asymmetric price responses of residential energy demand in ontario during the last few decades oil prices have experienced both sharp increases and more recently equally sharp decreases a number of researchers e g gately 1993a 1993b hogan 1993 shealy 1990 have examined the demand responses to these price movements and concluded that price induced changes in demand have not been symmetric more specifically this asymmetry is said to have taken the form of larger demand changes for price increases than for price decreases to explain this phenomenon it is typically argued that the oil price rises of the 1970s and early 1980s set in motion behavioural changes that had long lasting effects so that when price decreases occurred later in the 1980s relatively small changes in demand were observed shealy 1990 among others points to the capital stock as playing an important role in this process but does not explicitly incorporate infornmation on the stock of capital in the model he estimates studies that have examined this issue are typically based on as many as three broad levels of aggregation they tend to aggregate geographically focusing on entire countries or even groups of countries many of these studies also aggregate across sectors of the economy and thus fail to take into account the different patterns of energy utilization in different regions and or sectors of the economy finally by looking only at the demand for oil products or at total energy demand these studies do not explicitly allow for inter fuel substitution in contrast we examine residential energy demand in a single province ontario and allow for inter fuel substitution by specifying a system of fuel expenditure share equations which is estimated using annual data for the period 1962 1989 our focus on the residential sector is predicated on the

the transatlantic productivity gap is r d the main culprit the literature has pointed to different causes to explain the productivity gap between europe and united states in the last decades this paper tests the hypothesis that the lower european productivity performance in comparison with the us can be explained not only by a lower level of corporate rd however using different estimation techniques the r d coefficients for the us firms always turn out to be significantly higher to see to what extent these transatlantic differences may be related to the different sectoral structures in the us and the eu we differentiated the analysis by sectors the result is that both in manufacturing services and high tech sectors us firms are more efficient in translating their r d investments into productivity increases

residential energy demand in oecd countries and the role of irreversible efficiency improvements abstract after undergoing substantial changes during a period of high energy prices household energy demand did not rebound in times of declining energy prices as might have been expected hence other factors such as irreversible improvements in technical efficiency must be understood in order to describe both past and future household energy demand in this paper we consider irreversible efficiency improvements as a major reason for the moderate growth in energy demand after the plummeting of the oil price in 1985 we test different econometric models to take into account efficiency indicators the major conclusions of our investigation are i price elasticities are different for rising and falling prices for the latter they are close to zero implying a low rebound effect in the residential sector ii technical efficiency is an important parameter for describing and forecasting energy demand and iii income elasticities turn out to be higher once we incorporate indicators of technological efficiency in the process of estimating energy demand

umbrella branding and external certification abstract in a market environment with random detection of product quality a firm can employ umbrella branding as a strategy to convince consumers of the high quality of its products alternatively a firm can rely on external certification of the quality of one or both of its products we characterize equilibria in which umbrella branding fully or partially substitutes for external certification we also show that the potential to signal quality is improved if consumers condition their beliefs on the source of information namely whether information comes from external certification or from random detection

a new look at residential electricity demand using household expenditure data the recent push for a federal energy policy that could substantially change electricity prices in the u s highlights the need to obtain accurate residential electricity demand estimates many electricity demand estimates have been obtained based on the assumption that consumers optimize with respect to known marginal prices but increasing empirical evidence suggests that consumers are more likely to respond to average prices under this assumption this paper develops a new strategy based on gmm to estimate household electricity demand our approach allows a national level demand estimation from publicly available expenditure data and utility level consumption data complementing studies that use individual billing data which are richer yet often proprietary we estimate the price elasticity near 1 which is at the upper end in magnitude among the estimates from previous studies we apply our elasticity estimates in a u s climate policy simulation to determine how these elasticity estimates alter consumption and price outcomes compared to the more conservative elasticity estimates commonly used in policy analysis

residential consumption of gas and electricity in the u s the role of prices and income abstract we study the residential demand for electricity and gas working with nationwide household level data that cover recent years namely 1997 2007 our dataset is a mixed panel multi year cross sections of dwellings households in the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the united states as of 2008 we estimate static and dynamic models of electricity and gas demand we find strong household response to energy prices both in the short and long term from the static models we get estimates of the own price elasticity of electricity demand in the 0 860 to 0 667 range while the own price elasticity of gas demand is 0 693 to 0 566 these results are robust to a variety of checks contrary to earlier literature metcalf and hassett 1999 reiss and white 2005 we find no evidence of significantly different elasticities across households with electric and gas heat the price elasticity of electricity demand declines with income but the magnitude of this effect is small these results are in sharp contrast to much of the literature on residential energy consumption in the united states and with the figures used in current government agency practice our results suggest that there might be greater potential for policies which affect energy price than may have been previously appreciated

a retrospective look at the u s productivity growth resurgence it is widely recognized that information technology was critical to the dramatic acceleration of u s labor productivity growth in the mid 1990s this paper traces the evolution of productivity estimates to document how and when this perception emerged early studies concluded that information technology was relatively unimportant only after the massive information technology investment boom of the late 1990s did this investment and underlying productivity increases in the information technology producing sectors come to be identified as important sources of growth although information technology has diminished in significance since the dot com crash of 2000 and observed growth rates have slowed recently we project that private sector productivity growth will average around 2 4 percent per year for the next decade only moderately below the average of the post 1995 period

measuring the energy savings from home improvement investments evidence from monthly billing data an important factor driving energy policy over the past two decades has been the energy paradox the perception that consumers apply unreasonably high hurdle rates to energy saving investments we explore one possible explanation for this apparent puzzle that realized returns fall short of the returns promised by engineers and product manufacturers using a unique data set we find that the realized return to attic insulation is statistically significant but the median estimate 9 7 is almost identical to a discount rate for this investment implied by a capm analysis we conclude that the case for the energy paradox is weaker than has previously been believed

carbon tax scenarios and their effects on the irish energy sector abstract in this paper we use annual time series data from 1960 to 2008 to estimate the long run price and income elasticities underlying energy demand in ireland the irish economy is divided into five sectors residential industrial commercial agricultural and transport and separate energy demand equations are estimated for all sectors energy demand is broken down by fuel type and price and income elasticities are estimated for the primary fuels in the irish fuel mix using the estimated price and income elasticities we forecast irish sectoral energy demand out to 2025 the share of electricity in the irish fuel mix is predicted to grow over time as the share of carbon intensive fuels such as coal oil and peat falls the share of electricity in total energy demand grows most in the industrial and commercial sectors while oil remains an important fuel in the residential and transport sectors having estimated the baseline forecasts two different carbon tax scenarios are imposed and the impact of these scenarios on energy demand carbon dioxide emissions and government revenue is assessed if it is assumed that the level of the carbon tax will track the futures price of carbon under the eu ets the carbon tax will rise from 21 50 per tonne co2 in 2012 the first year forecasted to 41 in 2025 results show that under this scenario total emissions would be reduced by approximately 861 000 tonnes of co2 in 2025 relative to a zero carbon tax scenario and that such a tax would generate 1 1 billion in revenue in the same year we also examine a high tax scenario under which emissions reductions and revenue generated will be greater finally in order to assess the macroeconomic effects of a carbon tax the carbon tax scenarios were run in hermes the esri s medium term macroeconomic model the results from hermes show that a carbon tax of 41 per tonne co2 would lead to a 0 21 contraction in gdp and a 0 08 reduction in employment a higher carbon tax would lead to greater contractions in output

the short run and long run effects of behavioral interventions experimental evidence from energy conservation we document three remarkable features of the opower program in which social comparison based home energy reports are repeatedly mailed to more than six million households nationwide first initial reports cause high frequency action and backsliding but these cycles attenuate over time second if reports are discontinued after two years effects are relatively persistent decaying at 10 20 percent per year third consumers are slow to habituate they continue to respond to repeated treatment even after two years we show that the previous conservative assumptions about post intervention persistence had dramatically understated cost effectiveness and illustrate how empirical estimates can optimize program design jel d12 d83 l94 q41

the demand for residential industrial and total electricity 1973 1998 this paper estimates residential industrial and total electricity demand by a partial adjustment approach and by a simultaneous equation approach simultaneous equation models are more appropriate since they provide negative price elasticity estimates for the residential industrial and total electricity samples flow adjustment models yield positive price elasticity estimates in some cases suggesting they fail to identify proper supply considerations that may be influencing prices the simultaneous equation approach suggests that residential customers are more price sensitive than industrial customers weather seems to have the greatest impact on the residential sector and cold weather appears to affect demand more than hot weather

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

automakers short run responses to changing gasoline prices abstract we provide empirical evidence that automobile manufacturers use cash incentives to offset how gasoline price fluctuations affect the expected fuel expenses of automobile buyers regressions based on a database of incentives over 2003 to 2006 suggest that on average manufacturers offset 40 of the change in relative fuel costs between vehicles due to gasoline price fluctuations the results highlight that carbon taxes and emissions trading programs likely would generate substantial substitution within vehicle classes and studies that ignore manufacturer discounting likely underestimate consumer demand for fuel economy the results also have implications for the optimal design of feebate programs

opportunities incentives and the collective patterns of technological change in a few pages in the introductory article for this debate vernon ruttan succeeds in the unlikely task of flagging many issues at the core of the economic interpretation of technological change and by doing so he implicitly addresses also a few sensitive spots for the economic discipline at large here i will not attempt to provide any thorough view of what i consider the achievements and limitations of the current state of the art see however freeman i 994 for a critical survey which i largely share rather i shall put forward a series of remarks which hopefully could be seen as part of a much wider and still largely unexplored research programme as a premise just note that some form of attention to technology related phenomena has spread over the last 20 30 years from small enclaves of heterodox economists and economic historians to become an important concern even for quite mainstream theories of e g the firm industrial organisation macroeconomics trade growth etc from patent races all the way to new trade and new growth theories and even real business cycle macro models technical change has drawn a consideration which is less by default than it was say in robert solow s original growth models orjoe bain s barriers to entry views on industrial structures and in parallel empirical studies at the levels of specific technologies firms sectors and countries have boomed for overviews cf dosi i988 nelson i993 freeman i982 i 994 cohen i 995 and granstrand i 994 among others so at least in this sense those decreasing returns to the economics of technical change suggested by ruttan do not seem to have set in however ruttan s paper raises also substantive questions about the relative success of three interpretative perspectives which he calls induced evolutionary and path dependent in the following i shall argue that an evolutionary perspective broadly defined can easily accommodate both inducement effects and path dependent patterns of technical change let me start from what i consider the major building blocks of an

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

the value of delegated quality control this paper studies the case in which a firm delegates quality control to an independent monitor in a repeated game consumers trust provides incentives to acquire information about whether the good is defective and withhold defective goods from sale if third party reports are observable to consumers delegation lessens the first and dispenses with the second moral hazard concern but also creates agency costs internal quality control is optimal only if trades are sufficiently frequent and consumer information is sufficiently precise this result holds in the presence of the possibility of collusion fully non verifiable presale information and economies of scale in external quality control

the new economy in europe 1992 2001 despite the fast catching up in ict diffusion experienced by most eu countries in the last few years information technologies have so far delivered little productivity gains in europe in the second half of the past decade growth contributions from ict capital rose in six eu countries only the uk denmark finland sweden ireland and greece quite unlike the united states this has not generally been associated to higher labour or total factor productivity growth rates the only exceptions being ireland and greece particularly worrisome the large countries in continental europe germany france italy and spain showed stagnating or mildly declining growth contributions from ict capital together with definite declines in tfp growth compared to the first half of the 1990s it looks like that the celebrated solow paradox on the lack of correlation between ict investment and productivity growth has fled the us to migrate to europe

estimation of short run and long run elasticities of energy demand from panel data using shrinkage estimators this article discusses the problem of obtaining short run and long run elasticities of energy demand for each of 49 states in the united states using data for 21 years estimation using the time series data by each state gave several wrong signs for the coefficients estimation using pooled data was not valid because the hypothesis of homogeneity of the coefficients was rejected shrinkage estimators gave more reasonable results the article presents in a unified framework the classical empirical bayes and bayes approaches for deriving these estimators

how serious is the aggregation problem an empirical illustration heterogeneity in consumer behaviour may create problems with aggregation across consumers if so we may not be able to make correct inferences about behaviour based on aggregated data however using micro estimates to predict aggregate demand responses to policy changes may also create a bias if not aggregated properly this may sound like a catch 22 situation but it is not as it is possible to calculate both micro and aggregate demand responses based on microdata the size of the aggregation bias is an empirical question in this article we show how to calculate theoretically consistent aggregate demand responses we use both micro and macro data for norwegian household electricity consumption to illustrate the magnitude and direction of different aggregation biases we find considerable aggregation biases in particular when estimating with macro data

response of residential electricity demand to price the effect of measurement error abstract in this paper we present an empirical analysis of the residential demand for electricity using annual aggregate data at the state level for 48 us states from 1995 to 2007 earlier literature has examined residential energy consumption at the state level using annual or monthly data focusing on the variation in price elasticities of demand across states or regions but has failed to recognize or address two major issues the first is that when fitting dynamic panel models the lagged consumption term in the right hand side of the demand equation is endogenous this has resulted in potentially inconsistent estimates of the long run price elasticity of demand the second is that energy price is likely mismeasured to address these issues we estimate a dynamic partial adjustment model using the kiviet corrected least square dummy variables lsdv 1995 and the blundell bond 1998 estimators we find that the long term elasticities produced by the blundell bond system gmm methods are largest and that from the bias corrected lsdv are greater than that from the conventional lsdv from an energy policy point of view the results obtained using the blundell bond estimator where we instrument for price imply that a carbon tax or other price based policy may be effective in discouraging residential electricity consumption and hence curbing greenhouse gas emissions in an electricity system mainly based on coal and gas power plants

residential electricity demand in spain new empirical evidence using aggregate data this paper presents an empirical analysis on residential demand for electricity this analysis has been performed using aggregate panel data at the province level for 47 spanish provinces for the period from 2000 to 2008 for this purpose we estimated a log log demand equation for electricity consumption using a dynamic partial adjustment approach this dynamic demand function has been estimated using a two step system gmm estimator proposed by blundell and bond 1998 the purpose of this empirical analysis is to highlight some of the characteristics of spanish residential electricity demand particular attention has been paid to the influence of price income and weather conditions on electricity demand the estimated short and long run own price elasticities are negative as expected but lower than 1 furthermore weather variables have a significant impact on electricity demand

estimation of the depreciation rate of physical and r d capital in the u s total manufacturing sector i introduction numerous studies on production and cost the sources of productivity and endogenous growth have recognized the pivotal role of the physical capital stock studies at various levels of aggregation over assets and industries have emphasized the crucial role of investment in plant and equipment in the growth of demand and productive capacity it is clearly recognized by economists and policymakers that knowledge capital approximated by rd 1986 to measure the depreciation rates of the stock of rd 1980 in the literature on dynamic demand models such an approach was first adopted by epstein and denny 1980 and more recently by kollintzas and choi 1985 for a single capital good and on a theoretical level in bernstein and nadiri 1987a 1987b the paper is organized as follows the specification of the model is presented in section ii section iii is devoted to a discussion of the data and to the presentation of the parameter estimates of the model in section iv we present the empirical results for the depreciation rates for physical and r d capital and compare them with those reported in the literature we compare the physical capital stock estimates generated by our model with the official capital stock estimates produced by u s department of commerce bureau of economic analysis in this section we also present our estimates of the decomposition of gross investment into replacement and expansion investment for both physical and r d capital these decompositions are important from the vantage point of public policy analysis

energy consumption for space heating a discrete continuous approach energy demand for space heating is estimated using a discrete continuous choice model which focuses on the relationship between the choice of heating equipment and energy consumption the model is estimated on norwegian micro data and the two stages of the model are estimated simultaneously the capital cost and the operating cost of the heating systems are both found to have a significant impact on the choice of heating system furthermore the results show that household characteristics are important variables in residential energy models energy price elasticities and income elasticities are also estimated

change in consumer sensitivity to electricity prices in response to retail deregulation a panel empirical analysis of the residential demand for electricity in the united states abstract about ten years have passed since the deregulation of the u s retail electricity market and it is now generally accepted that the available data is adequate to quantitatively assess and compare conditions before and after deregulation this study therefore estimates the changes in price elasticity in the residential electricity market to examine the changes if any in household sensitivity as a result of retail electricity market deregulation policies to residential electricity rates specifically six types of panel data are prepared based on three cross sections all states except for alaska and hawaii and the district of columbia deregulated states and non deregulated states and two time series the period before deregulation and the period after deregulation the panel empirical analysis techniques are used to determine whether or not the variables are stationary and to estimate price elasticity we find that there is no substantial difference in the price elasticity between deregulated and non deregulated states for both periods before deregulation and after deregulation thus it can be said that the deregulation of the retail electricity market has not made consumers more sensitive to electricity rates and that retail deregulation policies are not the cause of price elasticity differences between deregulated and non deregulated states

comparing productivity growth an exploration of french and u s industrial and firm data this paper compares and analyzes the growth of productivity in the manufacturing industries and firms in france and the u s based on newly assembled comparable data sets in both countries three explanations of the recent productivity slowdown are reviewed shortfall in physical investment rise in materials prices and a decline in the intensity or fecundity of r d investment and found not to bear on the differences in productivity growth between and within the two countries either at the industry or the firm levels this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

smart meter devices and the effect of feedback on residential electricity consumption evidence from a natural experiment in northern ireland abstract using a unique set of data and exploiting a large scale natural experiment we estimate the effect of real time usage information on residential electricity consumption in northern ireland starting in april 2002 the utility replaced prepayment meters with advanced meters that allow the consumer to track usage in real time we rely on this event account for the endogeneity of price and payment plan with consumption through a plan selection correction term and find that the provision of information is associated with a decline in electricity consumption of 11 17 we find that the reduction is robust to different specifications selection bias correction methods and subsamples of the original data the advanced metering program delivers reasonably cost effective reductions in carbon dioxide emissions even under the most conservative usage reduction scenarios

regional electric power demand elasticities of japan s industrial and commercial sectors abstract in the assessment and review of regulatory reforms in the electric power market price elasticity is one of the most important parameters that characterize the market however price elasticity has seldom been estimated in japan instead it has been assumed to be as small as 0 1 or 0 without proper examination of the empirical validity of such a priori assumptions we estimated the regional power demand functions for nine regions in order to quantify the elasticity and found the short run price elasticity to be 0 09 0 30 and the long run price elasticity to be 0 12 0 56 inter regional comparison of our estimation results suggests that price elasticity in rural regions is larger than that in urban regions popular assumptions of small elasticity of 0 1 for example could be suitable for examining japan s aggregate power demand but not power demand functions that focus on respective regions furthermore assumptions about smaller elasticity values such as 0 01 and 0 could not be supported statistically by this study

unobservables in consumer choice residential energy and the demand for comfort a model of consumption of residential energy in dwellings is developed distinguishing between attributes of housing that provide direct benefits to consumers and attributes that serve as inputs in the production of final goods for example the thermal comfort of dwellings empirical estimates are made of the mode based upon the annual housing survey and the results are used to calculate the effects of changes in energy prices on the consumption of housing residential energy and other goods the analysis suggests that the adjustment process within the housing market permits a great deal of substitution in response to energy price changes copyright 1989 by mit press

investment and technical progress models in which the growth rate is exogenous provide no role for government in determining growth in our model growth is associated with investment through externalities from learning by watching rather than with the level of the capital stock presumption of a technical progress function with first increasing and then decreasing returns leads to multiple steady state growth equilibria there is also an explicit role of government policy in setting tax rates on output it follows that two economies with identical structures and stochastic tax policies may exhibit very different growth paths over sustained periods although the stationary distribution of growth rates is the same given the desirability in principle of subsidizing investment various practical methods are considered copyright 1992 by oxford university press

what s in a name reputation as a tradeable asset the author develops a model in which a firm s only asset is its name which summarizes its reputation and studies the forces that cause names to be valuable tradable assets an adverse selection model in which shifts of ownership are not observable guarantees an active market for names with either finite or infinite horizons no equilibrium exists in which only good types buy good names the reputational dynamics that emerge from the model are more realistic than those in standard game theoretic reputation models and suggest that adverse selection plays a crucial role in understanding firm reputation

durable goods and residential demand for energy and water evidence from a field trial this article describes a household production model in which energy efficient durable goods cost less to operate so households may use them more the model is estimated using household level data from a field trial in which participants received high efficiency clothes washers free of charge the estimation strategy exploits this quasi random replacement of washers to derive precise estimates of the household production technology and a demand function for clothes washing during the field trial households increased clothes washing on average by 5 6 after receiving a high efficiency washer implying a price elasticity of 06 the complete model is used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of recent changes in minimum efficiency standards for clothes washers

does the new economy measure up to the great inventions of the past abstract during the four years 1995 99 u s productivity growth experienced a strong revival and achieved growth rates exceeding that of the golden age of 1913 72 accordingly many observers have declared the new economy to be an industrial revolution even more important than the second industrial revolution of 1860 1900 which made the golden age of productivity growth possible this paper dissects the recent productivity revival subtracts out a cyclical component and concludes that there is no revival of the productivity growth trend in the 88 percent of the private economy lying outside of the durables manufacturing sector the paper explains this surprising finding by pointing to limitations in computers and the internet in comparison with the great inventions of the past

sensitivity of price elasticity of demand to aggregation unobserved heterogeneity price trends and price endogeneity evidence from u s data abstract price elasticity estimates of residential electricity demand vary widely across the energy economics and policy literature in this paper we seek to explain these findings using three nationwide datasets from the u s the american housing survey forms eia 861 and the residential energy consumption survey we examine the role of the sample period level of aggregation use of panel data use of instrumental variables and inclusion of housing characteristics and capital stock our findings suggest that price elasticities have remained relatively constant over time upon splitting our panel datasets into annual cross sections we do observe a negative relationship between price elasticities and the average price whether prices are rising or falling appears to have little effect on our estimates we also find that aggregating our data can result in both higher and lower price elasticity estimates depending on the dataset used and that controlling for unit level fixed effects with panel data generally results in more inelastic demand functions addressing the endogeneity of price and or measurement error in price with instrumental variables has a small but noticeable effect on the price elasticities finally controlling for housing characteristics and capital stock produces a lower price elasticity

brand extension as informational leverage the marketing literature refers to the concept of brand capital and provides empirical evidence that firms with a large stock of well established brands have an advantage in introducing new products this paper develops a theory of brand extension as a mechanism for informational leverage in which a firm leverages off a good s reputation in one market to alleviate the problem of informational asymmetry encountered in other markets it is shown that brand extension helps a multi product monopolist introduce a new experience good with less price distortion thus the paper provides a theoretical foundation for the concept of brand capital

r d productivity and the spillover effects of high tech industry on the traditional manufacturing sector the case of taiwan this study sets out to estimate the impact of r d on productivity within the private sector with further analysis of the different impacts of r d within high tech and traditional manufacturing firms we also attempt to examine the spillover effects from r d investment in the high tech sector on productivity growth within the traditional industries using a sample of 136 large manufacturing firms during the period 1994 2000 we develop an extended version of the cobb douglas production function model and our findings suggest that taiwan s r d investment had a significant impact on firm productivity growth with output elasticity standing at around 0 18 when the sample is divided into high tech and traditional firms the r d output elasticity in high tech firms is significantly greater than that found in traditional firms in addition the average rate of return in high tech firms is much greater than that estimated for other industries besides our empirical results show that although significant the impact of r d investment from the high tech sector on the productivity growth of traditional firms is rather limited

estimation of elasticity price of electricity with incomplete information abstract the sharp increase in energy prices and growing concern for environmental issues among other things are behind the renewed interest in energy demand estimation however there is scarce academic literature that takes real situation of energy suppliers into account high quality but incomplete data in this paper we propose a useful and rather simple instrument for estimating electricity demand with the incomplete and or imperfect data currently available to suppliers in particular using real expenditure and consumption data on electricity we employ a model of random effects for panel data to estimate residential and industrial electricity demand in spain

short and long run elasticities of electricity demand in the korean service sector abstract this paper attempts to examine the electricity demand function in the korean service sector using the annual data covering the period 1970 2011 the short and long run elasticities of electricity demand with respect to price and income are empirically estimated using a co integration and error correction model the short and long run price elasticities are estimated to be 0 421 and 1 002 respectively the short and long run income elasticities are computed to be 0 855 and 1 090 respectively electricity demand in the service sector is inelastic to changes in both price and income in the short run but elastic in the long run therefore it appears that a pricing policy is more effective than the direct regulation of reducing electricity demand in the long run in order to stabilize the electricity demand in the service sector moreover it is necessary to encourage a more efficient use of electricity to cope with increasing demand for electricity following economic growth because the electricity demand in the service sector is income elastic in the long run

umbrella branding as a signal of new product quality an example of signalling by posting a bond i present a signalling model in which a multiproduct firm can use its reputation as a bond for quality by using a brand name for an established product when it introduces a new experience good as out of equilibrium beliefs are specified a false signal may be taken to imply that both the established and the new product are of low quality in contrast the absence of a signal leaves open the possibility that one of the two products is of high quality hence the signal can be credible without excessive sunk costs as long as the bond posted is sufficiently large

long run implications of investment specific technological change an attempt is made to disentangle its effects from the more traditional hicksneutral form of technological progress the balanced growth path for the model is characterized and calibrated to u s national income and product account nipa data the quantitative analysis suggests that investment specific technological change accounts for the major part of growth jel e13 030 041 047

recent trends and structural breaks in us and eu15 labour productivity growth this article examines shifts in labour productivity growth in the us and in europe between 1970 and 2007 based on econometric tests of structural breaks additionally it makes use of time series based projections of labour productivity growth up to 2009 in order to detect breaks depending on confidence intervals of the projections the identification of structural breaks in the us labour productivity growth is far from obvious a statistically significant break is found in the late 1990s only if at least the 97 5th percentile of forecasts materializes in the future which means that despite a clear pick up in productivity growth in the second half of the 1990s the size of the hump is not large enough compared with past variations to make this change a statistically significant break however a significant break point is detected in the mid 1990s for the difference in labour productivity growth between the us and the eu15 even when controlling for the convergence of europe towards the us productivity l

estimating residential demand for electricity in the united states 1965 2006 abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in the us economy as a function of the per capita income the price of electricity the price of oil for heating purposes the weather conditions and the stock of occupied housing over the period 1965 2006 this paper has two novelties first the occupied stock of houses as a proxy for the stock of electrical appliances and second the identification of a possible equilibrium relationship among the variables is ascertained through the recently advanced ardl approach to cointegration our empirical findings give support to a stable long run relationship implying also short run and long run elasticities whose size and sign are comparable to other similar studies

accounting for behavioral effects of increases in the carbon dioxide co2 tax in revenue estimation in sweden in this paper we describe how behavioral responses of carbon dioxide co 2 tax increases are accounted for in tax revenue estimation in sweden the rationale for developing a method for this is a

modeling the impact of a carbon tax a trial analysis for washington state abstract in recent years energy policy makers have proposed a carbon tax as an economy wide policy tool to curb greenhouse gas ghg emissions the quantification of its impact on ghg emissions has relied on an energy economy model whose complexity often makes it difficult to comprehend how it simulates the interaction of a carbon tax and energy demand this study therefore aims at developing an alternative model called the carbon tax analysis model c tam the elasticity based approach used in c tam is less sophisticated than an equilibrium based approach used in an energy economy model but c tam is designed to maximize its predictive capabilities by using a wide range of elasticities for each sector and fuel use accounting for likely changes in fuel mix for electricity generation and addressing the model s sensitivity to elasticity estimates with monte carlo simulation the trial analysis in this study evaluates a potential carbon tax in washington state suggesting a carbon tax at us 30 per metric ton of co 2 tco 2 lowers ghg emissions by 8 4 from the business as usual bau scenario in 2035 the study concludes that c tam can provide meaningful policy implications by forecasting detailed impact on revenues and energy demand for each sector and fuel use

what do we learn about consumer demand patterns from micro data the aim of this paper is to assess the importance of using micro level data in the econometric analysis of consumer demand to do this we utilize a time series of repeated cross sections covering some 4 000 households in each of 15 years employing a number of different aggregation procedures we conclude that aggregate data alone are unlikely to produce reliable estimates of structural price and income coefficients however once certain aggregation factors as well as trend and seasonal components are included an aggregate model is not necessarily outperformed across all demand equations in terms of forecasting ability jel d12 c52 c31 the purpose of this paper is to develop a complete consumer demand system based on a time series of individual household data and to use it to measure the biases introduced into the study of consumer de mand behavior when aggregate data are used in place of the appropriate microeco nomic data we assess the suitability of ag gregate data through the impact on income and price elasticities and by evaluating the ability of both micro and aggregate based models to forecast aggregate consumer de mand the biases introduced by the use of aggregate data depend upon the way that household characteristics interact with in come and price effects and on departures of demand systems from linearity we explore the structure of microeconomic demand sys tems and the role of household characteris tics in the behavior of consumer demand both for the light this may shed on the pattern of future demands and for the im plications this behavior has for issues of aggregation consumer demand patterns typically found in micro data sets vary considerably across households with different household characteristics and with different levels of income we model this variability by making intercept and slope parameters in the budget share equations of our demand sys tem depend on household characteristics and by allowing for nonlinear total log expenditure terms in fact in theory consistent demand systems it is total ex penditure rather than disposable income that is allocated across goods we find that this general framework leads to a well specified data coherent demand system which is a quadratic extension of the popu lar almost ideal model of angus s deaton and john muellbauer 1980 the micro level estimates are shown to be sensitive to the treatment of endogeneity of total expen diture and to the specification of interaction terms with household characteristics in ad dition this specification is also shown to possess many attractive features for the evaluation of aggregate models

the economic future of europe after three years of near stagnation the mood in europe is definitely gloomy many doubt that the european model has a future in this paper i argue that things are not so bad and there is room for optimism over the last thirty years productivity growth has been much faster in europe than in the united states productivity levels are roughly similar today in the european union and in the united states the main difference is that europe has used some of the increase in productivity to increase leisure rather than income while the united states has done the opposite still not everything is well unemployment is still high and europe suffers from inefficient regulation here also however there is more action than often perceived and a wide ranging reform process is taking place this process is driven by reforms in financial and product markets reforms in those markets are in turn putting pressure for reform in the labor market reform in the labor market is slowly taking place but not without political tensions these tensions dominate the news but they are a symptom of change not a reflection of immobility

the determinants of electricity theft an empirical analysis of indian states abstract more than 20 of the electricity generated in india is lost to rampant thefts drawing data from 28 states of india over a time span of five years 2005 2009 this paper examines the role played by socio economic and governance factors in determining the extent of electricity thefts in indian states results from the feasible generalised least squares fgls model demonstrate that lesser corruption higher state tax to gdp ratio greater collection efficiency of electricity bills by state utilities higher share of private installed capacity lesser poverty greater literacy and greater income are closely associated with lesser power thefts a better understanding of the key determinants of thefts in electricity distribution is vital for policy makers for designing policies

estimation of japanese price elasticities of residential electricity demand 1990 2007 abstract this paper estimates elasticities of japanese residential price electricity from 1990 to 2007 the first difference generalized method of moment estimator is employed to avoid dynamic panel bias which is not considered in most previous studies the results show that while short run elasticities are similar to those in previous studies long run elasticities are significantly lower in our study we also find that the price elasticity of japanese residential electricity consumption is notably affected by income inequality and severe weather based on these results we provide some insights to tailor environmental taxation so as to effectively attain the kyoto protocol

growth accounting when technical change is embodied in capital this paper revisits the hypothesis that technical change is embodied in capital it extends old results to make them more relevant to the contemporary debates about the adjustment of investment goods for quality change and about the role of embodied technical change as a source of economic growth it is shown that the failure to adjust capital for quality change has the effect of suppressing the quality effects into the conventional total factor productivity residual and it is found that approximately 20 percent of the residual growth of quality adjusted output could be attributed to embodied technical change copyright 1992 by american economic association