a review of renewable investment and power system operational issues in bangladesh generation investments especially large scale variable renewable energy requires careful scrutiny of the state of the power system power system planning and operations in a developing country like bangladesh can often achieve significant improvements in economics and security of supply through modest and prudent investments a review of the bangladesh power sector is presented in this paper that highlights a changes to dispatch protocols to undertake fuel constrained dispatch optimization and ancillary services co optimization and pricing b issues related to the allocation of natural gas between sectors and c a technology neutral investment framework the study uses an hourly dispatch and ancillary services co optimization model that also optimizes short to medium term investment decisions the results demonstrate bangladesh can a reduce its production costs by 63 through more efficient dispatch b reduce production costs by 77 by using an additional natural gas quota of 212 mmcfd or a 23 increase and c should have invested in power import and baseload gas coal rather than expensive solar pv projects proposed in 2011 at substantially higher cost at the time when a carbon price is imposed in the model the implied break even cost to justify the solar program is very high in excess of 150 tonne

electricity consumption and economic growth nexus in bangladesh revisited evidences abstract in this paper an attempt is being made to examine the causal relationship between per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp of bangladesh using the vector error correction specified granger causality test to search their short run long run and joint causal relationships for the period of 1971 2008 empirical findings reveal that there is a short run unidirectional causal flow running from per capita electricity consumption to per capita gdp without feedback the presence of a positive short run causality explains that an increase in electricity consumption directly affects economic activity in bangladesh likewise results from joint causality exhibit the same as in short run by contrast long run results show a bi directional causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth with feedback these findings can provide essential policy insights to design immediate and long term growth prospect for bangladesh keeping in mind its present planned growth strategy and dismal power and energy sector

rates of time preference and valuations of the duration of life abstract this paper develops a multi period markov model of the lifetime choice of occupational fatality risks the empirical model analyzes the wage effects of job risks using the 1982 university of michigan panel study of income dynamics in conjunction with death statistics from the u s national traumatic occupational fatality survey evidence regarding workers intertemporal choices with respect to risks with long term implications is broadly consistent with rational behavior workers implicit real rate of time preference with respect to future life years equals approximately 11 percent this rate of time preference decreases with education

reconciling sustainability and discounting in cost benefit analysis a methodological proposal abstract the incorporation of the intergenerational equity objective has rendered the traditional cost benefit analysis cba approach obsolete for the evaluation of projects presenting an important number of environmental externalities and for those whose impacts extend throughout a long period of time based on the assumption that applying a discount rate rewards current consumption and therefore that it is only possible to introduce a certain intergenerational equity in a cost benefit analysis in this work we propose an approach to discounting based on a different rationale for tangible and intangible effects we designed two indicators of environmental profitability a the intergenerational transfer amount ita which quantifies in monetary units what the current generation is willing to pass on future generations when an environmental restoration project is carried out and b the critical environmental rate cer measures the implicit environmental profitability these concepts were tested through an empirical case study pertaining to the assessment of an erosion control project in the southeast of spain the results yield traditional profitability indicators that are higher and probably closer to the real values set by the contemporary society the information provided by the environmental profitability indicators proposed renders more transparency to the quantification of the levels of intergenerational equity applied thereby facilitating the difficult reconciliation of the cba technique with the objective of sustainability

a multisector model of efficiency wages the pattern of effort and wages is derived in a multisector efficiency wage model firms choose effort endogenously easily monitored or low turnover jobs have high effort and may have low wages in equilibrium empirical wage differentials from a measure of supervision are smaller than observed industry differentials that have been attributed to efficiency wage models and are closer to those predicted by the model workers can search for and avail of on the job offers if sectors grow at different rates or the unemployment rate changes the pattern of wage differentials is unaffected

energy consumption real income and temporal causality results from a multi country study based on cointegration and error correction modelling techniques abstract unlike previous studies on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth this paper illustrates how the finding of cointegration i e long term equilibrium relationship between these variables may be used in testing granger causality based on the most recent johansen s multivariate cointegration tests preceded by various unit root or non stationarity tests we test for cointegration between total energy consumption and real income of six asian economies india pakistan malaysia singapore indonesia and the philippines non rejection of cointegration between variables rules out granger non causality and imples at least one way of granger causality either unidirectional or bidirectionial secondly by using a dynamic vector error correction model we then analyse the direction of granger causation and hence the within sample granger exogeneity or endogeneity of each of the variables thirdly the relative strength of the causality is gauged through the dynamic variance decomposition technique by decomposing the total impact of an unanticipated shock to each of the variables beyond the sample period into proportions attributable to shocks in the other variables including its own in the bivariate system results based on these tools of methodology indicate that while all pair wise relationships shared common univariate integrational properties only relationships for three countries india pakistan and indonesia were cointegrated for these countries temporal causality results were mixed with unidirectional causality from energy to income for india exactly the reverse for indonesia and mutual causality for pakistan the vdcs were not inconsistent with these results and provided us with an additional insight as to the relatively more dominant direction of causation in pakistan simple bivariate vector autoregressive models for the three non cointegrated systems did not indicate any direction of causality significantly in either direction

statistical models of consumer behavior with heterogeneous values and constraints in a market with heterogeneous individuals the fact that a particular group of individuals are the consumers of a particular product already indicates that there exist systematic differences between them and the average person simple tools from statistical theory are used here to analyze the implications of consumer diversity it is argued that an increase in consumer diversity will increase the gains from trade and that there is a shadow price of heterogeneity associated with product quality throughout the discussion the significance of consumer self selection and the distinction between average and marginal will be emphasized

nexus between non renewable energy demand and economic growth in bangladesh application of maximum entropy bootstrap approach abstract the paper analyzes the causal relationship between energy demand and economic growth in bangladesh using annual time series data from 1980 to 2011 from world development indicator wdi database of the world bank since the results of causal direction are sensitive to the models being employed the paper uses maximum entropy bootstrap meboot due to its superiority to overcome small sample bias and limitation of asymptotic distribution theory to avoid the omitted variables bias the paper uses multivariate framework in production function specification the paper finds that a unidirectional causality runs from economic growth to energy demand which indicates that conservative policy might not harm the bangladesh economy but since economic progress leads higher energy consumption demand side management of energy and exploring renewable energy sources are must the implications are discussed

road transport externalities during the last decade much progress has been made in defining measuring the external costs of transport as the cost of tolling equipment falls the set of realistic policy options to internalise these externalities will continue to grow this will determine the research and policy agenda we make three points firstly empirical work is still necessary to better identify marginal external costs including congestion accident and environmental costs secondly any assessment of policy options should treat externalities simultaneously the use of pricing instruments and emissions standards are discussed within this framework thirdly we emphasise the role of government designing the optimal road pricing institutions requires consideration of horizontal and vertical tax competition while double dividend arguments are central to the question of securing public support

compensating differentials and self selection an application to lawyers this paper models individual choice between two types of jobs as dependent on the difference in potential earnings and on preferences for nonpecuniary the model leads to simultaneous estimation of earnings and job choice functions in a manner that takes account of self selection of individuals into the sector of highest utility an application to lawyers choosing between private and public interest law casts doubt on the notion that public interest lawyers are accepting substantially lower earnings by virtue of their choice an impression derived from estimation of earnings functions without accounting for self selection the estimation technique also takes proper account of the choice based nature of the sample which appears to be important

an investigation of co integration and causality between energy consumption and economic activity in taiwan applying hsiao a version of the granger causality method this paper examines the causality between energy and gnp and energy and employment by applying recently developed techniques of co integration and hsiao s version of the granger causality to taiwanese data for the 1955 1993 period the phillips perron tests reveal that the series with the exception of gnp are not stationary and therefore differencing is performed to secure stationarity the study finds causality running from gdp to energy consumption without feedback in taiwan it is also found that causality runs from gdp to energy but not vice versa

public vs private demand for covering long term care expenditures this article studies the determinants of the willingness to pay wtp for long term care ltc insurance coverage two alternatives are considered one compulsory financed through taxes the other purchased on a voluntary basis and paid through a premium wtp was elicited through open ended contingent valuation within a survey conducted in the italian region emilia romagna about ltc population needs we model information on individual wtp as a two stage process where respondents first establish their interest for ltc cover then state their wtp results show that interest and wtp are influenced by different variables and that differences arise also between the wtp for public and private coverage

a model of the demand for longevity and the value of life extension we specify a demand function for longevity or quantity of life along with corresponding demand functions for indicators of quality of life and a value of health and life extension function we show that the demand for health must be derived in conjunction with that for longevity and the related consumption plan and that all choices depend on initial individual endowments and terminal conditions our comparative dynamics predictions indicate that optimal health and longevity are increasing functions of endowed wealth rather than necessarily current income that improvements in opportunities to produce health can accentuate the differences between endowed health and attained longevity levels and that the value individuals ascribe to their health may be increasing over a good portion of their life cycle we use this model to analyze observed empirical variations in levels and trends of life expectancy and in exposure to health risks across different population groups

unemployment and product market competition in a cournot model with efficiency wages this paper analyzes the impact of product market competition on unemployment wage and welfare in a model where unemployment is caused by the efficiency wage consideration and oligopolistic firms compete in quantity it is shown that while more intense competition in the product market increases output and reduces price it does not necessarily lead to a lower unemployment rate or a higher wage for workers depending on the technologies the relationship between the intensity of competition and the level of employment respectively wage welfare is not always monotonic and in some instances has an inverted u shape resume chomage et concurrence dans le marche du produit dans un modele a la cournot en presence de salaires d efficience ce texte analyse l impact de la concurrence dans le marche du produit sur le chomage le salaire et bien etre dans un modele ou le chomage est cause par des considerations de salaires d efficience et ou les firmes oligopolistiques se concurrencent par les quantites on montre que meme si une concurrence plus intense dans le marche du produit accroit la production et reduit le prix ceci n entraine pas necessairement un taux de chomage plus bas ou un niveau de salaire plus eleve pour les travailleurs selon les technologies la relation entre l intensite de la concurrence et le niveau de l emploi respectivement salaire bien etre n est pas toujours monotone et parfois a la forme d un u inverse

causal relationship between energy consumption and gdp revisited the case of korea 1970 1999 abstract causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is investigated applying a multivariate model of capital labor energy and gdp usual btu energy aggregate is substituted with a divisia aggregate in an attempt to mitigate aggregation bias to test for granger causality in the presence of cointegration among the variables we employ a vector error correction model rather than a vector autoregressive model empirical results for korea over the period 1970 1999 suggest a long run bidirectional causal relationship between energy and gdp and short run unidirectional causality running from energy to gdp the source of causation in the long run is found to be the error correction terms in both directions

free entry and social inefficiency our goal is to provide a simple yet general exposition of the conditions under which the number of entrants in a free entry equilibrium is excessive insufficient or optimal our analysis compares the number of firms that enter a market when there is free entry with the number that would be desired by a social planner who is unable to control the behavior of firms once they are in the market that is we consider the second best problem of choosing the welfare maximizing number of firms while we take as given their noncompetitive behavior after entry we demonstrate that the crucial conditions for establishing the presence of an entry bias can be stated quite simply in terms of the outcome of the postentry game played by entrants in contrast to previous work we do not need to model this postentry game explicitly

foreign direct investments fdis in turkish power sector a discussion on investments opportunities and risks abstract power sector is important for managing the transition towards sustainable and cleaner energy systems and foreign investments can contribute to overcome the problems encountered in the process despite the vast literature on foreign direct investments fdi in other sectors studies on the power sector have been limited to either developed economies or major developing economies such as china or india therefore this study aims to discuss turkish case by using panel data analysis for 2002 2012 period results have shown that the major drivers of fdi inflows in turkish power sector were privatization and low real effective exchange rate during the period in addition turkey has the potential and opportunities to attract more investments with the recent reforms and increasing incentives for renewable energy technologies however business environment and the quality of institutions may create obstacles for realizing its potential moreover fiscal incentives and macroeconomic stability are important to sustain investments and economic and institutional reforms notably the eu integration process are important for fdi inflows

the relationship between energy and gnp further results this paper reexamines the casuality between gnp and energy consumption by using updated us data for the period 1947 1979 as a secondary contribution we investigate the causal relationship between energy consumption and employment applying sims technique we find no causal relationship between gnp and energy consumption we find further that there is a slight unidirectional flow running from employment to energy consumption economic interpretations of the empirical results are also presented

foreign direct investment in the energy and power sector in bangladesh implications for economic growth abstract in this paper we present a discussion on current energy and power situation of the country and examine the causal relationship between fdi in the energy and power sector and economic growth in bangladesh for the period 1972 2010 related trend reveals a considerable gap between energy production and energy use during this period moreover inflow trend of fdi was also fluctuating over the studied period we also find that there are robust positive and unidirectional short run causal relationships running from fdi to energy use and from energy use to gdp growth empirical results also confirm a causal relationship for the energy use equation in the long run considering the resource and technology gap and requirements for the development of the energy and power sector fdi should be encouraged to this sector that would be imperative to the targeted gdp growth

universal health insurance in the clinton plan coverage as a tax financed public good the financing arrangements embodied in the clinton health reform plan involve some important differences in the way in which public goods are usually financed the subsidies to small low wage firms mandated to provide benefits distort markets in both labor and products and offer incentives for the creation of small firms in addition the financing scheme implicitly envisions a head tax on families at modest income levels but offers a possible rationale for it nevertheless the main reason for many of the financing features appears to be an attempt to hold down the apparent budgetary cost of universal coverage

does entry regulation hinder job creation evidence from the french retail industry are product market and entry regulation key sources of low employment growth in many european countries we investigate this question in the context of the french retail trade industry since 1974 approval by regional zoning boards has been required for the creation or extension of any large retain store in france we exploit a unique database that provides time and region specific variation in boards approval decisions we show that stronger deterrence of entry by the boards increased retailer concentration and slowed down employment growth in france

macroeconomic effects of regulation and deregulation in goods and labor markets product and labor market deregulation reduce and redistribute rents leading economic players to adjust to this new distribution it typically comes with distribution and dynamic effects to study these effects we build a macroeconomic model on two central assumptions monopolistic competition in the goods market which determines the size of rents and bargaining in the labor market which determines the distribution of rents product market regulation determines entry costs and the degree of competition labor market regulation determines the bargaining power of workers we show the effects of deregulation we then use our results to discuss the political economy of deregulation and recent macroeconomic evolutions in europe

competition and the capital labor conflict abstract this paper analyzes the distributional effects of changes in the intensity of product market competition the focus is on the interaction between imperfect competition in product markets and bargaining in the labor market the main result is that while a uniform intensification of product market competition increases employment it may cause real wages to fall in the short run as well as in the long run this is especially likely if labor market regulations are favorable to workers therefore product market and labor market regulations tend to reinforce each other politically and compensatory fiscal transfers may be needed in order to enact employment enhancing deregulation policies

energy and output dynamics in bangladesh the relationship between energy consumption and output is still ambiguous in the existing literature the economy of bangladesh having spectacular output growth and rising energy demand as well as energy efficiency in recent decades can be an ideal case for examining energy output dynamics we find that while fluctuations in energy consumption do not affect output fluctuations movements in output inversely affect movements in energy use the results of granger causality tests in this respect are consistent with those of innovative accounting that includes variance decompositions and impulse responses autoregressive distributed lag models also suggest a role of output in bangladesh s energy use hence the findings of this study have policy implications for other developing nations where measures for energy conservation and efficiency can be relevant in policymaking

a theory of time preference grant a taylor this article proposes that people generally prefer present consumption to future consumption because their expected utility from consumption eventually falls as their mental and physical abilities eventually decline with age moreover contrary to the ubiquitous intertemporal formulation with a constant rate of time preference and contrary to three recent theories of time preference that predict decreasing discounting as people age this article asserts that discounting increases over the life cycle this hypothesis is supported by data from the panel study of income dynamics as well as evidence from numerous previous studies jel d91 1 introduction despite the almost universal assumption of time preference in models of intertemporal choice an adequate explanation of why people discount the future has not been provided 1 olsen and bailey 1981 make a convincing case for positive time preference by contradiction i e without time preference models of intertemporal choice do not yield predictions consistent with observed behavior but they do not explain why individuals would rationally discount the future 2 three recent studies have attempted to provide the explanation rogers 1994 argues that societies that discount the future at a rate of about 2 will be the long run survivors in an evolutionary fitness situation 3 posner 1995 argues that discounting occurs because individuals have multiple selves that is people are weighting their present consumption far more heavily than their future consumption because the present self and the future self are in some meaningful sense separate persons 92 becker and mulligan 1997 argue that discounting occurs because of a rational defective recognition of future utilities 730 but as will be shown these three theories are inconsistent with empirical evidence on consumption over the life cycle in at least one important aspect this article constructs and empirically supports a new theory of time preference the hypothesis is that people do not have an intrinsic preference for present consumption relative to future consumption instead the instantaneous utility function also known as the felicity function is expected to vary with age just as people s physical and mental abilities vary with age in other words the ability to enjoy consumption eventually deteriorates over the life cycle along with other abilities this life cycle view of the expected utility function causes people to rationally devalue consumption in periods of low expected felicity that is discount future consumption perhaps this is what is meant by the cliche don t wait until you are too old to enjoy it moreover this causes individuals implicit discount rates to vary systematically with age 4 in fact this provides the testable implication of the theory the standard specification of intertemporal preferences holds the discount rate constant over th e life cycle 5 to be more precise in the early stage of the life cycle the capacity to enjoy consumption may be expected to rise hence a young individual s discount rate may be negative figure 1 illustrates this possibility with a hypothetical adult life cycle marginal felicity function for a given level of consumption u sub c c a c denotes consumption and a denotes age and its corresponding discount rate function rho a the vast majority of wealth is held by older people that is those in the declining stage of their abilities thus the preference for present consumption over future consumption appears to hold in the aggregate this view of intertemporal preferences may at first seem inconsistent with practically all dynamic analyses which are based on the notion of stationary utility on further consideration however the hypothesis is quite consistent with modern consumer theory since becker 1965 it has been widely accepted that households derive utility from commodities that are produced with market goods combined with household time and skills i

a dynamic model of shirking and unemployment private saving public debt and optimal taxation abstract this paper introduces private saving and public debt into the shirking unemployment model of shapiro and stiglitz 1984 while relaxing their exclusive focus on steady states after generalizing their no shirking constraint to accommodate asset accumulation and demonstrating that the resulting economy s equilibrium is saddle path stable we use our dynamic model to obtain significant departures from the shapiro stiglitz prescriptions for optimal policy most notably wage income should be taxed not subsidized in the long run if the labor market is sufficiently distorted furthermore interest income should be exhaustively taxed only during an initial interval of time as in chamley s 1986 full employment model

unemployment and the business cycle abstract this paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model where labor effort is imperfectly observable and there is unemployment in equilibrium in contrast to shirking models in the efficiency wage literature detected shirkers are not dismissed instead they face a monetary punishment because they forgo an increase in their compensation estimated versions of the model can generate the high variation in employment and low variation of real wages observed over the business cycle and are consistent with existing qualitative evidence about the responses of the economy to fiscal policy shocks

quality of life and the wtp for an increased life expectancy at an advanced age abstract in this study we report an attempt to measure the value adult swedes impute to an increased survival probability at high ages a rating scale between the worst possible quality of life 1 and the best possible quality of life 10 is used to indicate the quality of life a person expects to achieve at an advanced age we find a highly significant correlation between this quality measure and the insurance premium a person is willing to pay in exchange for a programme increasing the expected length of life by one year conditional on having survived until the age of 75 years the maximum insurance premium the average person is willing to pay for such a programme is less than 1500 the willingness to pay increase with a person s age but at a low rate the implied average marginal rate of time preference is about 1 percent

next power generation mix for bangladesh outlook and policy priorities abstract bangladesh s strategy for economic development relies heavily on its energy and power policy searching for an efficient implementation of planned power generation mix of gas oil coal and hydro at present the contribution of gas is around 83 of total power generation which is much higher than other traditional fuel sources to reduce this single source dependency on gas bangladesh needs to initiate alternative option to sustain its mid term power generation mix in addition to achieve its long term energy security government of bangladesh has already initiated a new master plan for the development of power generation under fuel diversification scenario in this view local coal production and imported coal would assist the power planners to reduce the sole dependency on gas driven power plants in addition cross border hydropower import from bhutan myanmar and nepal would also be a vital policy imperative to maintain the country s long term energy security nonetheless adding extra power to production side is certainly essential demand side management through efficient energy use and energy conservation could also be of assistance to the release the existing crisis to a greater extent

the relationship between energy consumption energy prices and economic growth time series evidence from asian developing countries this paper estimates the causal relationships between energy consumption and income for india indonesia the philippines and thailand using cointegration and error correction modelling techniques the results indicate that in the short run unidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for india and indonesia while bidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for thailand and the philippines in the case of thailand and the philippines energy income and prices are mutually causal the study results do not support the view that energy and income are neutral with respect to each other with the exception of indonesia and india where neutrality is observed in the short run c 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classifications c22 q43 q48

limits to substitution and irreversibility in production and consumption a neoclassical interpretation of ecological economics abstract there are many methodological approaches within ecological economics one of the principal modes of analysis is a modified version of the standard neoclassical model this paper examines the parallels which emerge between the ideas of some ecological economists concerning production and the ideas of others concerning consumption when these ideas are interpreted in the neoclassical paradigm it is well known that ecological economics is characterized by arguments concerning limits to substitution between inputs energy natural capital etc vs manufactured capital labor etc in production and the implications these have for sustainability however various authors have also expressed concerns regarding limits to substitution in consumption either between environmental assets and other goods or between basic needs commodities and other goods though the specific reasons for non substitution are different in the production and consumption cases the underlying theme is that individual commodities and other inputs have unique physical or other properties which make them poor substitutes ideas about irreversibility in production and economic development are also prominent in ecological economics likewise many authors have argued for similar irreversibilities in consumption behavior in analogy to the term technological change i coin the term preferential change to describe these phenomena the linking themes in this case are that the economy environment system is evolutionary in character and that external effects intended and unintended consequences of actions or processes imposed on other parties or resources are all pervasive

the spillovers of foreign direct investment and the convergence of energy intensity abstract the imbalance and insufficiency of china s regional economic development has led to huge differences in regional energy efficiency reducing the differences in regional energy efficiency has become an urgent energy issue in china the constant absorption of foreign direct investment fdi has brought advanced technologies to china which has an important impact on china s energy efficiency to explore whether fdi can reduce regional energy efficiency differences this paper investigates the existence of energy intensity convergence while incorporating foreign direct investment fdi since existing research on regional energy intensity convergence lacks of consideration of the data spatial dependence we focus on spatial econometric model to test energy intensity convergence we use panel data of 30 provinces in china over the period of 2005 2014 to test energy intensity convergence by convergence model the empirical results show that considering the spatial dependence of the data fdi can promote the formation of conditional energy intensity convergence further analysis found that the spillover effect of fdi plays an important role in this formation in addition the convergence speed accelerates after considering the spatial dependence finally the spillover effect of fdi which is global inhibits the declining speed of energy intensity during the research period the scale effect of fdi and energy rebound effect plays an important role in the effect of fdi on energy intensity these results show that guiding foreign investment more reasonably in each province in china can make contributions to the reduction of energy efficiency differences

the effect of risk context on the value of a statistical life a bayesian meta model this paper presents the first value of statistical life vsl meta analysis that empirically estimates correction factors for out of context benefits transfer bt purposes in the field of mortality risk reductions elicited willingness to pay values in one risk context say road safety are frequently applied in other risk contexts like air pollution however differences in risk perception and the population at risk across contexts are likely to result in diverging vsl estimates in a meta analysis of 26 international stated preference studies a bayesian model is estimated regressing contingent values for mortality risk reductions originating from three different risk contexts on the characteristics of the risk reduction itself and additional variables characterizing the underlying studies a willingness to pay wtp premium for mortality risk reductions in the air pollution and general mortality risk context relative to improving road safety is observed evaluated at the mean road safety vsl estimates should be multiplied by a factor 1 8 before being applicable in the air pollution context moreover in an illustrative bt exercise we find limited overlap in the set of context specific predictive vsl distributions consequently out of context bt results in a substantial over or underestimation of the vsl

time series growth in the female labor force in this paper we investigate the reasons for the growth in the female labor force in america during the twentieth century in our research we study the longer term trends since 1900 and conduct a more intensive examination of developments after the second world war on the basis of our work we conclude that rising real wages accounted for 60 of the total growth in the female labor force half of this wage effect in expanding labor supply was the fertility reducing consequence of a higher female wage

the electricity consumption and gdp nexus for the fiji islands fiji is a small open island economy dependent on energy for its growth and development hence the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is crucial for fiji s development in this paper we investigate the nexus between electricity consumption and economic growth for fiji within a multivariate framework through including the labour force variable we use the bounds testing approach to cointegration and find that electricity consumption gdp and labour force are only cointegrated when gdp is the endogenous variable we use the granger causality f test and find that in the long run causality runs from electricity consumption and labour force to gdp implying that fiji is an energy dependent country and thus energy conservation policies will have an adverse effect on fiji s economic growth

valuing environmental health effects an economic perspective this paper provides an overview of some of the issues involved in comparing benefit cost analysis and cost effectiveness analysis based on quality adjusted life years as alternative approaches to assessing environmental policies that affect human health it concludes that i although qalys have the advantage of reflecting policy impacts on both health status and longevity in a single scalar measure they are not consistent with utility theory unless individuals preferences satisfy some restrictive conditions ii they do not capture other important aspects of the valuation of changes in mortality and morbidity iii cost effectiveness analysis based on qalys as a measure of effectiveness omits non health related effects of environmental policy and iv it leaves unanswered the important question of what level of environmental regulation is appropriate

the saving and investment nexus for china evidence from cointegration tests the saving and investment nexus as postulated by feldstein and horioka fh 1980 is revisited the saving investment correlation for china is estimated over the periods 1952 1998 and 1952 1994 the latter culminating in a period of fixed exchange rate regime amongst the key results it is found that saving and investment are correlated for china for both the period of the fixed exchange rate and the entire sample period with high saving investment correlation the results suggest that the chinese economy is in conformity with the fh hypothesis this is a valid outcome for in china capital mobility was fairly restricted over the 1952 1994 period as indicated by the relatively low foreign direct investment