leapfrog to the future energy scenarios and strategies for suriname to 2050 abstract this paper formulates energy strategies for suriname a conceptual model identifying relationships in the energy sector is conceived one of the striking characteristics is that various relationships inhibit significant uncertainty our contemporary age is characterized by more complex becoming relations decreasing predictability and increasing chaos simple extrapolation of past events is therefore futile since deviations from anticipated outcomes have significant impacts the scenario planning methodology has been used to deal with this uncertainty the most uncertain high impact driving forces that shape the future of the energy sector in suriname have been identified and are used to create energy scenarios to 2050 next robust strategies have been formulated which primarily focus on institutionalization renewable resources cost reflecting tariffs decentralization of energy supply and energy efficiency and savings leading indicators have been identified that identify towards which scenario the present develops and hence which set of strategies need to be applied

estimating the intensity of choice in a dynamic mutual fund allocation decision abstract the paper analyzes the intensity of choice in an agent based financial optimization problem mean variance optimizing agents choose among mutual funds of similar styles but varying performance we specify a model for the allocation of new funds switching between funds and withdrawals and obtain statistically significant estimates of the intensity of choice parameter this estimate is also given economic interpretation through the underperformance of funds that use an active style we find that agents with relative risk aversion of 2 will move 1 of their funds from active to passive for an extra 34 basis points of return

a characterization of erratic dynamics in the overlapping generations model abstract in this paper we characterize and give examples o wide classes of utility functions which generate erratic dynamics in the standard deterministic overlapping generations model erratic dynamics refers to feasible trajectories which are bounded but which do not converge to stationary points or periodic orbits we show that such trajectories are pareto efficient we introduce credit into the model and show how a constant credit expansion rate can result in erratic trajectories in prices and the real value of credit finally we briefly discuss certain technical aspects of the mathematics used and the statistical nature of the dynamics that can arise from deterministic dynamical systems

the value of cooperatives in rural electrification the electricity sectors of many developing countries underwent substantial reforms during the 1980s and 1990s driven by global agendas of privatization and liberalization however rural electrification offered little by way of market incentives for profit seeking private companies and was often neglected as a consequence delivery models for rural electrification need to change this paper will review the experiences of various rural electrification delivery models that have been established in developing countries including concessionary models dealership approaches and the strengthening of small and medium sized energy businesses it will use examples from the usa bangladesh and nepal together with a detailed case study of a nepali rural electric cooperative to explore the role that local cooperatives can play in extending electricity access it is shown that although there is no magic bullet solution to deliver rural electrification if offered appropriate financial and institutional support socially orientated cooperative businesses can be a willing efficient and effective means of extending and managing rural electricity services it is expected that this paper will be of particular value to policy makers donors project planners and implementers currently working in the field of rural electrification

dynamic predictor selection in a new keynesian model with heterogeneous expectations abstract this paper introduces dynamic predictor selection into a new keynesian model with heterogeneous expectations and examines its implications for monetary policy we extend branch and mcgough 2009 by incorporating endogenous time varying predictor proportions along the lines of brock and hommes 1997 we find that periodic orbits and complex dynamics may arise even if the model under rational expectations has a unique stationary solution the qualitative nature of the non linear dynamics turns on the interaction between hawkishness of the government s policy and the extrapolative behavior of non rational agents

a new tailored scheme for the support of renewable energies in developing countries abstract historically the promotion of renewable energy technologies in isolated areas has involved international donors or governments subsidising the initial capital investment this paper proposes an alternative support mechanism for remote villages based on the generation of renewable electricity this communication presents an evaluation of the renewable energy premium tariff rpt scheme a locally adapted variation of the feed in tariff tailored for decentralised grids of developing countries the rpt scheme stimulates the deployment of renewable energy technologies by paying for renewable electricity generated a good quality performance is secured since the support is given based on the electricity produced by renewables not for the initial capital investment the mechanism has been designed to provide a cost effective scheme for the introduction of renewable energy technologies to remote villages to provide sustainable and affordable electricity to local users to make renewable energy projects attractive to policy makers and concurrently decrease financial risk to attract private sector investment

performance of monetary policy with internal central bank forecasting abstract recent models of monetary policy have analyzed the desirability of different optimal and ad hoc interest rules under the restrictive assumption that forecasts of the private sector and the central bank are homogeneous this paper studies the implications of heterogeneity in forecasting by the central bank and private agents for the performance of interest rules in a framework of econometric learning

determinants of capital structure evidence from a major developing economy a major shortcoming of capital structure studies on developing economies is that they generally restrict their analyses to large publicly traded manufacturing firms consequently we know little about the applicability of various capital structure theories to firms that are private small and or outside the manufacturing industry in these economies in this paper we conduct a comparative test of the trade off and pecking order theories using a comprehensive firm level dataset that covers manufacturing non manufacturing small large publicly traded and private firms in a major developing economy turkey the trade off theory provides a better description of the capital structures of all firm types than the pecking order theory moreover the trade off theory appears to be particularly suitable for understanding the financing choices of large private firms in the non manufacturing sector and when the economic environment is relatively stable by contrast pecking order theory is most useful when it comes to small publicly traded manufacturing firms especially when the economic environment is relatively unstable

stationary sunspot equilibria in a finance constrained economy abstract stationary sunspot equilibria are shown to exist in a production economy with infinite lived agents when it is not possible to borrow against future wage income equilibrium fluctuations exhibit persistence over time scales of the same order of magnitude as observed business cycles an active fiscal policy that stabilizes aggregate money expenditures can prevent such fluctuations

the debt equity choice when firms adjust their capital structures they tend to move toward a target debt ratio that is consistent with theories based on tradeoffs between the costs and benefits of debt in contrast to previous empirical work out tests explicitly account for the fact that firms may face impediments to movements toward their target ratio and that the target ratio may change over time as the firm s profitability and stock price change a separate analysis of the size of the issue and repurchase transactions suggests that the deviation between the actual and the target ratios plays a more important role in the repurchase decision than in the issuance decision

financial globalization and debt maturity in emerging economies this paper studies how financial globalization affects debt structure in emerging economies we find that by accessing international markets firms increase their long term debt and extend their debt maturity in contrast with financial liberalization long term debt decreases and the maturity structure shifts to the short term for the average firm these effects are stronger in economies with less developed domestic financial systems the evidence is consistent with financial integration having opposite effects on the firms that are able to integrate with world markets and obtain financing globally relative to the firms that rely on domestic financing only

stability of cycles and expectations the actual dynamics of an economy depends on how agents forecast the future at every date as a function of their information on the past while possibly learning the structure of their environment we show in the case of a one dimensional state variable that under mild conditions on expectations functions a given cycle with perfect foresight that is stable in the actual dynamics is stable in a fictitious backward perfect foresight dynamics we exhibit a restricted class of expectations functions for which the converse is true

modern energy access to all in rural india an integrated implementation strategy abstract expanding energy access to the rural population of india presents a critical challenge for its government the presence of 364 million people without access to electricity and 726 million who rely on biomass for cooking indicate both the failure of past policies and programs and the need for a radical redesign of the current system we propose an integrated implementation framework with recommendations for adopting business principles with innovative institutional regulatory financing and delivery mechanisms the framework entails establishment of rural energy access authorities and energy access funds both at the national and regional levels to be empowered with enabling regulatory policies capital resources and the support of multi stakeholder partnership these institutions are expected to design lead manage and monitor the rural energy interventions at the other end trained entrepreneurs would be expected to establish bioenergy based micro enterprises that will produce and distribute energy carriers to rural households at an affordable cost the escos will function as intermediaries between these enterprises and the international carbon market both in aggregating carbon credits and in trading them under cdm if implemented such a program could address the challenges of rural energy empowerment by creating access to modern energy carriers and climate change mitigation

the prospects of renewable energy technologies for rural electrification a review from nepal abstract utilization of renewable energy technologies remains one of the major energy policies throughout the world these technologies are proven to be successful for electrifying rural communities especially in developing countries realizing the benefits of renewable energy sources the government of nepal has initiated the production and distribution of renewable energy technologies in recent years mainly to electrify rural communities although these technologies are suitable for providing electricity in isolated and remote rural areas their implementation programs have not been successful as expected this review provides broad spectrum view about the energy situation in nepal and highlights the current policies and subsidies for the optimal utilization of renewable energy resources in isolated and poor rural communities in addition major promotional barriers for their implementation in nepal have been discussed

does the worldwide shift of fdi from manufacturing to services accelerate economic growth a gmm estimation study abstract we examine the effect of manufacturing and service fdi foreign direct investment on their own sector growth the spillover to the other sectors and the overall economy in host countries we identify significant sectoral and inter industry spillover effects with various data classifications and types of fdi flows evidence reveals that growth effect of manufacturing fdi operates by stimulating activity in its own manufacturing sector and is prevalent in latin america caribbean in europe central asia middle to low income countries and economies with large industry share a surge of service fdi is likely to spur growth in service industries but hurt activity in manufacturing industries financial service fdi enhances growth in south east asia and the pacific high income countries and service based economies by stimulating activity in both manufacturing and service sectors however nonfinancial service fdi drains resources and hurts manufacturing industry in the same group of countries we conclude that a shift from manufacturing to service fdi is likely to lead to deindustrialization in certain regions and types of economies if this shift is spearheaded by nonfinancial fdi

calabashes for kilowatt hours rural energy and market failure this paper describes how management and information failures can retard transitions from the traditional use of biomass fuel by low income rural consumers and micro producers in general societies

expectation calculation and macroeconomic dynamics the authors establish a framework wherein agents make expectation revision decisions subject to a specified calculation technology and preferences over forecast errors the technology endows agents with correctly specified economic models but the cost of expectation calculation using these models leads to gradual and incomplete adjustment to long run rational expectation equilibrium the rational expectations hypothesis emerges as a special case of the equilibrium paths obtained in the authors framework in a natural rate model of monetary policy calculation technology gives rise to long run nonneutrality and hysteresis effects and incomplete adjustment of forecast rules causes output fluctuations to be amplified copyright 1992 by american economic association

drivers barriers and strategies for implementation of renewable energy technologies in rural areas in bangladesh an innovation system analysis abstract bangladesh has good potential for harnessing renewable energy sources such as solar biomass wind and mini hydropower the country has been experiencing a gradual shift towards exploring renewable energy resources as a driving force for rural development a few public sector and non government organizations have started to develop renewable energy technology ret projects in rural areas the lessons learnt from different demonstrations of ret projects reveal that with careful forward planning renewable energy can provide far reaching economic environmental and social benefits to people living in remote rural areas in bangladesh this paper identifies some of the barriers that need to be overcome for the successful development of renewable energy technology sector and betterment of rural livelihoods it does so through a critical review of policy and institutional settings as well as present status and lessons learnt from pilot demonstration of a number of ret projects undertaken by different organizations the study highlights policy implications of the review with the aim of supporting decision makers in formulating renewable energy policies and future plans for bangladesh

the economic lives of the poor in what turned out to be a rhetorical master move the 1990 world development report from the world bank defined the extremely poor people of the world as those who are currently living on no more than 1 per day per person measured at the 1985 purchasing power parity ppp exchange rate in 1993 the poverty line was updated to 1 08 per person per day at the 1993 ppp exchange rate which is the line we use in this paper poverty lines have always existed indeed 1 per day was chosen in part because of its proximity to the poverty lines used by many poor countries 1 however the 1 a day poverty line has come to dominate the conversations about poverty to a remarkable extent

animal spirits heterogeneous expectations and the amplification and duration of crises we introduce a simple equilibrium model of a market for loans households lend to firms and form expectations about their loan default probability under heterogeneous expectations with switching between forecasting strategies driven by reinforcement learning even a small fraction of pessimistic traders has a large aggregate effect causing a heterogeneous expectations risk premium i e significantly higher contract rates for loans and significantly lower output our stylized model illustrates how animal spirits and heterogeneous expectations may lead to aconfidence loss and to financial instability amplifying the magnitude of economic crises and slowing down recovery

equilibrium models displaying endogenous fluctuations and chaos abstract this paper surveys current developments in dynamic general equilibrium theory concerned with conditions under which endogenous fluctuations are possible existing contributions are divided into two classes the larger one consists of models with a unique perfect foresight equilibrium while the second includes models where equilibrium is indeterminate and the set of equilibria involving endogenous fluctuations includes sunspots equilibria while the two classes of models involve oscillations of different natures and with different policy implications we show that both are consistent with optimizing behavior and competitive equilibrium

structural stochastic volatility in asset pricing dynamics estimation and model contest abstract in the framework of small scale agent based financial market models the paper starts out from the concept of structural stochastic volatility which derives from different noise levels in the demand of fundamentalists and chartists and the time varying market shares of the two groups it advances several different specifications of the endogenous switching between the trading strategies and then estimates these models by the method of simulated moments msms where the choice of the moments reflects the basic stylized facts of the daily returns of a stock market index in addition to the standard version of msm with a quadratic loss function we also take into account how often a great number of monte carlo simulation runs happen to yield moments that are all contained within their empirical confidence intervals the model contest along these lines reveals a strong role for a tamed herding component the quantitative performance of the winner model is so good that it may provide a standard for future research

behavioral heterogeneity in u s inflation dynamics in this article we develop and estimate a behavioral model of inflation dynamics with heterogeneous firms in our stylized framework there are two groups of price setters fundamentalists and rando

intrinsic heterogeneity in expectation formation we introduce the concept of misspecification equilibrium to dynamic macroeconomics agents choose between a list of misspecified econometric models and base their selection on relative forecast performance a misspecification equilibrium is a stochastic process in which agents forecast optimally given their choices with forecast model parameters and predictor proportions endogenously determined under appropriate conditions the misspecification equilibrium will exhibit intrinsic heterogeneity in which all predictors are used at all times even in the neoclassical limit in which only the most successful predictors are used this equilibrium is attainable under least squares learning and dynamic predictor selection based on average profits

replicator dynamics in a cobweb model with rationally heterogeneous expectations abstract this paper extends the adaptively rational equilibrium dynamics of brock and hommes brock w a hommes c h 1997 a rational route to randomness econometrica 65 1059 1160 by introducing a generalized version of the replicator dynamic the replicator equilibrium dynamics red couples the price dynamics of a cobweb model with predictor selection governed by an evolutionary replicator dynamic we show that the red supports the conclusion of sethi and franke sethi r franke r 1995 behavioural heterogeneity under evolutionary pressure macroeconomic implications of costly optimisation the economic journal 105 583 600 that costly rational beliefs persist though unlike them these results obtain in the deterministic case numerical evidence shows that complex dynamics exist as in brock and hommes even though no weight is placed on strictly dominated predictors in an red steady state

on the existence of an optimal capital structure theory and evidence one of the most contentious issues in the theory of finance during the past quarter century has been the theory of capital structure the geneses of this controversy were the seminal contributions by modigliani and miller 18 19 the general academic view by the mid 1970s although not a consensus was that the optimal capital structure involves balancing the tax advantage of debt against the present value of bankruptcy costs no sooner did this general view become prevalent in the profession than miller 16 presented a new challenge by showing that under certain conditions the tax advantage of debt financing at the firm level is exactly offset by the tax disadvantage of debt at the personal level since then there has developed a burgeoning theoretical literature attempting to reconcile miller s model with the balancing theory of optimal capital structure e g deangelo and masulis 5 kim 12 and modigliani 17 the general result of this work is that if there are significant leverage related costs such as bankruptcy costs agency costs of debt and loss of non debt tax shields and if the income from equity is untaxed then the marginal bondholder s tax rate will be less than the corporate rate and there will be a positive net tax advantage to corporate debt financing the firm s optimal capital structure will involve the trade off between the tax advantage of debt and various leverage related costs the upshot of these extensions of miller s model is the recognition that the existence of an optimal capital structure is essentially an empirical issue as to whether or not the various leverage related costs are economically significant enough to influence the costs of corporate borrowing the miller model and its theoretical extensions have inspired several timeseries studies which provide evidence on the existence of leverage related costs trczinka 28 reports that from examining differences in average yields between taxable corporate bonds and tax exempt municipal bonds one cannot reject the miller hypothesis that the marginal bondholder s tax rate is not different from the corporate tax rate however trczinka is careful to point out that this finding does not necessarily imply that there is no tax advantage of corporate debt if the personal tax rate on equity is positive indeed buser and hess 1 using a longer time series of data and more sophisticated econometric techniques estimate that the average effective personal tax rate on equity is statistically positive and is not of a trivial magnitude more importantly they document evidence that is consistent with the existence of significant leverage related costs in the economy

indeterminacy and increasing returns abstract we investigate properties of the one sector growth model with increasing returns under two organizational structures capable of reconciling the existence of aggregate increasing returns with competitive behavior by firms the first involves input externalities the second involves monopolistic competition we show for parameters in close accord with recent literature on real business cycles that the model displays an indeterminate steady state that can be exploited to generate a model of business fluctuations driven by self fulfilling beliefs in our first class of models growth is generated by exogenous increases in factor productivity in the second class the marginal product of capital is large enough for endogenous growth journal of economic literature classification numbers e00 e3 o40

rural electrification in the developing world abstract rural electrification does not cause development electricity is a derived demand occurring only when an area has reached a certain economic level this has important consequences for the choice of areas for electrification rural electrification subsidies are generally excessive and tariffs need to be greatly increased renewable energy sources should be analysed on the same technical and economic basis as conventional supply systems particular care is required when considering photovoltaic systems for pre electrification community management may provide a means of electricity supply for some villages but the key questions are likely to be institutional and managerial rather than technical

infrastructure provision gender and poverty in indian slums we examine the relationship between infrastructure provision and poverty alleviation by analyzing 500 interviews conducted in serviced and non serviced slums in india using a mixed method approach of qualitative analysis and regression modeling we find that infrastructure was associated with a 66 increase in education among females service provision increased literacy by 62 enhanced income by 36 and reduced health costs by 26 evidence suggests that a gender sensitive consideration of infrastructure is necessary and that a one size fits all approach will not suffice we provide evidence that infrastructure investment is critical for well being of slum dwellers and women in particular

the diffusion of energy technology in the rural areas of developing countries a synthesis of recent experience abstract this paper provides a synthesis of the experience of attempts to diffuse energy conversion technologies in the rural areas of developing countries it draws on the experience reported in the literature as well as the five other articles included in this special section the first four articles report the results of research supported under the rural energy technology assessment and innovation network retain funded by the international development research centre of canada these cover biogas in china gasifiers in the philippines decentralized electricity supply in argentina and dual fuel biogas engines in india the final paper provides a review of the experience of the diffusion of a number of successful mature energy technologies this introductory paper charts the changing perspective of technology diffusion that has occurred in recent years the shift from the largely social psychological concerns to concerns about the nature of the technology itself the political economy of the users and producers and the more evolutionary views of the process of technical change the evidence is grouped under nine headings the role of the market and state diffusion strategies the performance of the technology users needs political economy financial returns the macro policy environment the system overhead costs and adaptation in the light of experience the paper concludes by drawing from this complex picture of rural technical change a set of basic principles which might guide policy makers and researchers in improving the prospects for the diffusion of rural energy technology

on endogenous competitive business cycles the belief that the long run equilibrium of a competitive monetary economy that does not experience any exogeneous shocks whether originating from the external environment or from policy should be modelled as a state that is stationary or perhaps growing at a constant rate seems to be deeply rooted in the mind of some economists

dynamic recapitalization policies and the role of call premia and issue discounts in a dynamic framework the advantage of leverage depends upon the firm s recapitalization policy we show that if bonds are callable at par then equityholders have an incentive to recapitalize too early call premia and issue discounts however mitigate the agency problem of early recapitalization the model provides the optimal call premium and issue discount as a function of firm specific characteristics an analysis of a bond sample supports the model s prediction that the optimal call premium is positively related to firm risk

convergence of least squares learning in environments with hidden state variables and private information we study the convergence of recursive least squares learning schemes in economic environments in which there is private information the presence of private information leads to the presence of hidden state variables from the viewpoint of particular agents by applying theorems of ljung we extend some of our earlier results to characterize conditions under which a system governed by leastsquares learning will eventually converge to a rational expectations equilibrium we apply insights from the learning results to formulate and compute the equilibrium of a version of townsend s model

living in an imaginary world that looks real abstract in the paper we show using standard approaches general equilibrium modeling and the assumption of complete rationality that the macroeconomic environment is endogenous and is indeterminate specifically it is argued without resorting to sunspot type arguments that microeconomic fundamentals do not suffice to characterize the economy at the macro level in particular we show how perceptions of rational agents of the workings of the economy a shape the environment b affect the environment sufficiently to ensure that rational economic agents find the observed environment consistent with their beliefs even though it is not as a by product we illustrate that endogenous macro uncertainty can arise as an outcome if rational economic agents whose expectations are anchored on endogenous variables expect them to arise finally we show that systematic errors can persist indefinitely under rationality

debt agency costs and industry equilibrium we show that risk characteristics of projects cash flows are endogenously determined by the investment decisions of all firms in an industry as a result in reasonable settings financial structures which create incentives to expropriate debtholders by increasing risk are shown not to reduce value in an industry equilibrium without taxes capital structure is irrelevant for individual firms despite its effect on the equityholders incentives but the maximum total amount of debt in the industry is determinate allowing for a corporate tax advantage of debt capital structure becomes relevant but firms are indifferent between distinct alternative debt levels the effect of firms financial structures on subsequent investment and output decisions has recently received considerable attention in the finance literature the central insight that equityholders control the firm s investment and production decisions and in general do not maximize the value of a levered firm has been applied to the analysis of risk shifting underinvestment and firms abilities to enter into optimal contracts with their customers existing models of firms financial structures and their effect on investment decisions are generally based on a single firm framework and do not take into account the relationship between project cash flows and the investment decisions of all firms in the industry 2 in this paper we allow the distribution of investment projects within an industry to adjust and show that this generates new insights and reverses several key results of single firm agency cost models the new predictions conform with well documented

connective power solar electrification and social change in kenya summary market based rural electrification with solar energy is increasingly common in developing countries this article revolves around three main claims about solar electrification in kenya s unsubsidized market 1 the benefits of solar electrification are captured primarily by the rural middle class 2 solar electricity plays a modest role in supporting economically productive and education related activities but connective applications such as television radio and cellular telephone charging often receive a higher priority 3 solar electrification is more closely tied to increased television use the expansion of markets more rural urban communication and other processes that increase rural urban connectivity than to poverty alleviation sustainable development or the appropriate technology movement

meeting electrification s social objectives in south africa and implications for developing countries electrification programmes and projects are usually planned and evaluated on the basis of their economic financial and socio economic performance it is not usually recognised that electrification is often carried out for social objectives of poverty alleviation and political effect examination of electrification in south africa reveals clearly that initial electrification was to meet economic objectives later socio economic objectives were adopted and recently the objectives were social social electrification particularly rural electrification is not viable according to usual assessment methods which are frequently distorted to provide the justification for a project to proceed the technology of network electrification changed to meet the constraints challenging usual perceptions about the relative costs of urban and rural electrification and the potential for photovoltaic electrification adopting a specification for social electrification allows suitable tariffs for electrification to be identified indicates how capital investment decisions might be modified for social electrification and identifies implications for electricity industry restructuring a better understanding of electrification s social objectives has implications for projects and programmes in other developing countries

adaptive behavior and economic theory the relationship between psychological and economic views of behavior once a subject of heavy dispute is now understood in a very similar way by practitioners of both these disciplines and of our sister social sciences in general terms we view or model an individual as a collection of decision rules rules that dictate the action to be taken in given situations and a set of preferences used to evaluate the outcomes arising from particular situation action combinations these decision rules are continuously under review and revision new decision rules are tried and tested against experience and rules that produce desirable outcomes supplant those that do not i use the term adaptive to refer to this trial anderror process through which our modes of behavior are determined if one is interested in modeling particular decisions in any very explicit way it is obviously necessary to think about rather narrow aspects of an individual s entire set of decision rules his or her personality experimental psychology has traditionally focused on the adaptive process by which decision rules are replaced by others in this tradition the influence of the subject s or as an economist says the agent s preferences this essay uses a series of examples to illustrate the use of rationality and adaptation in economic theory it is argued that these hypotheses are complementary and that stability theories based on adaptive behavior may help to narrow the class of empirically interesting equilibria in certain economic models an experiment is proposed to test this idea

learning to lend for off grid solar power policy lessons from world bank loans to india indonesia and sri lanka abstract the world bank has sought to advance the diffusion of solar photovoltaic pv technology for off grid applications in the developing world as these systems are fundamentally different to centralised power stations and conventional rural electrification the world bank has been learning how best to lend for such technology this study seeks to highlight the lessons learnt from the world bank s first loans for off grid pv to india indonesia and sri lanka it uses lifetime cost analysis to justify continued intervention in this sector and it draws on theories of innovation diffusion to guide analysis and ultimately policy recommendations because of the special role of entrepreneurial start up companies in the rural pv sector the paper also uses a company cash flow model to demonstrate the efficacy of various supply side policies finally the study concludes with a checklist of policy lessons and a consideration of the role of the international finance corporation in this sector

rural electrification policy and institutional linkages some of the problems that have besieged rural electrification in most developing countries include inadequate policies weak institutional frameworks and limited financing in the last two decades governments in developing countries have been making various efforts both at the policy level and in financing to facilitate increased levels of rural electrification however the introduction of market based reforms in the power sector in the last decade has affected the institutional and financing arrangements for rural electrification the reforms have also affected the rate of electrification and affordability of electricity there is need therefore to establish the extent to which the reforms have affected access and affordability of electricity in rural areas and to develop appropriate policy and the supporting institutional structures to align rural electrification with reformed power sectors it is cardinal to establish how privatised and commercialised power companies in a reformed power sector could contribute to rural electrification and the role of governments and government agents in facilitating expanded access to electricity in rural areas

learning with misspecification in an artificial currency market abstract agents evolve their forecast rules over time via a modified genetic algorithm in a simple artificial currency market these forecast rules can be nonlinearly misspecified when the misspecification is suppressed learning tends to be complete when it is not suppressed learning can generate persistent exchange rate dynamics

indeterminacy of equilibria in a hyperinflationary world experimental evidence the authors design and study an olg experimental economy where the government finances a fixed real deficit through seigniorage the economy has continua of nonstationary rational expectations equilibria and two stationary rational expectations equilibria the authors do not observe nonstationary rational expectations paths observed paths tend to converge close to or somewhat below the low inflation stationary state the adaptive learning hypothesis is consistent with the data in selecting the low inflation stationary state rational expectations equilibrium as a long run stationary equilibrium nevertheless simple adaptive learning models do not capture the market uncertainty or the biases observed in the data copyright 1993 by the econometric society

the economics of renewable energy expansion in rural sub saharan africa accelerating development in sub saharan africa will require massive expansion of access to electricity currently reaching only about one third of households this paper explores how essential economic development might be reconciled with the need to keep carbon emissions in check the authors develop a geographically explicit framework and use spatial modeling and cost estimates from recent engineering studies to determine where stand alone renewable energy generation is a cost effective alternative to centralized grid supply the results suggest that decentralized renewable energy will likely play an important role in expanding rural energy access but it will be the lowest cost option for a minority of households in africa even when likely cost reductions over the next 20 years are considered decentralized renewables are competitive mostly in remote and rural areas while grid connected supply dominates denser areas where the majority of households reside these findings underscore the need to de carbonize the fuel mix for centralized power generation as it expands in africa

genetic algorithms and inflationary economies abstract this paper studies overlapping generations economies in which agents use genetic algorithms to learn correct decision rules the results of computer simulations show that a genetic algorithm converges to the unique monetary steady state in case of a constant money supply policy and to the low inflation stationary equilibrium in case of a constant real deficit financed through seignorage features of the genetic algorithm adaptation are compared to the performance of other learning algorithms and to the behavior observed in experiments with human subjects in the same olg environments

an integrated framework for rural electrification adopting a user centric approach to business model development rural electrification re has gained prominence over the past two decades as an effective means for improving living conditions this growth has largely been driven by socio economic and political imperatives to improve rural livelihood and by technological innovation based on a content analysis of 232 scholarly articles the literature is categorized into four focal lenses technology institutional viability and user centric we find that the first two dominate the re debate the viability lens has been used less frequently whilst the user centric lens began to engage scholars as late as 2007 we provide an overview of the technological institutional and viability lenses and elaborate upon the user centric lens in greater detail for energy policy and practice we combine the four lenses to develop a business model framework that policy makers practitioners and investors could use to assess re projects or to design future rural electrification strategies

gross substitutability in large square economies abstract this paper investigates the implications of gross substitutability of excess demand functions for the equilibria of exchange economies with countably many goods and arbitrarily many consumers we provide uniqueness theorems for general models we also show that the equilibrium trajectories of dynamic stationary overlapping generations economies satisfy strong turnpike properties in particular we are able to extend gale s characterization of the equilibrium dynamics of the model with one good per period one consumer per generation and two periods of life to models with many goods many consumers and many periods of life

the maturity structure of corporate debt we provide an empirical examination of the determinants of corporate debt maturity our evidence offers strong support for the contracting cost hypothesis firms that have few growth options are large or are regulated have more long term debt in their capital structure we find little evidence that firms use the maturity structure of their debt to signal information to the market the evidence is consistent however with the hypothesis that firms with larger information asymmetries issue more short term debt we find no evidence that taxes affect debt maturity

random perturbations of deterministic equilibria abstract this paper examines whether a small random deviation from a non random policy process will destabilize the equilibrium exchange rate the results focus on exchange rate dynamics when the government maintains a target zone or makes unanticipated deviations from a policy rule with rational expectations small random shocks do not create large deviations from the policy rule exchange rate if agents are approximately rational large deviations between exchange rates are possible

on the consistency of backward looking expectations the case of the cobweb in dynamic models of economic fluctuations backward looking expectations with systematic forecasting errors are inconsistent with rational behaviour in non linear dynamic models exhibiting seemingly unpredictable chaotic fluctuations however simple habitual rule of thumb backward looking expectation rules may yield non zero but nevertheless non systematic forecasting errors in a chaotic model expectational forecasting errors may have zero autocorrelations at all lags even for rational agents patterns in these forecasting errors may be very difficult to detect especially in the presence of small noise backward looking expectations are then not necessarily inconsistent with rational behaviour we investigate whether simple expectation schemes such as naive or adaptive expectations can be consistent with rational behaviour in the simplest of all non linear dynamic economic models the non linear cobweb model

expectational diversity in monetary economies abstract we investigate an overlapping generations monetary economy in which expectations depend upon backward looking predictors of the future price level we use discrete choice theory to model how agents select a predictor based on its past forecast error letting the number of available predictors tend to infinity we obtain the large type limit of the system taking the large type limit dramatically reduces the number of free parameters while maintaining the expectational diversity which we argue is necessary for constructing plausible learning based models the model s dynamics are strongly influenced by the intensity of choice which measures how sensitive an agent s predictor choice is to differences in forecast errors across predictors when the intensity of choice is low the monetary steady state is stable as the intensity of choice increases and if certain parametric restrictions are met the system undergoes a hopf bifurcation in which case we document the existence of highly irregular equilibrium price paths

on learning and the nonuniqueness of equilibrium in an overlapping generations model with fiat money abstract this paper examines disequilibrium adaptive learning behavior in an overlapping generations model with fiat money agents are concerned with forming correct forecasts of future inflation if they use a disequilibrium adaptive forecast rule it is shown that they will eventually learn to believe in a nonstationary nonunique perfect foresight equilibrium the nonstationary equilibrium isolated by the adaptive learning process can be used to explain the sluggish adjustment of the price level to monetary disturbances as documented in the time series analysis of sims amer j agr econ 71 1989 489 494 journal of economic literature classification numbers d83 e31

how does industry affect firm financial structure we examine the importance of industry to firm level financial and real decisions we find that in addition to standard industry fixed effects financial structure also depends on a firm s position within its industry in competitive industries a firm s financial leverage depends on its natural hedge its proximity to the median industry capital labor ratio the actions of other firms in the industry and its status as entrant incumbent or exiting firm financial leverage is higher and less dispersed in concentrated industries where strategic debt interactions are also stronger but a firm s natural hedge is not significant our results show that financial structure technology and risk are jointly determined within industries these findings are consistent with recent industry equilibrium models of financial structure copyright 2005 oxford university press