opportunities improve children are also more likely to leave school as local labor market conditions become more favorable the relationship between children s schooling and work and local labor market conditions changes in years of crisis compared to other years the effects of macroeconomic fluctuations on children s school and work behavior are examined with particular focus on whether the income effect or substitution effect dominates as macroeconomic conditions change over time the study uses data from the pesquisa nacional amostra de domicilios a large household survey that is conducted almost annually by the ibge we use variation in the urban areas of 25 states over 12 years to identify the aggregate effects

child labor and household land holding theory and empirical evidence from zimbabwe summary the relationship between rural household productive assets and child labor in developing countries is complex some empirical evidence shows that child labor tends to increase as land holding increases or there is an inverted u shaped curve relationship between the probability of putting children to work and land holding this paper shows that the relationship between use of children as laborers and land holding is nuanced child labor generally decreases as per capita land holding increases but there can be an upward bump in the relationship between child labor and landholding near the middle of the range of land per capita the bump can be explained theoretically by the relationship between the marginal productivity of a child worker on the farm and the marginal value placed on his her education at different levels of wealth this pattern is repeated in three surveys conducted in zimbabwe in 2001 2007 8 and 2010 11 from the perspective of policy making the policy maker should be alerted that the programs to promote school retention should not necessarily focus only on the poorest households in rural areas there is a high probability that middle wealth households put their children to work and this probability may change by some other factors such as gender of child and agro ecological conditions

the value and allocation of time in rural botswana abstract time use data indicate that there is substantial surplus labor in rural areas of botswana with the incidence of underutilization varying by age sex and asset position time allocations are influenced by economic incentives i e income and productivity effects the more productive capital the household has the more productive work its members perform particularly its children the positive productivity effect of capital on economic work somewhat outweighs its negative income effect time allocations also are constrained by a culturally determined division of labor by age and sex which however shows some flexibility at the margin

the energy efficiency gap what does it mean abstract as renewed attention has been given by policy makers to energy conservation issues it has frequently been asserted that an energy efficiency gap exists between actual and optimal energy use the critical questions is how to define the optimal level of energy efficiency this paper seeks to disentangle some confusing strands of argument that are frequently brought to bear on this question by identifying the major conceptual issues that determine the set of feasible answers we identify five separate and distinct notions of optimality the economists economic potential the technologists economic potential hypothetical potential the narrow social optimum and the true social optimum each of these has associated with it a corresponding definition of the energy efficiency gap our analysis demonstrates that necessary preconditions for identifying the right measure of the energy efficiency gap include understanding and disentangling market failure and non market failure explanations for the gradual diffusion of energy efficient technologies

an insight into the italian chemical sector how to make it green and efficient abstract the present research moves from the consideration that the implementation and the dissemination of circular economy processes is a hotspot in european ecosystem management and that eu countries must converge towards the same targets considering the relevance of chemical sector economic and environmental impact we aim at unveiling the economic and institutional determinants of sectoral performances in terms of circular economy and resource efficiency by means an oecd procedure we built a circular economy index for the chemical sector following a panel data model has been applied on 20 italian regions in order to test two economic hypotheses and a politico institutional one this allowed us to capture the features most likely to affect circular performances within the regions the findings reveal that regional socio economic background plays a fundamental role in improving firm performance level while institutions and sectoral economic dynamic are not strong flywheel of circular economy

a multi criteria evaluation framework for tradable white certificate schemes recent years have witnessed regained political momentum on energy efficiency and interest in establishing markets is growing as a result tradable white certificate twc schemes of differing design have been implemented in great britain italy and france much attention is being paid to justifying and evaluating such schemes in this paper we develop and apply a multi criteria framework for evaluating twc schemes an approach that attempts to cover their individual design features a broad evaluation is conducted regarding energy saving and environmental effectiveness economic efficiency cost effectiveness transaction costs political feasibility administrative burden and technical change the results show the design and performance of twc schemes to be case and context specific and generalisations are thus inappropriate this evaluation supports the cost effectiveness modelled for the british scheme and the assumption that a twc scheme is an economically efficient policy instrument for the other more complex twc schemes more data and experience are needed to judge their ex post merit on the whole the proposed multi criteria evaluation requires considerable data and complementary methods however the framework improves the understanding of the broad effects and attributes of twc schemes it deals with various empirical and normative aspects that can be applied in their evaluation

child labor and household wealth theory and empirical evidence of an inverted u some studies on child labor have shown that at the level of the household greater land wealth leads to higher child labor thereby casting doubt on the hypothesis that child labor is caused by poverty this paper argues that the missing ingredient may be an explicit modeling of the labor market we develop a simple model which suggests the possibility of an inverted u relationship between land holdings and child labor using a unique data set that has child labor hours it is found that controlling for child household and village characteristics the turning point beyond which more land leads to a decline in child labor occurs around 4 ac of land per household c 2009 published by elsevier b v