politics growth and inequality in rural china does it pay to join the party abstract economic reform is often constrained because rank and file bureaucrats responsible for implementation have vested interests that oppose change drawing on an unusual longitudinal survey data set for a representative rural county in northern china we show an alternative positive scenario consistent with the presence of an implicit performance based incentive contract that ties the household incomes of local officials to market liberalization increases in consumer demand and the provision of local public goods the mechanisms appear to be tolerated as the fruits of growth are shared fairly equitably thus allowing implementation of a politically and economically self reinforcing reform process

an engineering economic approach to estimating the price elasticity of residential electricity demand abstract this paper develops separate methods for projecting short and long run electricity demand the short run econometric analysis accounts explicitly for weather sensitive appliances and distinguishes these from non weather sensitive appliances the long run analysis combines the econometric approach with an engineering accounting approach unlike pure econometric approaches it is able to identify the effect of sharp price increases on electricity demand it treats total price elasticity as the sum of a utilization elasticity and a long run stock adjustment using utility specific data we obtain elasticity estimates at the low end of the range of previous estimates

more shock than therapy market transition employment and income in russia 1991 1995 sixteen predictions from market transition theory are assessed using survey data on employment earnings and income in russia during the first five years of market reform although the private sector has grown self employment is still rare incomes are down and unemployment is up a distended income distribution reflects unprecedented income inequality distinctive features of late soviet era stratification persist low returns to education a gender gap in earnings and low earnings among professionals the russian market transition offers more opportunity in trade consumer services and speculation and less in manufacturing than do other emerging makets this corresponds to merchat capitalism and contradicts the predictions of market transition theory everything the communists told us about communism was a lie everything they told us about capitalism turns out to be true popular russian joke circa 1996

the market transition debate toward a synthesis in his seminal 1989 article a theory of market transition victor nee offered a new theory of social inequality and applied it to the study of the problem of transition from state socialist redistributive economy to market capitalism nee claimed that the emergence of markets in state socialist redistributive economies had unexpected consequences the most privileged stratum or class of state socialism the redistributors lost some of their privilege while those at the bottom of the state socialist hierarchy the direct producers benefited for earlier formulations see szelenyi and konrad 1969 szelenyi 1978 and whyte 1984 as a result inequality as measured by income or access to scarce goods was reduced nee s theory identified the mechanisms by which markets generated equality under redistributive systems if wages are not administratively set but established by transactive relations then producers are likely to have more power market power if markets operate then human capital is likely to be rewarded more while political loyalty is likely to matter less market incentive if there are markets in a redistributive economy then entrepreneurship becomes an alternative avenue of socioeconomic mobility market opportunity nee 1989 data collected in 1985 in rural china offered support to the theory of market transition between 1977 and 1985 overall income inequalities in china declined the income gap between urban residents and farmers shrank the income gap in the countryside between peasants and cadres also narrowed the decline of inequality arguably was the result of deregulation of state policies in agriculture after 1977 chinese peasants received land their production targets were less strictly regulated by planners and they were allowed to bring their produce to urban markets as

regional variation in earnings inequality in reform era urban china this article studies the regional variation in earnings inequality in contemporary urban china focusing on the relationship between the pace of economic reforms and earning determination through

household production and the short and long run demand for electricity this paper deals with the residential demand for electricity a theoretical model is formulated which is based on intertemporal optimization in a household production context the model is estimated using a dynamic version of the pls partial least squares approach most important determinants of electricity consumption are the prices of appliances and of those goods which can either be purchased in the market or produced at home the dynamic interrelationship between capital stock and electricity consumption is also an important element of the estimated model

chinese villages and townships as industrial corporations ownership governance and market discipline1 public firms in a reforming socialist economy face two problems the old soft budget constraint syndrome and new principal agent problems china s township village government owned enterprises tves outperform state owned enterprises soes in growth rate and productivity three explanations are proposed in the literature 1 tves represent informal or ambiguous private property rights which are most efficient in partial reform 2 the small size and scale of township village governments as industrial corporations allows officials to monitor tves directly and to limit their wherewithal for cross subsidizing 3 strict market disciplines facing tves render indirect market monitoring to mitigate agency problems effectively analyses of jiangyin data show that a while both superior to local soes village and township enterprises share similar productivity and b the scale of township village corporations slightly increases productivity i conclude that local state corporatism should be revised to inc

time series analysis applied to construct us natural gas price functions for groups of states the study of natural gas markets took a considerably new direction after the liberalization of the natural gas markets during the early 1990s as a result several problems and research opportunities arose for those studying the natural gas supply chain particularly the marketing operations consequently various studies have been undertaken about the econometrics of natural gas several models have been developed and used for different purposes from descriptive analysis to practical applications such as price and consumption forecasting in this work we address the problem of finding a pooled regression formula relating the monthly figures of price and consumption volumes for each state of the united states during the last twenty years the model thus obtained is used as the basis for the development of two methods aimed at classifying the states into groups sharing a similar price consumption relationship a dendrogram application and an heuristic algorithm the details and further applications of these grouping techniques are discussed along with the ultimate purpose of using this pooled regression model to validate data employed in the stochastic optimization problem studied by the authors

politics and markets dual transformations the articles published in this issue of the journal help advance the debate on market reform in former socialist states in our comment besides dealing with data analysis issues we suggest several ways to improve the level of debate about substantive issues these suggestions include more attention to politics including path dependence and more attention to middle level generalizations from other developing market societies

insecure property rights and government ownership of firms we develop a theory of the ownership of firms in an environment without secure property rights against state encroachment private ownership leads to excessive revenue hiding and state ownership i e national government ownership fails to provide incentives for managers and local governments in a credible way because local government ownership integrates local government activities and business activities local government may better serve the interests of the national government and thus local government ownership may credibly limit state predation increase local public goods provision and reduce costly revenue hiding we use our theory to interpret the relative success of local government owned firms during china s transition to a market economy

regional variations in us consumer response to price changes in home heating fuels the northeast and the south 1987 regional variations in us consumer response to price changes in home heating fuels the northeast and the south applied economics vol 19 no 9 pp 1261 1268

economic transformation and income inequality in urban china evidence from panel data using panel data of 4 730 urban residents drawn from 20 cities in china this article examines changes in income determinants between the prereform and reform eras to guide this empirical study a conceptual model is developed that emphasizes the coevolution of politics and markets to synthesize theoretical ideas in the recent debate on the transformation of state socialist societies the findings show significant changes in returns to education and in the rise of private hybrid firms in the reform era there is also strong evidence of institutional persistence in returns to positional power and in the organizational hierarchy these findings reveal multifaceted processes of transformation that call for more sophisticated theoretical models and in depth institutional analyses

natural gas price elasticities variations by region and by sector in the usa abstract this article s primary objective is to estimate the own price and cross price elasticities of demand for natural gas in the residential commercial and industrial sectors by doe region in the usa a simultaneous equations model was developed and its reduced form was employed for natural gas consumption demand elasticity estimation in conjuction with the instrumental price variables data from 1967 to 1978 were used in the estimation but the 1973 oil embargo effect was separated with the use of a dummy variable the demand for natural gas was much more price elastic in the long run than in the short run and the industrial sector was more less price sensitive than others however there were significant interregional and intersectoral variations among the elasticities estimated

a model of residential demand for electricity using a national household sample abstract using a three equation model demand price appliance stock index and a current national household data set this study develops partial and total elasticity estimates for the usa partial elasticities are 0 102 for income and 0 193 for price while total elasticities are 0 410 for income and 1 403 for price

income and price elasticities of energy consumption in egypt a time series analysis abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide empirical estimates of the price and income elasticities of energy consumption in egypt it fills an important gap since policy discussion of energy pricing issues has so far been based more on assumptions than on hard evidence the paper shows that the real relative price of energy has been falling steadily since 1972 while per capita energy consumption rose some 50 over the decade 1972 81 evidence produced in this exercise indicates quite clearly that price and income elasticities of energy consumption are significantly much lower than was generally believed

political connections and entrepreneurial investment evidence from china s transition economy abstract recent literature in entrepreneurship suggests that market and legal institutions matter for entrepreneurial investment yet prior studies have focused on the role of formal institutions building on new institutional theory and political connections literature this study aims to evaluate the role of political connections in entrepreneurial reinvestment in less developed and transition economies the purpose of this paper is threefold first it aims to demonstrate systematically how political connections affect entrepreneurial reinvestment second it applies this relationship to a subsample group i e small and medium enterprises smes in order to empirically test whether political connections are more beneficial for large firms or smes third it demonstrates that political connections substitute for rather than complement formal market and legal institutions the empirical test uses a nationally representative sample of entrepreneurial firms from china s transition economy

implementation in differential information economies abstract we consider the problem of implementation of social choice correspondences in differential information economies we provide necessary conditions for implementation and slightly stronger conditions which are sufficient to guarantee implementation

on the demand for natural gas in urban china abstract using a set of unbalanced panel data for chinese s cities during the period of 2006 2009 this study aims to estimate the price and income elasticities of residential demand for natural gas natural gas consumption is specified as a function of its own price substitute prices urban wages and other supply climate and housing characteristics using a feasible generalised least squares fgls technique which controls for panel heteroskedasticity and panel correlation we find that natural gas consumption is price elastic and income inelastic when other covariates e g the supply of natural gas pipeline and heating degree days are controlled in addition there are large variations in demand behaviours across china s regions there is a substantial income effect on demand for natural gas in southern china whereas the northern regions are found to have a higher price effect in addition the substitution effect between coal and natural gas is significant in north china but is not significant in south china these findings have several important policy implications for natural gas pricing and supply cost analysis in the context of china

tightening up declining class mobility during russia s market transition this study analyzes intergenerational occupational mobility in late soviet and post soviet russia using data from six surveys belying claims that class differences did not matter in the soviet union the authors find that social origin did affect occupational opportunity during russia s soviet period but the transition from state socialism to a market economy tightened the link between origins and destinations men and women were equally constrained by their social origin even though they faced significantly different opportunity structures in both periods as the economic transformation took hold fewer russians experienced upward mobility and more were downwardly mobile political and economic transition not the demographic replacement of retiring cohorts by younger ones strengthened the association between origins and destinations career mobility during the 1990s took the form of a regression toward origins as workers who had the most upward mobility during the soviet era lost the most in the tr

market transition industrialization and social mobility trends in postrevolution china1 this study examines trends in intergenerational class mobility in china by analyzing six comparable nationally representative surveys between 1996 and 2012 defying a simplistic unidirectional ac

are cadre offspring in the fast lane evidence from the labour market for college graduates in china this paper studies the impact of having a cadre parent on the labour market performance and channels of the intergenerational transference using a recent data set we find that college graduates w

china s natural gas consumption and subsidies from a sector perspective newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1305 18257 national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013

structural changes in residential energy demand abstract residential energy consumers in the usa faced several demand shocks in the 1970s and 1980s these included price rises engineered by the organization of petroleum exporting countries natural gas curtailments shortages of petroleum products and deregulation of energy markets one result of these events has been structural change in the demand for electricity and petroleum by residential consumers demand functions are now more responsive to price changes and consumers react more quickly in adjusting their capital stocks to new levels

price sensitivity of residential energy consumption in norway abstract the main aim of this paper is to test the stability of the results of a model which focus on the relationship between the choice of heating equipment and the residential energy consumption the results for the income and energy price variables are of special interest stability in the time dimension is tested by applying the model on micro data for each of the years 1993 1995 the parameter estimates are stable within a 95 confidence interval however the estimated impact of the energy price variable on energy consumption was considerably weaker in 1994 than in 1993 and 1995 the results for two different income groups in the pooled data set are also subject to stability testing the energy price sensitivity in residential energy consumption is found to be higher for high income households than for low income households

lifeline electricity rates as an income transfer device the lifeline electricity rates are presumed to be inefficient because they violate optimal pricing principles but they may also be an ineffective and inequitable way to transfer assistance to low income households evidence is presented to challenge the assumption that simple demand changes will permit high consuming households to subsidize low income users social security food stamps and other social programs are better alternatives to a general income transfer 7 references 2 tables dck

socioeconomic development and electricity consumption a cross country analysis using the random coefficient method this paper analyses the relationship between electricity consumption and socioeconomic variables by estimating the electricity consumption function on the basis of single year cross country data and using ols and random coefficient rc methods the latter method yields both mean response as well as country specific coefficients while electricity consumption is found to rise with socioeconomic development it is found to be inelastic with respect to changes in all the variables the estimated country specific coefficients with respect to per capita gnp and share of industry in gdp are found not to vary across countries indicating that the impact of these variables on electricity consumption is similar across countries on the other hand the impact of other variables years of schooling gdp growth urbanization and population density is found to vary substantially across countries

market expansion state intervention and wage differentials between economic sectors in urban china a multilevel analysis the rising earnings inequality in china has sparked a heated debate on the socioeconomic outcomes of market transformation while a large body of literature has focussed on the temporal trend of wage inequality during the reform period much less attention has been devoted to the structural causes of regional variations in sectoral wage differentials using a micro data sample from the 2005 one percent population sample survey and multilevel methods this article examines the geographic variability of wage differentials between economic sectors in urban china with a particular focus on the combination effects of market expansion and state intervention the results indicate that sectoral wage differentials vary substantially across regions and that market expansion interacts with state intervention to reconfigure earnings outcomes specifically prefectures located in the interior region tend to exhibit a large wage premium for the state sectors while prefectures located in the coastal region tend to di

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in germany abstract we first examine the determinants of household expenditures on space heating and hot water supply in germany a number of socio economic characteristics of households are included along with building characteristics our analysis covers information on more than 12 000 households in germany for the years 1998 and 2003 the analysis continues by investigating whether different kinds of households are affected differently by increases in energy prices households in owner occupied properties are less affected compared to those in rented accommodation this could be because owners are more likely to have installed energy efficient heating and hot water supply systems and landlords have less of an incentive to improve the conditions of their rented accommodations an energy policy targeting especially the latter group might benefit not only households in rented accommodation but might also increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well

unconventional energy taxation and interstate welfare an analysis of pennsylvania s severance tax policy abstract natural gas production from unconventional sources has increased over the past decade a significant portion of this increase has come from output in the marcellus region of pennsylvania this output has altered gas markets and repositioned pennsylvania as a major gas exporter it has also put pennsylvania at odds with other states as it is one of a few without a formal severance tax on extractive resources in this paper we combine results from a structural demand model with a two sector trade model to analyze the interstate welfare impacts of pennsylvania s current severance tax proposal our results demonstrate that most of the welfare losses from this proposed policy are likely to be shifted to residents in other states we also demonstrate how fluctuations in gas prices can substantially reduce tax revenue these findings have important implications for both pennsylvania and u s energy policy given the significant rise in energy production from new sources throughout the u s

market transition and the persistence of power the changing stratification system in urban china research on transitional socialist societies has explored trends in income inequality and issues concerning who gains and who loses during market reforms we find that income inequality in a major chinese city declined only slightly during the first decade of reform policies it then increased dramatically in the subsequent five years strategic position in the state bureaucracy continues to be an important determinant of income although connections to the market system are becoming alternate sources of advantage we interpret these findings in light of the historical and institutional context of urban china

undominated nash implementation in bounded mechanisms we study implementation in undominated nash equilibrium by bounded mechanisms an undominated nash equilibrium is a nash equilibrium in which no agent uses a weakly dominated strategy a mechanism is bounded if every dominated strategy is dominated by some undominated strategy we identify necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for such implementation these conditions are satisfied in virtually all economic environments and are also satisfied by interesting correspondences from the social choice literature for economic settings we provide a particularly simple implementing mechanism for which the undominated equilibrium outcomes coincide with those obtained from the iterative elimination of weakly dominated strategies

markets and inequality in transitional economies toward testable theories nee s 1989 and in this issue market transition theory contested by xie and hannum in this issue claims that market mechanisms have predictable implications for inequality compared to nonmarket allocation market exchange enhances the bargaining power of producers nee p 910 the core argument is that cadre advantages shall decline to the extent that markets replace redistribution as the dominant mode of economic allocation while in successive publications nee has altered his judgment about how far the market transition has proceeded in rural china and whether his theory does predict a decline of cadre privilege he has not altered the core claim about market allocation market economies vary widely in their patterns of power and privilege in ways unrelated to the extent to which a market economy has been established the variability of market economies warns against attempts to predict changes in inequality without first specifying the kinds of enterprises and other institutions that characterize the emerging market economy or even the characteristics of markets themselves we have been tempted into these predictions by the memorable polanyian contrast between two ideal typical economies redistributive and market that has proven a rich source of hypotheses about stratification szelenyi 1978 1983 and the theory of the firm kornai 1992 under state socialism this contrast has crystallized a research agenda by posing an important historical question about the social impact of the rise of market allocation in planned economies especially as it concerns the fate of communist officials but many now find that these ideal types and the continuum that bridges them are a poor guide to the analysis of emerging market economies see bian and logan 1996 lin 1995 rona tas 1994 1995 walder 1992 1995 and stark and xie and hannum in this issue general claims about the impact of markets should be viewed skeptically for the impact of markets works through the allocation of assets the characteristics of emerging markets and the political processes by which market economies are established markets per se are not the issue

a theory of market transition from redistribution to markets in state socialism state socialist redistributive economies are characterized by the allocation and distribution of goods through central planning this paper develops a theory of market transition which argues that in reforming socialist economies the transition from redistributive to market coordination shifts sources of power and privilege to favor direct producers relative to redistributors the shit improves incentives for direct producers stimulates the growth of private markets and provides to entrepreneurs an alternative path for socioeconomic mobility a set of hypotheses test the market transition theory with householdand village level data

markets and income inequality in rural china political advantage in an expanding economy when market reform generates rapid growth in an agrarian subsistence economy changes in inequality may be due to economic growth and structural change rather than to the intrinsic features of markets the case of post mao china is examined using nationally representative survey data gathered in 1996 to address unresolved questions about findings from 1980s surveys well into reform s second decade political officeholding has a large net impact on household income comparable to that of operating a private enterprise contrary to findings based on earlier surveys and expectations about the impact of growth cadre household advantages are stable across levels and forms of economic expansion returns to entrepreneurship however decline sharply with the spread of wage employment future declines in relative returns to political position are therefore unlikely to occur due to the further spread of private household entrepreneurship and theories of change based on this mechanism appear untenable

the emergence of a market society changing mechanisms of stratification in china this article examines the effect of institutional change the shift from redistribution to markets in altering the mechanisms of stratification new institutionalists maintain that interests are emb

a national micro data based model of residential electricity demand new evidence on seasonal variation building on earlier estimates of electricity demand the author estimates elasticities by month to determine differences between heating and cooling seasons he develops a three equation model of residential electricity demand that includes all the main components of economic theory the model generates seasonal elasticity estimates that generally support economic theory based on the model using a national current household data set monthly division the evidence indicates there is a seasonal pattern for price elasticity of demand while less pronounced there also appears to be seasonal patterns for cross price elasticity of alternative fuels for the elasticity of appliance stock index and for an intensity of use variable

electricity demand in a developing country paraguay this study analyzes the residential and commercial demand for electricity in ten regions in paraguay for 1970 1977 models that are both linear and nonlinear in the parameters are estimated the nonlinear model takes advantage of prior information on the nature of the appliances being utilized and simultaneously deals with the demand discontinuities caused by appliance indivisibility three dynamic equations including a novel cumulative adjustment model all indicate rapid adjustment to desired appliance stock levels finally the multiproduct surplus loss obtained from an estimated demand equation is used to measure the welfare cost of power outages 15 references

social inequalities in reforming state socialism between redistribution and markets in china this article extends market transition theory to an analysis of inequality under the conditions of partial reform in china logit regression analysis indicates cadres officials have no greater odds than other households of being among the privileged or avoiding poverty entrepreneurs andformer team cadres however are advantaged despite the rise of a hybrid elite of entrepreneurs who are currently cadres that capitalizes on redistributive power to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace increases in income inequality are modest when market reform stimulates improved economic performance the poor appear to benefit and experience comparable improvements in household income as a result there is only a slight increase in inequality at least in the early stages of market reform the empirical analysis is based on survey data collected in rural china in 1985

ownership organization and income inequality market transition in rural vietnam in transitional economies the scale of economic enterprise and the allocation of property rights shape social structures and influence income distribution in agrarian economies where labor intensive family enterprises dominate political officials income advantages decline rapidly relative to those of private entrepreneurs larger enterprises however provide greater income opportunities for officials especially when a government retains an ownership stake in the initial phases of reform this article replicates the findings from an earlier study of rural china using comparable survey data from vietnam we find that during the first two decades of rural market reform in vietnam and china the scale and ownership of firms differed radically small family enterprises dominated rural development in vietnam whereas china s development was dominated by larger firms initially established by rural governments consequently while cadre income advantages have kept pace with those of private entrepreneurs

does having a cadre parent pay evidence from the first job offers of chinese college graduates abstract we estimate the wage premium associated with having a cadre parent in china using a recent survey of college graduates carried out by the authors the wage premium of having a cadre parent is 15 and this premium cannot be explained by other observables such as college entrance exam scores quality of colleges and majors a full set of college human capital attributes and job characteristics these results suggest that the remaining premium could be the true wage premium of having a cadre parent

the merits of dual pricing of russian natural gas our analysis reveals that from russia s perspective there is no economic rationale to unify the price of natural gas it sells domestically and in europe we argue that pipelines allow gazprom to segment the russian market from the european including turkey market and that russia has market power in the european market if russia were to fail to exploit this market power in its european market by selling its natural gas to europe at only full long run marginal cost plus transportation costs russia would lose between 5 billion and 7 5 billion per year almost two per cent of its gdp if instead russia were to raise its domestic prices to the prices it charges in europe russian industry would incur very large investment adjustment and unemployment costs in the short run adjustment costs that cannot be justified on the basis of comparative advantage we estimate that the efficient world price would be achieved if gazprom were to employ its optimal two part tariff the optimal two part tariff would double gazprom s annual profits in europe but it involves significant long term risks for gazprom of lost market share

do gasoline demand elasticities vary this paper answers questions concerning gasoline demand elasticity by analyzing periods that span both increasing and decreasing prices focusing on consumer decisions about the distance driven and the automobile size us data show that efficiency changes and reduced mileages account equally for short run elasticities while automobile efficiency accounts for 90 in the long run the analysis shows a consistency that makes it useful in projecting elasticities during market disruptions and over a broad span of economic conditions in other countries 38 references dck

appliance specific electricity consumption in slovene households abstract on the basis of a national household survey carried out in 1983 this study presents estimates of electricity use per appliance our estimates of electricity use for space heating water heating and cooking are considerably lower than the engineering estimates the estimates for other electricity using appliances broadly conform with engineering estimates our low estimate of the short run income elasticity is in close agreement with other studies

industrial demand for natural gas inter industry variation in new york state abstract this study investigates the variability in demand for natural gas by manufacturing industries in new york state the study uses a dynamic model using the three stage least squares method which allows for the calculation of both long and short run elasticities the demand model the price equations for the major natural gas using industries and the estimation results are presented and analysed it differs from previous studies of natural gas demand in that it is done at the sic two digit industry level using state specific data rather than highly aggregated national data

property rights and stratification in socialist redistributive economies in socialist economies work organizations differ widely in the compensation they provide employees despite the absence of key product and labor market processes thought to ex plain such inequalities in market economies existing theories of stratification in socialist economies focus on the power and privilege of elites but inequalities among organizations are not created by political particularism or elite power in this paper i sketch elements of an institutional theory of stratification anchored in a conception of property rights the right to derive income from productive assets two aspects of property rights guide the analysis 1 the dispersion of property rights across a hierarchy of governmentjurisdictions and 2 the exercise of these rights by government jurisdictions as they extract revenues primarily through taxation extraction of revenues from a work organization varies with the budgetary resources of a government jurisdiction and the dependence of that jurisdiction on the out puts of the organization variation in revenue extraction in turn creates inequalities among work organizations in their abilities to provide benefits to employees an analysis of survey data on the provision of housing and benefits by work organizations in the large industrial city of tianjin china provides provisional support for these ideas s tudents of communist states have had little reason to dispute lenski s 1966 claim that the distribution of rewards in a society is a func tion of the distribution of power p 63 as ex emplified in szelenyi s wedding of elite theory to institutional economics this idea has been de veloped primarily in terms of the power of class es or occupational groups szelenyi 1978 be gan with the observation that planned economies operate according to redistributive rather than market principles however the process of re

residential demand for fuelwood this is the first national microbased study of residential demand for wood as fuel the data are from the us department of energy residential energy consumption survey the model employs a somewhat unique interaction dummy for price that allows the simultaneity problem to be adjusted for in a 2sls format and then the interaction term to be calculated and entered in the second stage results are compared with elasticity estimates derived from the same data set for the four other main residential fuels wood has a price elasticity of 0 421 for main users

the first shall be last entrepreneurship and communist cadres in the transition from socialism this article reviews the sociological literature on the transition from socialism to capitalism it distinguishes between the erosion and transition phases and between traditional and corporate segments in the emerging private sector panel survey data from hungary show that during the transition ex communist cadres maintain their advantageous position and do especially well in the more dynamic corporate segment they are successful because human capital is important in both capitalism and socialism and because the cadres are able to convert past political power to economic advantage contrary to the findings of studies based only on agriculture the transition increases income inequalities

lifeline electricity rates as an income transfer device comment the authors question the supporting evidence given in an earlier paper by burgess and paglin eapa 7 4039 they suggest using the national interim energy consumption survey niecs as an alternative base and present a new set of equations to validate the income elasticity of demand in the justification of lifeline rates burgess and paglin reply noting that garbacz s study raises questions about a national requirement for lifeline rates 4 references 5 tables dck

electricity consumption and economic growth in jamaica abstract this study examines the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in jamaica during 1970 86 a period of rapid increase in energy prices the results show that the aggregate demand for electricity is slightly income elastic electricity has a significant impact on economic growth the electricity intensity has increased over time residential demand is fairly income elastic commercial demand is price inelastic and the rate of adjustment is slow these results suggest that conservation policies could be ineffective therefore indigenous sources of electricity are important for jamaica to be less dependent on imported energy

residential energy demand additional empirical evidence by minority household type abstract in a number of recent studies household level data for specific urban areas or national household level micro data have been used to estimate price and income elasticities of energy demand none of this literature however provides us with elasticity estimates by minority majority household type the main focus of this paper is to measure the responsiveness of the quantity of electricity and total energy demanded for black hispanis and majority households to price and income price and income elasticities are compared among these groups over the short and long term a variable elasticity demand model is estimated the elasticities are allowed to vary with respect to non price and income variables the price elasticities of demand vary with heating and cooling degree days and the income elasticities with the number of household members mean estimates were calculated over the respective samples findings indicate that demand for electricity is relatively price inelastic irrespective of household group however blacks are more sensitive to variations in the short run to price than hispanic and majority households in the long run blacks are also more sensitive to price changes but the magnitude of the response to price changes in the long run relative to the short run is larger for hispanics and majority households respectively than for blacks

impact of historical conflict on fdi location and performance japanese investment in china historical relations between countries bring important explanatory power for foreign direct investment fdi decisions yet little is known on whether a home host country relation exhibits heterogeneous effects on fdi across the country s subnational regions in this study we examine the long term impact of historical conflict on fdi location choices and performance using a sample of 8 646 japanese fdi in china we show that civilian casualties in different provinces of china during the second sino japanese war exert deterring effects on japanese fdi location choices furthermore we demonstrate that civilian casualties negatively affect japanese fdi performance and political capital accumulation strategies in the forms of excessive tax payment and local employment can reduce this negative effect this study contributes to the discussion on how within country differences of historical factors affect fdi location decisions and performance the findings on firms political capital accumulation strategies also provide important implications for fdi operation in an environment characterized by historical animosity

electricity policies for low income households this paper discusses the implications of restructuring the u s electricity industry for low income energy policy and low income households the paper discusses the historical development of existing low income energy policies and programs federal policy has focused primarily on addressing the heating needs of low income customers state policy has traditionally vested the vertically integrated utility with much of the responsibility to provide energy programs to low income customers the paper considers how industry restructuring may affect the appropriateness of these policies and programs the paper describes new policies to provide low income electricity services that could be developed in parallel with broader industry restructuring efforts

the estimation of short run household electricity demand using pooled aggregate data short run household electricity demand has been estimated with conditional demand models by a variety of authors using both aggregate data and disaggregate data disaggregate data are most desirable for estimating these models however in many cases available disaggregate data may be inappropriate furthermore disaggregate data may be unavailable altogether in these cases readily available aggregate data may be more appropriate this article develops and evaluates an econometric technique to generate unbiased estimates of household electricity demand using such aggregate data

residential demand for electricity the case of greece this paper examines the determinants of residential electricity consumption in greece over the period 1961 86 the paper presents first a brief description of the evolution of residential electricity consumption then it proceeds in the estimation of elasticities of residential demand for electricity using a single equation model with the ridge regression method the paper concludes that i the residential demand for electricity is price inelastic and income elastic ii there is high substitutability between electricity and lpg iii during the examined period the number of consumers played a very important role in the expansion of electricity consumption in greece and iv there is no regional variation in residential electricity demand

short run residential demand for fuels a disaggregated approach a disaggregated model of residential energy demand is specified and then used to examine the data and econometric techniques available to estimate such a model inconsistencies in the currently popular random effects model and weighted least squares generate inconsistent parameter estimates for short run modeling some of the currently available pooled data is of poor quality the principal data series of concern are the appliance stock series but current research is attempting to improve aggregate data while the disaggregated elasticities reported can only be considered tentative the approach combined with better data and econometric techniques will produce an important policy tool the regression results are summarized in two tables in the appendix 42 references 5 tables

revolution reform and status inheritance urban china 1949 1996 do regime change and market reform disrupt patterns of intergenerational mobility china s political trajectory is distinctive from that of other communist regimes in two ways during its first three decades the regime enforced unusually restrictive barriers to elite status inheritance and during the subsequent market transition unlike most of its counterparts the communist party survived intact data from a multigeneration survey suggest that despite their obvious exclusion from the party and related administrative careers in the mao era certain prerevolution elites transmitted one type of elite status to their offspring to a surprising degree party elites in contrast were hit hard by radical maoism but recovered quickly afterward and their offspring inherited elite status at much higher rates

local governments as industrial firms an organizational analysis of china s transitional economy despite widespread skepticism about government ownership in transitional economies china s rapid industrial growth has been led by public enterprises kornai s theory of soft budbet constraints born of the failure of earlier hungarian reforms fosters such skepticism but it assumes as fixed organizational characteristics that in fact vary widely across government jurisdictions local governments with smaller industrial bases have clearer financial incentives and constraints fewer nonfinancial interests in enterprises and a greater capacity to monitor them in china s vast public sector the fastest growth in output and productivity has occurred where government ownership rights are clearest and most easily enforced which enables officials to manage public industry as a diversified market oriented firm

elite opportunity in transitional economies command economies gave communist era elites administrative control and material privilege but severely restricted money income and private wealth markets and privatization have injected new value into public assets and create unprecedented opportunities for elite insiders these opportunities depend on the extent of regime change and barriers to asset appropriation regime change varies from the survival of the entire party hierarchy to its rapid collapse and defeat in competitive elections barriers to asset appropriation vary with the extent pace and form of privatization and the concentration and liquidity of assets different combinations of such circumstances jointly affect the extent to which prior elites obtain ownership or control of privatized assets use political office to extract larger incomes move into salaried elite occupations or fall out of the elite altogether regime change and barriers to asset appropriation affect change at the national level but outcomes vary across economic sectors because of characteristics of organizations elite positions and assets this elementary theory serves to integrate varied findings from recent research on central europe china and russia and yields predictions for other regions

the demand for electricity and natural gas in the northeastern united states the demand for natural gas and electricity for the residential commercial and industrial sectors was estimated using a combination of the error components model and seemingly unrelated regressions the estimated demand models showed both natural gas and electricity to be price elastic in the long run and price inelastic in the short run in all sectors except the commercial sector in which electricity demand is unresponsive to its own price natural gas had negligible income elasticities in the residential and commercial sectors and a long run income elasticity of 2 86 in the industrial sector electricity had an insignificant income effect in all sectors but the industrial where its long run elasticity was unitary only in the residential demand for natural gas is the cross price elasticity substantial with the price of electricity having a long run cross elasticity of 1 70 fuel oil prices generally had a negative impact probably indicating a large income effect the elasticities of adjustment were higher for natural gas than electricity indicating a faster adjustment to change either in response to greater instability in energy availability or reflecting more alternative fuels or both 16 references 4 tables

on some recent results in incomplete information implementation this paper provides a review of some recent results on implementation in incomplete information environments this literature is concerned with characterizing the class of social choice functions that can be implemented as equilibrium outcomes of appropriately constructed games different game forms normal and extensive forms and different equilibrium concepts nash equilibrium sequential equilibrium etc lead to different characterizations the discussion focuses on the key difficulties that arise in implementing social choice functions in incomplete information environments and describes some of the alternative characterizations