socio geographic perception in the diffusion of innovation solar energy technology in sri lanka abstract understandings of the diffusion process have tended to emphasize either the adoption perspective which focuses on individual characteristics or the market perspective which focuses on institutional context in this paper we bring these two perspectives together by recognizing that people are embedded in socio geographic contexts that affect their perceptions of their situations which in turn shape the innovativeness of individuals and places focusing on the diffusion of solar home systems shs in sri lanka we explore the role of context at the village by comparing adoption rates among villages and individual by comparing time to adoption among household decision makers in a case study village scales at the village scale we find that expectations of government policy based on interactions related to ethnicity and politicians previous power grid connection promises are significant drivers of shs adoption along with perceived tolerance levels in the village for non conformist behavior among household decision makers within the case study village we analyze relative adoption time and the duration of the innovation decision process and find that perceiving strong village level social control inhibits shs adoption decision making the results add to innovation diffusion theory and provide policy recommendations for agencies promoting solar energy in developing countries

linking permit markets multilaterally we formally study the determinants magnitude and distribution of efficiency gains generated in multilateral linkages between permit markets we provide two novel decomposition results for these gains characterize individual preferences over linking groups and show that our results are largely unaltered with strategic domestic emissions cap selection or when banking and borrowing are allowed using the paris agreement pledges and power sector emissions data of five countries which all use or considered using both emissions trading and linking we quantify the efficiency gains we find that the computed gains can be sizable and are split roughly equally between effort and risk sharing

developmental financial institutions as technology policy instruments implications for innovation and entrepreneurship in emerging economies abstract developmental financial institutions dfis in emerging economies regularly assess new technology platforms to support their investments in new ventures established firms and technology institutions tis their financing decisions are guided by national priorities such as achieving technological self reliance by providing attractive financing options and related support dfis are well placed to consciously channel finance into designated priority technology areas to better understand dfi roles we conducted multiple interviews with participants affiliated with dfis firms and tis in india from data gathered from these interviews and secondary data on dfis in emerging economies we develop a preliminary framework to suggest that dfis when proactive in making technology assessments form an important link between developing a firm s absorptive capacity and building a nation s innovative capacity also dfi financing facilitates new venture creation in the context of underdeveloped capital markets prevalent in emerging economies to illustrate these roles we consider technology support programs of dfis in india and their role in the information technology it industry

permit trading merely an efficiency neutral redistribution away from climate change victims in this paper we present a climate policy game with international emissions trading where governments first select their amounts of emissions permits these permits are transferred to firms and then traded competitively on an international market compared with a game without trading we find that the potential efficiency gains from permit trading which have been identified in other studies are totally undone if governments also employ a tax or subsidy on domestic emissions the only effect of permit trading in this case is a redistribution of income away from those most affected by climate change

game theoretic modelling of transboundary pollution transboundary pollution is pollution which is emitted in one country and deposited or causing harm in another country due to the absence of a supranational institution that could enforce international legislation transboundary externalities cannot be approached in the same way as domestic pollution problems in an attempt to find non traditional solutions to such crossborder problems recent environmental economics literature incorporates behavioural assumptions with the help of game theory this paper discusses how different types of transboundary pollution have been approached and which static and dynamic game theoretic solution concepts have been evaluated while full cooperation among countries yields the economically optimal outcome it is difficult to reach because countries are faced with an inequitable sharing of the burden of pollution abatement and with the incentive to free ride side payment schemes to aid burden sharing and strategies to circumvent free riding are reviewed issues such as transaction costs information and motivation are briefly discussed

emission trading with fiscal externalities the case for a common carbon tax for the non ets emissions in the eu a government is fiscally constrained if it is unable to raise sufficient tax revenue to finance the first best level of public spending when involved in emission trading a fiscally constrained government will potentially seek to close its fiscal gap through emission permit sales this fiscal incentive therefore generates a fiscal externality in the permit market that is endogenous to the extent of fiscal constrainedness among the participating countries our theory explains how and when fiscal externalities may be expected to arise moreover we show that in a permit market equilibrium with fiscal externalities the initial allocation of emission permits between countries will affect 1 the price of emission permits 2 the global distribution of abatement effort and 3 total greenhouse gas mitigation costs this is contrary to the textbook model of emission permit markets our findings are especially relevant for the eu which is about to allow for trading in emission rights between eu member countries for all emissions outside the european emissions trading system

climate policy with technology transfers and permit trading in this paper we analyze technology transfers tt and tradable emission rights which are core issues of the ongoing climate negotiations subsidizing tt leads to the adoption of better abatement technologies in the south thereby reducing the international permit price this is beneficial for the north as long as it is a permit buyer hence it chooses to subsidize tt by contrast the permit selling south suffers from the lower permit price and its welfare usually deteriorates despite receiving subsidies we also consider how tt affects countries non cooperative choices of permit endowments and find that it tends to reduce overall emissions finally a simple numerical simulation model illustrates the results and explores some further comparative statics

going beyond best technology and lowest price on renewable energy investors preference for service driven business models abstract renewable energy is becoming increasingly important for economies in many countries but still in an emerging industry renewable energy requires supportive energy policy helping firms to develop and protect competitive advantages in global competition as a guideline for designing such policy we consult well informed stakeholders within the renewable energy industry investors their preferences serve as explorative indicator for assessing which business models might succeed in competition to contribute to only limited research on renewable energy investors preferences we ask which business models investment managers for renewable energy prefer to invest in we report from an explorative study of 380 choices of renewable energy investment managers based on the stated preferences we modelled three generic business models to calculate the share of investors preferences we find exiting evidence a customer intimacy business model that proposes best services is much more preferred by investors than business models that propose lowest price or best technology policy makers can use those insights for designing policy that supports service driven business models for renewable energy with a scope on customer needs rather than technology or price additionally we state important implications for renewable energy entrepreneurs managers and research

business models for model businesses lessons from renewable energy entrepreneurs in developing countries against the background of mounting research suggesting entrepreneurship as a means of increasing the uptake of renewable energy technologies rets in developing countries this paper presents the findings of an exploratory investigation into the business models used by renewable energy entrepreneurs in such countries forty three entrepreneurs were interviewed in 28 developing countries and secondary information about country and regional conditions was analysed we chose the business model canvas as an analytical tool and the findings shed new light on established renewable energy business types three different types of businesses were identified consultants distributors and integrators yet there is also some overlap between these types these business types appeared to parallel the life cycle progression of the business but this requires further research a key component of the study was to assess whether the types of businesses were related to country level conditions to assess the impact of regional differences these comparisons revealed consistencies between country level characteristics and the entrepreneurs choice of business model conclusions suggest that different regions may support certain business models more than others due to differing levels of government interest in renewables governance and policy support and the relative ease of doing business

choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to improve electricity services abstract modern forms of energy are an important vehicle towards poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries most developing countries households rely heavily on wood fuel which impacts on their health and socio economic status to ease such a dependency other modern forms of energy namely electricity need to be provided however the quality of the electricity service namely reliability is an important factor in reducing this dependency this paper discusses a choice experiment valuation study conducted among electrified rural households located in kisumu kenya in which the willingness to pay wtp to avoid power outages or blackouts was estimated a mixed logit estimation was applied to identify the various socio economic and demographic characteristics which determine preferences in reducing power outages among a household s users in conclusion several of the socio economic and demographic characteristics outlined in this paper were identified and can assist service differentiation to accommodate the diverse households preferences towards the improvement of the electricity service

energy microfinance intervention for below poverty line households in india more than 72 of india s population resides in rural india1 and it also has a high concentration of people living under abject poverty of the total rural population 27 1 28 3 lives below the poverty line2 bpl a lack of energy finance options is hampering the quality of life of the bpl community the members of this disadvantaged household which forms 27 1 and 23 6 of the india s rural and urban population3 has no ready access to mainstream finance or know how of sustainable energy products nor do they have access to energy service providing agency this lack of energy finance options has provided the marginalized population little means to break the conventional energy paradigm and the corresponding poverty cycle considering the afore mentioned problem we propose an energy microfinance intervention or a model that encompasses two independent entities one has an energy expertise and the other possesses finance management skills alternately we also propose a special purpose entity that comprises of these two entities this entity fosters different institutional technical and financial engineering approaches to the provision of energy finance and infrastructure services necessary for poverty alleviation

can product demonstrations create markets for sustainable energy technology a randomized controlled trial in rural india abstract the literature on sustainable energy technology sees informational barriers as a major obstacle to technology adoption in the case of solar home systems recent studies report positive socio economic effects on households but technology adoption remains underwhelming in collaboration with a local solar technology provider we conduct a randomized controlled trial in 75 large villages in the state of uttar pradesh india to examine the ability of village solar demonstrations to create markets for solar home systems we find no effect of such demonstrations on technology sales awareness or perceptions of solar technology technology adopters report high levels of satisfaction with product quality and service suggesting that the null finding cannot be attributed to poor technology these findings suggest that lack of awareness is not a binding constraint on the growth of solar technology markets in the study area based on additional surveys we find evidence suggesting that access to credit from rural banks is an important explanation for variation in sales across villages these results do not prove that information and awareness are irrelevant in general but they show that even carefully designed marketing campaigns cannot increase demand for new products in the presence of a binding credit constraint

the choice theory approach to market research this paper surveys economic choice theory stressing developments that permit use of data from psychometric and conjoint experiments to produce market demand forecasts alternatives to the widely used multinomial logit model are summarized and a new method for estimating multinomial probits is described an integration of choice models with attitudinal scaling and perceptual mapping within a latent variable system is described estimation of such systems under either random effects or fixed effects descriptions of heterogeneity across individuals is discussed issues in the use of choice models to describe responses from conjoint experiments are presented new regression diagnostic tests for the consistency of multinomial logit representations are discussed

renewable micro generation of heat and electricity review on common and missing socio technical configurations abstract a widespread adoption of distributed generation dg technologies in energy systems can play a key role in creating clean reliable energy and support the targets of emission reduction a transition from current modes of production to a significant deployment of renewable energy technologies can fundamentally affect the structure of the industry and change the way energy is produced transmitted and sold the current paper provides an extended review of the socio technical configurations of micro generation based on journal publications and reports during the 21st century the paper analyses currently existing and missing configurations and discusses technology and policy implications to support proliferation of micro generation technology and local energy production from renewable sources the potential for new configurations can be found particularly in heat producing micro generation with solar heat heat pumps and biomass developing further the operations and maintenance of distributed generation technologies and business models appears an area that calls for further innovation and corresponding innovation policy measures third party service and community driven deployment models can aide the proliferation of distributed generation and further innovation therein justifying the introduction of feed in tariffs to attract such models during their early diffusion

an empirical test of the asymmetric models on innovative activity who invests more into r d the incumbent or the challenger the theoretical discussion concerning the question whether the incumbent or the potential entrant invests more into r d has attracted considerable interest this paper reports the results of an empirical study on this question using data of about 3500 german firms over the years 1992 to 1995 the survey explicitly asks the firms for their motives to undertake innovative activity it is thus possible to take account of intended not just completed market entry it turns out that the challenger invests more into r d in order to enter a new market than the incumbent thus the patent racing model by reinganum and others seems to characterize innovative activity more accurately than the competing auction model of gilbert and newbery we use a heteroscedastic tobit as well as a tobit model with selectivity in order to deal with the econometric problems of double censoring

uncertain innovation and persistence of monopoly revisited abstract does monopoly persist in a dynamic industry with opportunities for technological innovations this paper points out that the persistence of monopoly under uncertain innovations depends on how r d competition is modeled if the incumbent and the entrant bid for a stochastic r d technology in an auction framework as in gilbert and newbery american economic review 1982 72 514 526 before engaging in r d competition as in reinganum american economic review 1983 73 741 748 then the incumbent monopolist wins the auction with probability one both for drastic and nondrastic innovations

the socio technical barriers to solar home systems shs in papua new guinea choosing pigs prostitutes and poker chips over panels this study explores the socio technical barriers to solar home systems shs in papua new guinea the authors collected primary data through semi structured research interviews conducted over the course of february 2010 april 2010 respondents included government officials financiers planners commercial distributors and companies teachers and rural villagers in addition to members of civil society academics consultants and trainers these interviews were supplemented with site visits to port moresby goroka and madang and field research in the villages of akameku asaroka lufa kundiawa okifa simbu and talidig the study draws from these interviews and visits to discuss four types of barriers technical barriers relate to substandard equipment and logistical problems economic barriers include high rates of poverty misconceptions about the role of currency and lack of financing political barriers include poor institutional capacity and a government commitment to fossil fueled grid electrification social barriers encompass unrealistic expectations about what shs can provide along with jealousy theft vandalism and unfamiliarity with solar technology

the clean development mechanism in a world carbon market this paper discusses the role of the clean development mechanism cdm on the market for carbon quotas and countries commitments to reduce their carbon emission levels we show that the cdm contributes to an efficient funding of clean technology investments in least developed countries however the cdm is not neutral on the global level of carbon emissions as it entices countries to raise their emission caps the cdm may also make inappropriate the inclusion of any country that takes no emission abatement commitment it can even make inefficient a country s decision to commit to an emission target

optimal containment and policy differentiation under unilateral climate policy without a broad international agreement climate policy is less effective due to carbon leakage we investigate whether this negative effect can be addressed by partially containing the policy s effects to intermediate goods sectors such as electricity or transportation services we use a three sector model to study a policy that taxes emissions caused by intermediate goods production while subsidizing the intermediate good we characterize the optimal containment policy for combating carbon leakage and show that it complements the concept of policy differentiation

environmental and resource economics a canadian retrospective the paper reviews research contributions to environmental and resource economics by scholars in canada we focus mainly on work from the past 25 years but also highlight earlier pathbreaking work we begin by looking at broad trends in research both internationally and within canada we then review canadian contributions to various topics in the field canadians have played a leading role in the development of the field especially in resource economics international environmental economics and the valuation of environmental amenities

valuation methods and policy making in environmental economics 1 valuation methods and policy making in environmental economics relevance and scope h folmer e van ierland part i the valuation of public goods 2 non market asset prices a comparison of three valuation approaches r c d arge j f shogren 3 valuing public goods in a risky world an experiment p o johansson 4 recreational values pareto optimality and timber supply p o johansson k g lofgren k g maler 5 estimating social benefits of environmental improvements from reduced acid rain deposition a contingent valuation survey s navrud part ii the valuation of health and life 6 benefits of reduced morbidity from air pollution control a survey m dickie s gerking 7 valuing a public good direct and indirect valuation approaches to the measurement of the benefits from air pollution abatement m shechter m kim l golan 8 environmental regulation and the valuation of life interindustry mobility and the market price of safety h w herzog jr a m schlottmann part iii cost benefit analysis 9 disequilibrium cost benefit rules an exposition and extension p o johansson k g lofgren 10 macroeconomic cost benefit analysis of environmental programmes a nentjes part iv aspects of policy making 11 benefit estimation for complex policies a randall j hoehn 12 the acid rain game k g maler index

analyzing the effectiveness of international environmental policies the case of the kyoto protocol we study the effectiveness of emission targets under the kyoto protocol with respect to reducing co2 emissions using country level and us state level panel data and employing the synthetic control method we find very little evidence for an emission reduction effect for the major emitters among the annex b countries with binding emission targets more generally we also show that evaluating the effectiveness of international environmental policies at the country level comes with a number of empirical challenges that may invalidate findings based on more traditional panel data approaches

strategic investment in climate friendly technologies the impact of global emissions trading our point of departure is that a group of industrialized countries invest in research and development r d of greenhouse gas ghg abatement technologies r d investments influence the future ghg abatement choices of both industrialized and developing countries we distinguish between investments that reduce industrialized countries abatement costs and investments that reduce developing countries abatement costs unlike earlier contributions we include global trading in emission permits this changes the nature of the game with global permit trading industrialized countries should in many cases invest strategically in technologies that only reduce abatement costs at home this comes in addition to investments abroad second we show that r d investments always decrease total emissions finally we find that the developing region receiving investments always benefits

political influence on non cooperative international climate policy we analyze non cooperative international climate policy in a setting of political competition by national interest groups in the first stage countries decide whether to link their domestic emission permit markets to an international market which only forms if it is supported by all countries in the second stage countries non cooperatively decide on the number of tradable emission allowances in both stages special interest groups try to sway the government in their favor we find that i both the choice of regime and the levels of domestic and global emissions only depend on the aggregate levels of organized stakes in all countries and not on their distribution among individual interest groups and ii an increase in lobbying influence by a particular lobby group may backfire by inducing a change towards the lobby group s less preferred regime

market power and hot air in international emissions trading the impacts of us withdrawal from the kyoto protocol ten years after the initial climate change convention from rio in 1992 the industrialized world is finally likely to ratify the kyoto protocol which will impose legally binding greenhouse gas emission reductions on the developed world however the kyoto protocol will enter into force without the usa which withdrew under president bush in march 2001 accounting for hot air and market power of the former soviet union on emission permit markets it is shown that us withdrawal has important consequences on environmental effectiveness compliance costs and excess costs of market power under the kyoto protocol non compliance of the usa implies a dramatic decrease in environmental effectiveness as well as compliance costs of oecd countries whereas the former soviet union and transitional economies in eastern europe suffer from a huge decline in permit sales revenues excess costs of market power in permit trade increase in relative terms but decline substantially in absolute terms due to us withdrawal pol

international emissions trading with endogenous allowance choices abstract this paper compares endogenous choices of tradable and non tradable emission allowances by non cooperative countries i find that the cost savings of trading do not necessarily lead to less pollution in particular environmentally more concerned countries usually choose less allowances if these are tradable but this may be offset by the choice of more allowances on the side of environmentally less concerned countries moreover if the establishment of a trading system requires the unanimous approval of all countries there may be no agreement on trading even if it were to lead to less pollution overall conversely a trading system may find unanimous approval even if it induces more pollution

the role of public policy in advancement of product service systems this article discusses developments in the area of product service systems pss and the need to facilitate the proliferation of the pss approach through public policies the article argues that policies that establish the framework conditions for environmental improvement are preferable to detailed legislation as they favour environmentally superior pss however there is also a need for more specifically targeted policy measures that stimulate knowledge creation and dissemination in the pss area this article suggests that informative policy measures should be used by authorities and reviews the results from the functional programme of the swedish epa as an example of this type of policy c 2003 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

unilateral co2 reductions and carbon leakage the consequences of international trade in oil and basic materials a recursively dynamic general equilibrium model featuring six world regions with trade in energy and non energy goods is used to simulate the period from 1990 through 2100 in 10 year intervals the simulations explore the effect of unilateral action by the oecd to curb global co2 emissions unilateral cuts create incentives for free riding by non participating regions so that global emissions are reduced by less than the amount that the oecd cuts back its regional emissions carbon leakage occurs through two channels first basic materials production increases in unconstrained regions resulting in increased carbon intensity of gdp second reductions in oecd oil imports cause the world oil price to fall leading to an increased energy intensity in the non participant regions in this paper we use a general equilibrium model to assess the extent to which these two mechanisms reduce the effectiveness of oecd reductions in curbing global co2 concentrations

exploring the link between products and services in low income markets evidence from solar home systems one of the key challenges of energy access in emerging markets and developing countries is how to reach households and communities that are unlikely to get a grid connection in the long term or those that are connected to the grid but suffer from regular blackouts or low voltage by surveying entrepreneurs selling solar home systems shss on a commercial basis in emerging and developing countries this study is one of the first attempts to quantify the key elements of four potential product service systems psss cash credit leasing and fee for service whereas the fee for service approach was found to be suitable only under certain conditions all psss share two key elements for successful market deployment one or more years of maintenance and customer support in financing these customers new asset moreover it appears that private sector companies are in principle able to deliver shss to households with incomes greater than usd 1000 per year the implications for policy makers and development aid agencies are first to include maintenance services into public programmes or public private partnerships and second to explicitly consider financial risks for entrepreneurs e g customer commitment and repayment conditions

what drives carbon dioxide emissions in the long run evidence from selected south asian countries abstract this study empirically investigates the relationship between co 2 emission and four of its potentially contributing factors i e energy consumption income trade openness and population using time series data from 1971 to 2013 on five selected economies of south asia after confirming that all the series are stationary using unit root test process the study incorporates three different and advance panel cointegration tests i e pedroni kao and johansen fisher panel cointegration all the panel cointegration tests confirm that all the variables cointegrated the long run association between the variables is checked using fmols grouped and individual cross section country in the panel the fmols grouped results show that energy consumption trade openness and population increases environmental degradation in the panel countries with exception of income which has negative impact and sounds the existence of environmental kuznet curve between income and emission the innovative accounting approach using variance decomposition test and impulse response function is applied to examine the causality amongst the underlined vectors the results show that there is bidirectional causality between energy consumption and trade openness and uni directional causality running from energy consumption trade openness and population to co 2 emission the results enumerate that the energy consumption and population density will increase in long run and foresee further environmental degradation in the region

hybrid conjoint analysis an estimation probe in new venture decisions abstract how venture capitalists select start ups for financing has been an interesting topic for many researchers and practitioners the underlying assumption is that people who make money investing in new businesses by assessing the proposals should be experienced enough to distinguish losers from winners our research study tested three models self explicated conjoint and a hybrid comprising the two previous ones conjoint in order to find out 1 if these models could be applied to venture capital decision making and if so 2 to demonstrate the potential of conjoint analysis as a practical research method 3 to test whether or not the characteristics of the entrepreneur the product and the market replicate the venture capital decision this research study confirms what normative literature on decision making emphasizes that in the first stage of an evaluation screening venture capitalists focus on a small subset of criteria in a non compensatory process i e an unacceptable value on one criterion cannot be offset by a high value of another one the important criteria in this phase appear to be the entrepreneur s experience and the existence of a prototype for some decision makers or unique features of the product for others the screening step is more judgemental than analytic in a second stage the evaluation phase however venture capitalists end a detailed examination due diligence process by choosing the most preferred ventures through processes approximating compensatory rules that is a low but acceptable value on one criterion can be compensated by a high value on another the most important criteria identified by the research in this second stage are criteria found in the previous stage product gross profit margin and patent our research demonstrates agreement among venture capitalists in terms of one criterion to evaluate research proposals managerial experience as to the rest of the attributes tested there was variation in the weights assigned to them the findings of this pilot study also confirm the applicability of conjoint analysis as a research method in venture capital decision the approach helps shed light on the decision rules applied and permits the testing of previously researched criteria for predictive validity the method has the advantage of retaining individual preferences and clustering them around venture capitalists demographic and psychographic backgrounds i e years of experience type of education life style and the like or other types of information such as venture fund policies size of the investment type of industry etc the major implication of the study for entrepreneurs is the importance of previous experience in the industry where they expect to develop their ventures and a deep knowledge of the product advantages over competition technical production and cost feasibility they are to produce and market these are the factors that have the greatest influence on venture capitalists evaluation of such projects

gains from emission trading under multiple stabilization targets and technological constraints abstract this study quantified the effectiveness of emission trading by considering multiple technological constraints burden sharing schemes and climate stabilization targets we used a global computable general equilibrium model and evaluated the effectiveness of emission trading using welfare losses associated with climate mitigation for scenarios with and without emission trading as measured by the hicksian equivalent variation hev we found that emission trading contributed to a reduction in the economic losses associated with climate mitigation for all technological assumptions burden sharing schemes and stabilization targets the net global welfare losses in scenarios without emission trading ranged between 0 7 and 1 9 whereas emission trading reduced the losses by 0 1 to 0 5 the range depended on the assumptions in the burden sharing schemes technological constraints and stabilization targets the percentage change in welfare gain from emission trading varied regionally and was relatively high in low income or middle income countries 0 2 to 1 0 and 0 1 to 1 2 respectively compared to high income countries 0 1 to 0 3 some regions displayed negative values with regard to the effectiveness of emission trading which might be due to the change in goods and service trades associated with emission trading if the usage of carbon capture and storage was constrained welfare loss became large and the effectiveness of emission trading ultimately increased the use of a burden sharing scheme was a significant factor in changing the effectiveness of emission trading and the per capita emission convergence in 2050 was more effective for emission trading than a per income convergence

energy services in sub saharan africa how conducive is the environment the bulk of rural populations in sub saharan africa have no access to electricity and are under served by any other form of modern infrastructure the cost of infrastructure to mainly scattered communities has been perennially cited as largely to blame this is an undeniable truth but only part of it there are in addition myriads of social economic and political obstacles that play an unquantified and frequently unrecognized negative role at the route of the problem lies a subdued role of the would be recipients who in fact unlike anybody else are conversant with their problems consequently a number of products may come as impositions or misplaced priorities consumer participation for sustainable development has been articulated at international forums and in publications as being advantageous in practice however the concept appears to be generally shunned and even when occasionally tried the needs of the consumers are presumed and their roles prescribed this paper discusses a range of social economic and political issues that constitute major obstacles to the realisation of sustainable rural development

preemptive patenting and the persistence of monopoly this article takes a different tack and inquires whether institutions such as the patent system create opportunities for firms with monopoly power to maintain their monopoly power the results apply to other situations such as brand identification spatial location and capacity expansion which share the characteristic that early or preemptive actions may lower the returns to potential competitors

market power and transferable property rights the appeal of using markets as a means of allocating scarce resources stems in large part from the assumption that a market will approximate the competitive ideal when competition is not a foregone conclusion the question naturally arises as to how a firm might manipulate the market to its own advantage this paper analyzes the issue of market power in the context of markets for transferable property rights first a model is developed that explains how a single firm with market power might exercise its influence this is followed by an examination of the model in the context of a particular policy problem the control of particulate sulfates in the los angeles region

product services as a research field past present and future reflections from a decade of research in the last decade many researchers institutes and programs in the eu paid attention to product service systems pss given this massive effort it is time to take stock is pss research a theoretical field in its own right is the pss concept indeed the road to the factor 10 world is it the road to enhanced competitiveness what is needed to really use the potential of the concept this paper discusses these questions summarizing the analysis done in the pss review book new business for old europe various eu sponsored projects and the conceptual approach chosen in a new research network on sustainable consumption and production called score 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

transitional restricted linkage between emissions trading schemes linkages between emissions trading systems are deemed an important element of the future climate policy landscape they are however difficult to agree and remain few and far between temporary restrictions on permit trading have potential to facilitate and gradually approach unrestricted full linkage we compare the relative merits of several link restrictions in this respect namely quantitative transfer limits border taxes on transfers exchange and discount rates and unilateral linkage to this end we develop a simple model to have a unifying framework which in conjunction with lessons we draw from real world experiences serves as a basis for a broader policy oriented discussion while quantitative restrictions seem to be the natural route to full linkage they can lead to uncertain distributional effects and weaken price signals these aspects are mitigated under a border permit tax but this policy seems harder to implement exchange rates have potential to adjust for programmes stringencies and raise ambition over time but can be challenging to select as experience corroborates unilateral linkage can be a convenient approach

international emissions trading good or bad abstract using a non cooperative climate policy game applied in the literature we find that an agreement with international emissions trading leads to increased emissions and reduced efficiency

the participation decision versus the level of participation in an environmental treaty a spatial probit analysis abstract this paper represents treaty participation as a two stage game for which nations first decide whether or not to participate and then they choose their level of participation the resulting subgame perfect equilibrium is used to derive a reduced form equation for estimating and separating the influences of the variables at the two decision stages this spatial probit equation forms the basis for a full information maximum likelihood estimator that accounts for the simultaneity bias associated with public good spillins at both stages when the procedure is applied to the helsinki protocol we find that the strategic influence of a variable may drastically differ depending upon which stage is scrutinized

public policy influence on renewable energy investments a panel data study across oecd countries this paper examines the impact of public policy measures on renewable energy re investments in electricity generating capacity made by institutional investors using a novel combination of datasets and a longitudinal research design we investigate the influence of different policy measures in a sample of oecd countries to suggest an effective policy mix which could tackle failures in the market for clean energy the results call for technology specific policies which take into account actual market conditions and technology maturity to improve the conditions for institutional investments advisable policy instruments include economic and fiscal incentives such as feed in tariffs fit especially for less mature technologies additionally market based instruments such as greenhouse gas ghg emission trading systems for mature technologies should be included these policy measures directly impact the risk and return structure of re projects supplementing these with regulatory measures such as codes and standards e g rps and long term strategic planning could further strengthen the context for re investments

specialization patterns and reduction of co2 emissions an empirical investigation of environmental preservation and economic efficiency abstract we study the effects that different degrees of specialization in the production of the global net output of a group of countries might have on the emissions of co2 the analysis is based on the sraffian notion of subsystems which allows us to study what the input output table of a country would look like under different hypotheses on the allocation of the available resources we use the wiod input output tables and the related environmental accounts for 1995 2009 we show that the environmental benefits deriving from appropriate specialization patterns could be substantial moreover our results suggest that co2 reduction is not necessarily detrimental to economic activity on the contrary with the appropriate exploitation of suitable patterns of specialization co2 reduction and gdp growth may even be pursued jointly

international emission permit markets with refunding we propose a blueprint for an international emission permit market such as the eu trading scheme each country decides on the amount of permits it wants to offer a fraction of these permits is grandfathered the remainder is auctioned revenues from the auction are collected in a global fund and reimbursed to member countries in fixed proportions we show that international permit markets with refunding lead to outcomes in which all countries tighten the issuance of permits and are better off compared to standard international permit markets if the share of grandfathered permits is sufficiently small we obtain approximately socially optimal emission reductions

least cost network evaluation of centralized and decentralized contributions to global electrification abstract the choice between centralized and decentralized electricity generation is examined for 150 countries as a function of population distribution electricity consumption transmission cost and the cost difference between decentralized and centralized electricity generation a network algorithm is developed to find the shortest centralized transmission network that spans a given fraction of the population in a country the least cost combination of centralized and decentralized electricity that serves the country is determined case studies of botswana uganda and bangladesh illustrate situations that are more and less suited for decentralized electrification specific maps for centralized and decentralized generation are presented to show how the least cost option varies with the relative costs of centralized and decentralized generation and transmission cost centralized and decentralized fractions are calculated for 150 countries for most of the world s population centralized electricity is the least cost option for a number of countries particularly in africa substantial populations and regions may be most cost effectively served by decentralized electricity

shedding light on the last mile a study on the diffusion of pay as you go solar home systems in central east africa approximately 1 2 billion people lack basic access to electricity the united nations sustainable energy for all initiative exemplifies the urgent need to address this issue recent advancements in photovoltaic light emitting diode and battery technology have resulted in the rise of affordable and innovative household electricity technologies however penetration rates remain low due to complexity surrounding last mile distribution this paper applies the diffusion of innovations theory as a framework to investigate the last mile challenges encountered when launching a pay as you go solar home system in a region of central east africa the results indicate that pay as you go offers the potential to deliver a disruptive positive impact with regard to increasing access to clean affordable energy for the poor however both the technology and business model are more complex than current alternatives and therefore require a much more developed go to market strategy the cost of achieving widespread diffusion is therefore higher than similar products sold at retail yet this is balanced by potential for a much faster rate of adoption finally this paper demonstrates the applicability of the diffusion of innovations theory as a viable framework for analysing last mile challenges associated with solar home systems

a regional dynamic general equilibrium model of alternative climate change strategies outcomes and noncooperative equilibria this study finds that cooperative policies show much higher levels of emissions reductions than do noncooperative strategies that there are substantial differences in the levels of controls in both the cooperative and the noncooperative policies among different countries and that high income countries may be the major losers from cooperation jel h41 q4 q2 q20

self enforcing environmental agreements and international trade abstract in the basic model of the literature on international environmental agreements ieas barrett 1994 rubio and ulph 2006 the number of signatories of self enforcing ieas does not exceed three if non positive emissions are ruled out we extend that model by introducing a composite consumer good and fossil fuel that are produced and consumed in each country and traded on world markets when signatory countries act as a stackelberg leader and emissions are positive the size of stable ieas may be significantly larger in our model with international trade this would be good news if larger self enforcing ieas would lead to stronger reductions of total emissions unfortunately in the presence of self enforcing ieas total emissions turn out to be only slightly less than in the business as usual scenario independent of the number of signatories we also investigate the role of international trade by comparing our free trade results with the outcome in the regime of autarky our autarky model turns out to be coincident with the basic model of the literature alluded to above we contribute to that literature by showing that in autarky the outcome of self enforcing ieas is also almost the same as in the business as usual scenario

is trade in permits good for the environment we analyze the impact of trade in emission permits on environmental policy when countries trade a differentiated good pollution is always higher with tradable permits as compared to the case where permits are not internationally tradable if pollution is a pure global public bad i e the marginal damage from transboundary pollution is the same as that from local pollution the permit price under trade equals the domestic marginal damage from own emissions if pollution is not a pure global public bad i e the marginal damage from transboundary pollution is less than that from local pollution trade results in a permit price lower than the domestic marginal damage from own emissions pollution is higher under trade relative to autarky regardless of the nature of transboundary pollution the permit price equivalent pollution tax is lower and pollution is higher with internationally tradable permits than with nontradable permits

a numerical investigation of the potential for negative emissions leakage leakage of greenhouse gas emissions increased emissions in unconstrained regions due to regulations in other regions undermines the effectiveness of sub global climate regulations reduces incentives for unilateral climate initiatives and can result in distortionary trade measures winchester 2012 these concerns are expressed in measures to reduce leakage included in the eu emissions trading scheme and draft legislation in the united states the now defunct waxman markey bill two sources of leakage include changes in fossil fuel prices and trade flows carbone helm and rutherford 2009 leakage via fossilfuel price effects occurs when reduced energy demand in constrained regions decreases fuel prices and increases fuel use in unconstrained regions trade changes contribute to leakage when production increases in unconstrained regions as a result of increased exports to and reduced imports from constrained regions

taxing international emissions trading we investigate the efficiency and effectiveness consequences of emissions trading taxation a theoretical partial equilibrium model is developed showing that permits taxation distorts the equilibrium price and abatement efforts potentially counterintuitive conclusions concerning the tax revenue are also derived a cge model complements theoretical results suggesting that the change in the equilibrium permits price brought about by taxation can be significant finally we conclude that policy design based on cost effectiveness might lead to wrong conclusions the socially desirable design of emissions trading taxation requires homogenous tax rates applied to net sellers and no rebate rates allowed for net buyers

the case for international emission trade in the absence of cooperative climate policy we evaluate the efficacy of international trade in carbon emission permits when countries are guided strictly by their national self interest to do so we construct a calibrated general equilibrium model that jointly describes the world economy and the strategic incentives that guide the design of national abatement policies countries decisions about their participation in a trading system and about their initial permit endowment are made noncooperatively so a priori it is not clear that permit trade will induce participation in international abatement agreements or that participation will result in significant environmental gains despite this we find that emission trade agreements can be effective that smaller groupings pairing developing and developed world partners often perform better than agreements with larger rosters and that general equilibrium responses play an important role in shaping these outcomes