the welfare economics of buy local this paper provides a theoretical model of how various aspects of the buy local movement influence social welfare and output across two regions market power considerations are also addressed where one region has a competitive advantage in production while consumers buy local for a variety of reasons our model categorizes some of the motivations and analyzes the impacts on output under various market structures welfare is calculated when demand is changed due to subsidies or taxes we also allow for the presence of externalities we find that in the absence of market power or externalities deadweight losses occur when the region without a competitive advantage buys more locally however in the presence of significant externalities and in the presence of market power it is possible that profits to producers from consumers buying local could increase more than consumer utility is harmed thus increasing aggregate social welfare this could arise if consumers genuinely feel there are sufficient positive externalities from local production or negative externalities from non local production to warrant the loss of efficiency we point out that understanding the motivation behind the movement is critical when analyzing welfare effects since some motivations are counter productive to each other

rice land designation policy in vietnam and the implications of policy reform for food security and economic welfare abstract with the aim of promoting national food security the vietnamese government enforces the designation of around 35 per cent of agricultural land strictly for paddy rice cultivation we investigate the economic effects of adjusting this policy using an economy wide model of vietnam with detailed modelling of region specific land use agricultural activity poverty and food security measures our results show that the removal of the rice land designation policy increases real private consumption by an average of 0 35 per cent per annum over 2011 2030 while also reducing poverty improving food security and contributing to more nutritionally balanced diets among vietnamese households

income generating effects of biofuel policies a meta analysis of the cge literature abstract while the production of biofuels has expanded in recent years findings in the literature on its impact on economic growth and development remain contradictory this paper presents a meta analysis of computable general equilibrium cge studies published between 2006 and 2017 on the effect of biofuel production on economic development worldwide using 30 cge studies we found that biofuel supportive policies generated significant impacts on gdp and household incomes cge studies included in our database reported an average 0 25 percentage point increase in gdp and a 0 49 percentage point increase in household incomes we also found that results were driven by several key features of the cge studies included in our database we investigated features such as biofuel type geographic area and characteristics of the cge models employed we found that biofuel expansion has heterogeneous effects in developed versus emerging countries simulations on longer time periods and in multi country studies led to results that indicate higher impacts of biofuel expansion on gdp growth and household incomes moreover simulations with an increase in agricultural productivity indicate positive welfare impact gains unlike simulations with land expansion lastly we found that biodiesel development leads to higher welfare impact gains than that of bioethanol

hiv status and labor market participation in south africa abstract we use econometric methods based on the propensity score to estimate the causal effect of hiv status on employment outcomes in south africa relying on rich data from a national survey which included hiv testing we control for systematic differences between hiv positive and hiv negative individuals we provide the first nationally representative estimates of the impact of hiv status on employment outcomes for southern africa being hiv positive is associated with an increase of 6 to 7 percentage points in the likelihood of unemployment overall and 10 to 11 percentage points for those who are less educated this disadvantage reinforces existing inequalities in south africa

hedging with price and output uncertainty abstract this paper extends mckinnon s analysis of hedging with price and output uncertainty to the general case where preferences are not necessarily quadratic and probability distribution not necessarily normal

impact of energy prices and cellulosic biomass supply on agriculture energy and the environment an integrated modeling approach abstract the accelerated growth in biofuel markets has both created and reinforced linkages between agriculture and energy the evolution of biofuel markets over the next 10 20 years and the implications for energy agriculture and the environment are uncertain building on an integrated agriculture energy modeling framework this study analyzes a baseline and three alternative scenarios two scenarios based on energy prices crude oil and natural gas and one based on assumptions regarding cellulosic biomass availability by examining the impact of scenarios driven by a changes in the energy sector and b changes in the agricultural sector we can compare the differential effects on biofuels markets commodity prices and quantities in each sector and co 2 emissions scenario comparisons show biofuel markets affected more by crude oil prices than natural gas prices however higher natural gas prices shift the biofuel production mix away from corn grain based to more cellulosic ethanol via multiple mechanisms alternatively the scenario with no cellulosic feedstock lowers total ethanol production and raises ethanol and corn prices in terms of environmental impacts higher ethanol levels driven by higher oil prices lead to lower co 2 emissions in comparison the no cellulosic scenario results in the highest co 2 trajectory relative to the baseline

the red and the black mental accounting of savings and debt in the standard economic account of consumer behavior the cost of a purchase takes the form of a reduction in future utility when expenditures that otherwise could have been made are forgone the reality of consumer hedonics is different when people make purchases they often experience an immediate pain of paying which can undermine the pleasure derived from consumption the ticking of the taxi meter for example reduces one s pleasure from the ride we propose a double entry mental accounting theory that describes the nature of these reciprocal interactions between the pleasure of consumption and the pain of paying and draws out their implications for consumer behavior and hedonics a central assumption of the model which we call prospective accounting is that consumption that has already been paid for can be enjoyed as if it were free and that the pain associated with payments made prior to consumption but not after is buffered by thoughts of the benefits that the payments will finance another important concept is coupling which refers to the degree to which consumption calls to mind thoughts of payment and vice versa some financing methods such as credit cards tend to weaken coupling whereas others such as cash payment produce tight coupling our model makes a variety of predictions that are at variance with economic formulations contrary to the standard prediction that people will finance purchases to minimize the present value of payments our model predicts strong debt aversion that they should prefer to prepay for consumption or to get paid for work after it is performed such pay before sequences confer hedonic benefits because consumption can be enjoyed without thinking about the need to pay for it in the future likewise when paying beforehand the pain of paying is mitigated by thoughts of future consumption benefits contrary to the economic prediction that consumers should prefer to pay at the margin for what they consume our model predicts that consumers will find it less painful to pay for and hence will prefer flat rate pricing schemes such as unlimited internet access at a fixed monthly price even if it involves paying more for the same usage other predictions concern spending patterns with cash charge or credit cards and preferences for the earmarking of purchases we test these predictions in a series of surveys and in a conjoint like analysis that pitted our double entry mental accounting model against a standard discounting formulation and another benchmark that did not incorporate hedonic interactions between consumption and payments our model provides a better fit of the data for 60 of the subjects the discounting formulation provides a better fit for only 29 of the subjects even when allowing for positive and negative discount rates the pain of paying we argue plays an important role in consumer self regulation but is hedonically costly from a hedonic perspective the ideal situation is one in which payments are tightly coupled to consumption so that paying evokes thoughts about the benefits being financed but consumption is decoupled from payments so that consumption does not evoke thoughts about payment from an efficiency perspective however it is important for consumers to be aware of what they are paying for consumption this creates a tension between hedonic efficiency and what we call decision efficiency various institutional arrangements such as financing of public parks through taxes or usage fees play into this tradeoff a producer developing a pricing structure for their product or service should be aware of these two conflicting objectives and should try to devise a structure that reconciles them

consumer inequality aversion and risk preferences in community supported agriculture abstract in community supported agriculture csa consumers face a tradeoff between i the desire to support a csa farmer and obtain environmentally friendly goods and ii the risk associated with a long term commitment we elicit inequality aversion and risk preferences of a sample of 162 french csa consumers using incentivized field experiments we find that csa consumers are concerned about payoff inequalities while we obtain evidence of advantageous inequality aversion toward csa farmers we also find disadvantageous inequality seeking we find that csa consumers are risk averse and loss averse and distort probabilities we also observe that inequality and risk preferences in the loss domain might complement each other to strengthen consumers support for csa farmers

more than food or fuel stakeholder perceptions of anaerobic digestion and land use a case study from the united kingdom anaerobic digestion ad is of growing importance within the uk as it can make an important contribution to the countries energy and climate change targets with the growth of the sector discussions about competing land uses are likely to increase for a better understanding of the synergies between agricultural land its role and bioenergy the perception of the different stakeholders will play an important role the perception of stakeholders related to ad feedstock and energy crop production was investigated through interviews and a stakeholder workshop the results indicated that from an ad operator and feedstock producer perspective on farm ad is more an additional activity integrated into existing agricultural systems than a renewable energy technology the risk of a shift in agricultural practices and large areas to grow energy crops for ad is seen as low for the uk nonetheless land use and related challenges need to be considered as the demand for ad feedstocks increases with the fast growth of the sector considering the synergies between bioenergy and agriculture as well as the motivations and benefits perceived by stakeholders will play an important role in a successful policy design to provide the required emission reduction in both sectors without subverting sustainability

persistent norms and tipping points the case of female genital cutting abstract more than 200 million women alive today have undergone female genital cutting fgc despite the associated negative health outcomes the practice has persisted for generations the prevailing theory of fgc persistence is that fgc is a social coordination norm which implies that if a sufficient number of community members agree to abandon fgc a tipping point is reached and the rate of fgc will fall to zero recent empirical evidence is inconsistent with this theory this paper formalizes an alternative theoretical explanation in which households have heterogeneous thresholds i e the rate of fgc in their community at which the household switches from practicing to not practicing fgc this threshold heterogeneity removes the certainty that a tipping point exists and introduces the possibility of a stable internal equilibrium in the rate of fgc in a community using a dataset of more than 27 000 women born across 4 5 decades in burkina faso i use a novel technique to construct community level distributions of household thresholds these distributions show that some communities in burkina faso have tipping points while some have a stable internal equilibrium i find suggestive but statistically insignificant evidence that communities with a larger share of educated women higher poverty rates and lower population density are more likely to have a tipping point additionally the empirical method developed in this paper has applications to the evolution of other social phenomena such as technology adoption voting behavior and racial segregation

a resource exchange theory analysis of consumer behavior marketing has been described as an exchange between two or more social units a psychological exchange theory developed by foa and foa 1974 was used to examine a the structure underlying six different resource categories i e love status information money goods and services and b the functional relations among these six resource categories i e the patterns of exchange the economic concept of resource constraint scarcity was also incorporated into the exchange process the results were basically consistent with both the structural and functional relations derived from foa s theory moreover resource scarcity was found to affect the types of resources an individual was likely to give in an exchange

young citizens knowledge and perceptions of bioenergy and future policy implications abstract in the past few years extensive discussions on bioenergy has been both positive and negative in europe the image of bioenergy appears to be low with lack of broad public support previous studies show that younger people are unsure about many issues surrounding renewable energy the aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge and perceptions of bioenergy among pupils in north karelia finland data drawn from 495 ninth grade students indicate that the majority of them lack in depth knowledge about different renewable energy sources including bioenergy only a small percentage has a high level of knowledge about bioenergy and the majority indicates critical perceptions of it statistically significant gender differences are not apparent girls appear to be more knowledgeable than boys results also show a clear urban and rural difference in perceptions of bioenergy perceptions of urban respondents being more positive than that of their rural counterparts developing collaboration between future bioenergy policies and bioenergy education for younger citizens is necessary for their engagement in critical debates on bioenergy

prospective analysis of technological innovation systems identifying technological and organizational development options for biogas in switzerland abstract in this article we put forward a concept for the identification and analysis of future development options of technological innovation systems the key element of our approach the so called variation analysis is a methodology to identify coherent socio technical and organizational variants within a specific innovation field consistent combinations of these two dimensions may be interpreted as nuclei for alternative future developments of innovation systems the method may be used in discursive foresight processes to inform strategy formulation of firms or policy makers who see a utility in furthering the innovation field the paper has a focus on developing the theoretical background and the analytical structure of the methodology empirically we illustrate the method for the innovation system of biomass digestion in switzerland

bivariate garch estimation of the optimal commodity futures hedge six different commodities are examined using daily data over two futures contract periods cash and futures prices for all six commodities are found to be well described as martingales with near integrated garch innovations bivariate garch models of cash and futures prices are estimated for the same six commodities the optimal hedge ratio ohr is then calculated as a ratio of the conditional covariance between cash and futures to the conditional variance of futures the estimated ohrs reveal that the standard assumption of a time invariant ohr is inappropriate for each commodity the estimated ohr path appears non stationary which has important implications for hedging strategies

the market for tradable ghg permits under the kyoto protocol a survey of model studies abstract this paper gathers results from 25 models of the market for tradable greenhouse gas ghg emission permits under the kyoto protocol due to diverging projections of emissions growth and different modeling approaches the model results differ substantially the average market volume is approximately 17 and 33 billion usd under global trading and annex b trading respectively including non carbon ghg lowers compliance costs and permit prices in the absence of the us permit demand roughly equals hot air from the former soviet union these countries can increase their revenues from selling permits by restricting supply which raises the permit price

institutional dynamics and technology legitimacy a framework and a case study on biogas technology legitimacy is central for both novel and established technologies to mobilize the resources necessary for growth and survival a loss of legitimacy in turn can have detrimental effects for an industry in this paper we study the rise and fall of technology legitimacy of agricultural biogas in germany over a period of more than 20 years 1990 2012 the field witnessed impressive growth and professionalization for many years and has become one of the key technologies in germany s energy transition in recent years however it has been confronted with major criticism which finally resulted in a substantial cut back of public and political support the aim of our study is twofold in empirical terms we will explain the technology s loss of legitimacy despite its compliance with original policy objectives growth and maturation in theoretical terms we work toward a more general framework to understand technology legitimacy and to explain the institutional dynamics of technological innovation systems

a historical review of promotion strategies for electricity from renewable energy sources in eu countries abstract the core objective of this paper is to elaborate on historically implemented promotion strategies of renewable energy sources and the associated deployment within the european electricity market hence at a first glance the historic development of renewable energy sources in the electricity res e sector is addressed on member state and on sectoral level as well as consequently discussed according to available res e potentials and costs the specific focus of this paper are promotion strategies for res e options as they are the key driver of an efficient and effective res e deployment therefore the paper depicts the main types of different promotion schemes and their properties additionally several cases studies of different european member states show an in depth analysis of the different res e promotion schemes in this context special emphasises are put on the question of effective and efficient promotion scheme designs of different res e technologies generally conducted research led to the conclusion that technology specific financial support measures of res e performed much more effective and efficient than others did hence it is not all about the common question of feed in tariffs vs quota systems based on tradable green certificates but more about the design criteria of implemented res e support schemes

the impact of different energy policy options on feedstock price and land demand for maize silage the case of biogas in lombardy abstract the growing demand of maize silage for biogas production in northern italy has triggered an intense debate concerning land rents maize prices and their possible negative consequences on important agri food chains the aim of this work is to quantify the extent to which the rapid spread of biogas raised the maize price at regional level increasing the demand of land for energy crops for this purpose we applied a partial equilibrium framework simulating the agricultural sector and the biogas industry in lombardy under two alternative schemes of subsidization policy results show that policy measures implemented in 2013 reducing the average subsidy per kwh may contribute to enforce the complementarity of the sector with agri food chains decreasing the competition between energy and non energy uses compared to the old scheme maize demand for biogas would decrease lessening the market clearing price as well as feed opportunity cost for livestock sector and reducing land demand for energy purposes

modeling linkages between climate policy and land use an overview agriculture and forestry play an important role in emitting and storing greenhouse gases for an efficient and cost effective climate policy it is therefore important to include land use land use change and forestry lulucf explicitly in economy climate models this article gives an overview and assessment of existing approaches to include lulucf into partial and general equilibrium economy climate models for each class of models we describe different examples their treatment of land and their potential for and applicability to policy analysis as well as their shortcomings we identify data requirements and conceptual problems and provide suggestions for future research

the regional economic impacts of biofuels a review of multisectoral modelling techniques and evaluation of applications allan g j the regional economic impacts of biofuels a review of multisectoral modelling techniques and evaluation of applications regional studies the regional economic impact of biofuel production depends upon a number of interrelated factors the specific biofuels feedstock and production technology employed the sector s embeddedness in the rest of the economy through its demand for local resources and the extent to which new activity is created these issues can be analysed using multisectoral economic models some studies use input output io and social accounting matrix sam modelling frameworks whilst a nascent computable general equilibrium cge literature has begun to examine the regional impact of biofuel development this paper reviews compares and evaluates these approaches for modelling the regional economic impacts of biofuels

valuing money and things why a 20 item can be worth more and less than 20 the study of risky decision making has long used monetary gambles to study choice but many everyday decisions do not involve the prospect of winning or losing money monetary gambles as it turns out may be processed and evaluated differently than gambles with nonmonetary outcomes whereas monetary gambles involve numeric amounts that can be straightforwardly combined with probabilities to yield at least an approximate expectation of value nonmonetary outcomes are typically not numeric and do not lend themselves to easy combination with the associated probabilities compared with monetary gambles the evaluation of nonmonetary prospects typically proves less sensitive to changes in the probability range inside the extremes of certainty and impossibility which among other things can yield preference reversals generalizing on earlier work that attributed similar findings to the role of affect in the evaluation process rottenstreich y c k hsee 2001 money kisses and electric shocks an affective psychology of risk psych sci 12 3 185 190 we attribute the observed patterns to a fundamental difference in the evaluation of monetary versus nonmonetary outcomes potential pitfalls in the use of monetary gambles to study choice are highlighted and implications and future directions are discussed

lobbying the energiewende assessing the effectiveness of strategies to promote the renewable energy business in germany abstract the article examines the influence of renewable energy companies on the decision making process related to the german energy transition it identifies clusters of different lobbying activities and styles through in depth interviews with 20 stakeholders from policy making and business the research used repertory grid technique in combination with homals multivariate analysis its main findings are first although the big four electric utilities operating on the german energy market still possess wide influence companies of renewable energy have developed from a niche into important players of the energy regime second lobbies by the renewable energy sector are mainly aimed at the legislative framework particularly on the renewable energy sources act and the feed in system third interviewees identified 36 different lobby activities the most effective ones are regular and personal maintenance of contact to politicians lobbying within an association knowledge development with correct information and top down contacting of most powerful politicians fourth the statistical analysis reveals clear distinctions between companies with regards to their lobby strategies which are evaluated differently by stakeholders finally the article concludes that companies have a strong influence on political decision making and together with governmental actors form a policy network that strongly shapes the german energy transition

modelling approaches for consequential life cycle assessment c lca of bioenergy critical review and proposed framework for biogas production abstract conventional life cycle inventories lcis are static models not considering any mechanism of revenue maximisation and price equilibrium under external constraints an additional demand of a given commodity irrespective of the amount can always be supplied by the average supplier under fully elastic market assumption this constitutes a recognised limitation for the application of lca to the assessment of the environmental consequences of changes applied to complex systems like agro systems in the so called consequential lci c lci the relationships between the activities and processes of a life cycle are no longer seen as essentially technical connections based on average data instead the determining socio economic mechanisms are considered via market information and eventually economic models partial or computable general equilibrium the practical implementation of c lci is however still obscure to many practitioners and the complementarities and overlaps between the different c lci modelling approaches have not been completely clarified so far this paper aims at filling this gap the first part of the paper provides a survey of a number of applications using different equilibrium models afterwards we critically review the main variables and parameters supporting the definition and implementation of the c lci modelling approaches in the last part of the paper we propose a methodology to integrate economic modelling and lca in order to perform a c lca of biogas production specifically addressing the indirect land use change iluc issue finally we describe the application of this methodology to a case study dealing with the production of biogas in luxembourg

nitrogen tax and set aside as greenhouse gas abatement policies under global change scenarios a case study for germany the ambitious climate policy objectives of the cop21 agreement require the design and the implementation of effective and efficient policy instruments the effectiveness and efficiency of agricultural abatement options depend on regional climate and natural conditions changes in the global economy global agricultural markets and regional agricultural production thus the assessment of abatement options requires consideration of the global scale the market scale and the regional producer scale we investigate two abatement options discussed controversially in literature both have been partially applied to reduce environmental pollution from agriculture a tax on nitrogen and the obligatory set aside of agricultural land our study provides an assessment of the ecological effectiveness and the economic efficiency of both abatement options under different global scenarios in our policy analysis we combine three applied policy simulation models to develop an integrated economic model framework this model framework considers the global the national and the regional scale and consists of the global general equilibrium model dart bio the partial equilibrium model capri and the regional supply model raumis in the different global scenarios the results show that both abatement options create relatively high marginal abatement costs and that the maximally reached abated greenhouse gas emissions represent only 15 of the quantity required to fulfill the policy targets compared to the obligatory set aside option the nitrogen tax is in both scenarios the more efficient policy with respect to impacts on production and environment a nitrogen tax is less forecastable than the obligatory set aside option our study illustrates the relevance of considering global economic and market change in the assessment of producer targeting environmental policies

biofuels and economic development a computable general equilibrium analysis for tanzania abstract biofuels could offer new economic opportunities for low income countries we use a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model of tanzania to evaluate different biofuels production options and estimate their impacts on growth and poverty our results indicate that maximizing the poverty reducing effects of biofuels production in countries like tanzania will require engaging and improving the productivity of smallholder farmers evidence shows that cassava based ethanol production is more profitable than other feedstock options cassava also generates more pro poor growth than sugarcane based systems however if smallholder yields can be improved rather than expanding cultivated land then both sugarcane and cassava out grower schemes generate similar pro poor outcomes we conclude that in so far as the public investments needed to establish a biofuels industry are consistent with other development needs then producing biofuels will enhance economic development in countries like tanzania

assessing non marginal variations with consequential lca application to european energy sector many policies are being designed to mitigate impacts of human activities on the environment an environmental evaluation of these policies should include assessments of their impacts according to all known environmental impacts moreover because policies may indirectly affect regions or economic sectors not initially targeted by these policies indirect environmental consequences should be included in environmental balances life cycle analysis lca is a holistic method made to assess environmental impacts caused by products or services according to various environmental damage categories however the ability of lca to model environmental consequences due to a change is restricted to marginal changes occurring in small life cycles new methodological developments are needed to study major changes and their environmental consequences as they may happen when a policy is applied at large scale for that purpose the economic general equilibrium model gtap has been used to predict global economic perturbation that would be caused by two different european energy policies bioenergy policy and business as usual policy lca was then used to assess environmental impacts due to european energy generation and perturbation of world economy despite the bioenergy policy involves more energy from renewable technologies which are expected to be less polluting results show that due to rebound effects bioenergy policy results in more environmental impacts combining both gtap and lca improves environmental assessment made with gtap because it allows computing environmental impacts according to products life cycles instead of using economic sector emission factors and because emissions and extractions from environment are related to impacts on environment regarding lca method this new approach allows studying significant changes affecting large systems with a global modeling of economy in a time dependent environment however more work is needed to evaluate this new approach especially uncertainty should be studied

individual acceptance of the biogas innovation a structural equation model abstract the rapid spread of biogas production in germany has resulted in an increased public debate over this new business branch today the production of biogas is much more controversially debated than several years ago at the same time it could be proven that even among farmers themselves the acceptance of biogas production in some regions is somewhat dampened due to accompanying collateral damages therefore the goal of this paper is to identify relevant influencing factors that determine the acceptance of the innovation biogas among farmers by applying a causal analysis initial results among the five investigated determinants show that not only an individual attitude toward biogas but also the farmers personal innovativeness strongly and significantly influences an individual s acceptance of the innovation biogas

market and committee based mechanisms in the creation and diffusion of global industry standards the case of mobile communication abstract the existing literature on industrial standards almost exclusively focuses on pure market competition this paper shows how and why both governments and firms have had a strong effect on the creation of global standards in the mobile communication industry through a hybrid system of committees and markets according to our model governments can and did influence forecasted and actual installed base for systems in the mobile communications industry through their influence on product demand e g by determining the amount of competition in the market and the number of and degree of openness in the standards in particular the choice of a single standard by either a large single country or region dramatically and instantaneously increased the forecast for the standard s domestic installed base thus causing other countries to also adopt the standard

is there a role for biofuels in promoting energy self sufficiency and security a cge analysis of biofuel policy in thailand given the rising price of crude oil some developing countries including thailand are looking towards developing their domestic renewable energy resources in particular biofuels however there are concerns about the possible adverse effects such a policy strategy would have on key variables such as sectoral output land allocation and the effects of prices particularly food prices this study develops a computable general equilibrium cge model of the thailand economy that features enhancements of the energy sector and uses it to analyze the government s recent renewable energy development plan this plan aims to increase domestic energy use from renewable sources to replace fossil fuel imports the study simulated specific policies contained in the plan among other things we found that promoting biofuel use causes a rapid increase in the price of biofuel and biofuel feedstock in the short run whereas these prices only increase slightly in the long run due to more elastic supplies the prices of food and other products marginally increase implying that food security is not undermined by the policy on the basis of the findings the study recommends a review of some of the targets because they were found to be rather high and a phasing in of others

an analysis of policy scenario effects on the adoption of energy production on the farm a case study in emilia romagna italy abstract the agriculture sector s contribution to energy production is a central issue in ongoing policy debates and one of the central elements of the development of bioeconomy sector the common agricultural policy cap is one of the main determinants of the different farm strategies of european farmers the cap is now undergoing a thorough revision process which necessarily includes a debate of the role of the policy in rural areas and the effectiveness of the various cap policy mechanisms the objective of this paper is to assess the impact of alternative cap scenarios in the light of the possible changes in 2013 and the willingness to adopt energy plants for energy crops in the province of bologna italy this is pursued using both survey information and farm household mathematical programming models hence using stated intentions and simulated profitability to analyse the adopt of new technologies for energy production the results underscore the relevance of the cap scenarios in altering intentions with regard to the adoption of energy production and the relevant effect of uncertainty in delaying the diffusion of energy production systems

global land use implications of first and second generation biofuel targets recently an active debate has emerged around greenhouse gas emissions due to indirect land use change iluc of expanding agricultural areas dedicated to biofuel production in this paper we provide a detailed analysis of the iluc effect and further address the issues of deforestation irrigation water use and crop price increases due to expanding biofuel acreage we use globiom an economic partial equilibrium model of the global forest agriculture and biomass sectors with a bottom up representation of agricultural and forestry management practices the results indicate that second generation biofuel production fed by wood from sustainably managed existing forests would lead to a negative iluc factor meaning that overall emissions are 27 lower compared to the no biofuel scenario by 2030 the iluc factor of first generation biofuels global expansion is generally positive requiring some 25 years to be paid back by the ghg savings from the substitution of biofuels for conventional fuels second generation biofuels perform better also with respect to the other investigated criteria on the condition that they are not sourced from dedicated plantations directly competing for agricultural land if so then efficient first generation systems are preferable since no clear technology champion for all situations exists we would recommend targeting policy instruments directly at the positive and negative effects of biofuel production rather than at the production itself

zero as a special price the true value of free products when faced with a choice of selecting one of several available products or possibly buying nothing according to standard theoretical perspectives people will choose the option with the highest cost benefit difference however we propose that decisions about free zero price products differ in that people do not simply subtract costs from benefits but instead they perceive the benefits associated with free products as higher we test this proposal by contrasting demand for two products across conditions that maintain the price difference between the goods but vary the prices such that the cheaper good in the set is priced at either a low positive or zero price in contrast with a standard cost benefit perspective in the zero price condition dramatically more participants choose the cheaper option whereas dramatically fewer participants choose the more expensive option thus people appear to act as if zero pricing of a good not only decreases its cost but also adds to its benefits after documenting this basic effect we propose and test several psychological antecedents of the effect including social norms mapping difficulty and affect affect emerges as the most likely account for the effect

trade ins mental accounting and product replacement decisions when a consumer who already owns a durable type product in a category faces the opportunity to upgrade to a new higher quality product the replacement purchase decision is driven by both normative economic factors and psychological factors as a normative decision maker s he considers the purchase price of the new alternative but s he additionally considers the mental cost of retiring the old product before s he has gotten his her money s worth out of it during ownership of a product a consumer mentally depreciates the initial purchase price thus creating a mental book value for the product the write off of this mental book value is felt as the mental cost of a replacement purchase based on the principles of mental accounting and mental depreciation i provide a theoretical explanation for this mental cost and why an individual s replacement purchase decision may be more sensitive to the mental cost than the marginal cost when applied appropriately mental accounting can serve a useful purpose

corporate entrepreneurship strategy extending the integrative framework through the lens of complexity science whereas our understanding of corporate entrepreneurship ce and corporate entrepreneurship strategy ces continues to expand there has been little theoretical development to support the most extensive framework to date the integrative model of ces as proposed by ireland et al entrep theory pract 33 1 19 46 2009 according to the model ces is built upon the three foundational elements of an entrepreneurial strategic vision a pro entrepreneurship organizational architecture and entrepreneurial processes and behaviors as exhibited throughout the organization ireland et al 2009 p 38 the purpose of this study is to present a broad overarching theory complexity science to examine the key elements and propositions of the ces model complexity science founded on assumptions of interdependent heterogeneous agents and nonlinear interactions as well as non deterministic and potentially extreme outcomes offers established multi level concepts theoretical boundary conditions and methodological guidance for scholars to build and test future studies on ce and ces though our complexity perspective draws extensively from conceptual work on complex adaptive systems and agent based models we ground our arguments on the empirical ubiquity of power law distributions in all constructs and levels of analysis within the ces model we conclude with a detailed research agenda as well as a prescriptive discussion related to theory development quantitative analysis and practical applications to guide future studies on ce

biofuel related price transmission literature a review abstract in this article an extensive review of the rapidly growing biofuel related time series literature is carried out the data used the modeling techniques and the main findings of this literature are discussed providing a review of this flourishing research area is relevant as a guidepost for future research this literature concludes that energy prices drive long run agricultural price levels and that instability in energy markets is transferred to food markets

the impacts of local markets a review of research on farmers markets and community supported agriculture csa a growing interest in sourcing local food prod ucts is reflected in two recent best selling books kingsolver hopp and kingsolver 2007 pollan 2008 that make the case for going local darby et al 2008 recently found that consumers prefer locally grown over u s grown even when freshness is held constant and are willing to pay almost double for a product from a closer location a sur vey by the hartman group 2008 found that many consumers define local in terms of dis tance from their home one half said that local meant made or produced within 100 miles while one third of consumers 37 under stood local to mean made or produced in my state farmers markets could be considered the historical flagship of local food systems and their numbers in the united states have grown significantly over the last decade a 150 in crease from 1994 through 2006 ams 2007 total nationwide sales for the 2005 season were estimated at 1 billion reflecting 13 sales growth since 2000 usda 2006 re search on farmers markets is not new an in ventory of farmers market research brown 2002 mentions studies as far back as the 1940s brown s literature review however ends with research in 2000 since that time the number of farmers markets has increased by 53 ams 2007 and research on farmers markets has also grown community supported agriculture csa is a marketing strategy where consumers buy shares in the farm before planting begins and receive a portion of whatever is available each week of the growing season these shares gen erally cost several hundred dollars and provide enough fresh produce for a family some shares include other products such as eggs honey flowers and or meat first introduced into the united states in 1985 and estimated at only 50 farms in 1990 csa farms now number over 1 900 localharvest 2008 research on csa has also increased although much is descrip tive research or case studies of a small number of farms afsic 2008 this review of litera ture focuses on research that examines the im pacts that csa and farmers markets have on farmers consumers and communities follow ing up on brown s 2002 findings by reviewing research conducted on farmers markets since 2000

a general equilibrium theory of contracts in community supported agriculture community supported agriculture csa contracts allow consumers to buy claims on a farm s future production in turn the consumer provides working capital to the farm during the growing season csa contracts also provide risk management for farmers with limited access to federal crop insurance by transferring part of the farm s risk to the consumer we derive a theory of csa contract pricing for the two most prevalent types of csa contracts yield contracts in which consumers receive a percentage of the farm s production and weight contracts in which consumers receive fixed quantities we develop a two period model in which expected utility maximizing producers and consumers engage in csa contracting in the first period based on anticipation of yields and spot prices in the second period using the model we generate several testable hypotheses to be explored in future research additionally we present an overview of the data necessary to test the propositions and potential challenges that might arise in related empirical work

public control of rational and unpredictable epidemics abstract efforts to improve disease forecasting are often justified on the grounds that accurate and reliable forecasts offer opportunities to improve response to epidemics yet little is known about how disease forecasts influence the responsiveness to public health interventions this paper couples an optimal stopping model and rational disease prevention with a stochastic compartmental epidemiological model of disease spread to develop a framework for evaluating the timing of public health interventions in response to rational but unpredictable epidemics optimal behavior by a public health agency is characterized by a pair of critical prevalence thresholds that trigger implementation and suspension of a public prevention program unlike existing economic thresholds for disease prevention our decision thresholds account for time varying probabilities of different levels of infection prevention by private individuals and the likelihood of crossing epidemiological thresholds that determine disease persistence

causality and predictability in distribution the ethanol food price relation revisited abstract this paper examines the relationship between biofuels field crops and cattle prices in the u s from a new perspective we focus on predictability in distribution by asking whether ethanol returns can be used to forecast different parts of field crops and cattle returns distribution or vice versa density forecasts are constructed using conditional autoregressive expectile models estimated with asymmetric least squares forecast evaluation relies on quantile weighed scoring rules which identify regions of the distribution of interest to the analyst results show that both the centre and the left tail of the ethanol returns distribution can be predicted by using field crops returns on the contrary there is no evidence that ethanol can be used to forecast any region of the field crops or cattle returns distributions

the impact of german biogas production on european and global agricultural markets land use and the environment abstract as part of its climate policy germany promotes the production of biogas via its so called renewable energy act eeg the resulting boost in biogas output went along with a significant increase in production of green maize the dominant feedstock existing studies of the eeg have analysed its impacts on german agriculture without considering market feedback we thus expand existing quantitative analysis by also considering impacts on european and global agricultural markets land use and the environment by combining a detailed location model for biogas plants the regionalised location information system maize resi m2012 with a global partial equilibrium model for agriculture the common agricultural policy regional impact capri model our results indicate that the german biogas production is large enough to have sizeable impacts on global agricultural markets in prices and quantities causing significant land use change outside of germany while profits in the agricultural sector increase food consumer face higher prices and subsidies for biogas production are passed on to electricity consumers the german biogas program as long as it is almost entirely based on non waste feedstocks is probably not a promising avenue towards a ghg saving renewable energy production but a rather expensive one

tipping and the dynamics of segregation schelling dynamic models of segregation journal of mathematical sociology 1 1971 143 186 showed that extreme segregation can arise from social interactions in white preferences once the minority share in a neighborhood exceeds a tipping point all the whites leave we use regression discontinuity methods and census tract data from 1970 through 2000 to test for discontinuities in the dynamics of neighborhood racial composition we find strong evidence that white population flows exhibit tipping like behavior in most cities with a distribution of tipping points ranging from 5 to 20 minority share tipping is prevalent both in the suburbs and near existing minority enclaves in contrast to white population flows there is little evidence of nonlinearities in rents or housing prices around the tipping point tipping points are higher in cities where whites have more tolerant racial attitudes

biofuels and the poor global impact pathways of biofuels on agricultural markets this study seeks to assess the future impacts of biofuel production on regional agricultural and related sectors over the next decade with a specific focus on the vulnerable regions of developing nations using a modification of the gtap modeling platform to account for the global interactions of regional biofuel and food markets the analysis shows that biofuel production levels depend on the assumption about the future price of energy and the nature of the substitutability between biofuels and petroleum based transport fuels low energy prices reduce the demand for biofuels and thus require greater government support to meet the desired production targets at the other extreme when prices are high and there is scope for substituting biofuels for petroleum based fuels the volume of biofuels produced will exceed the mandates even when biofuels are being mainly produced in developed countries our results indicate that there are impact pathways that extend far beyond the borders of the us brazil and the eu prices of feedstock and non feedstock commodities rise in developing countries there is also a rise in value added from the agricultural sector a gain that is enjoyed by the owners of land and labor including unskilled hence to the extent that agriculture is a key sector in getting growth started and addressing poverty needs the emergence of biofuels can in this way at least be a positive force

institutional activism in the early american automobile industry abstract a common proposition is that new industries gain constitutive legitimacy through claim making by institutional activists yet neoinstitutional research seldom analyzes the effects of claim making on the formation of new organizations and how the effect of claim making is moderated by other sources of constitutive legitimacy advertising legal recognition and a policy regime favorable to business i explore the relationship between claim making by activists and new organization building in a study of the early american automobile industry when auto clubs organized reliability contests to validate the automobile the results show that the visibility of reliability contests within the focal state increased foundings of car firms in the state but that this effect diminished with advertising legal recognition of the car and the existence of a business friendly governor in the focal state taken together these results demonstrate that claim making is crucial in the early phase of gaining legitimacy for new industries

the hidden costs of renewables promotion the case of crop based biogas abstract this paper finds that specific characteristics of bioenergy investments namely long times to build relatively high variable costs and the managerial ability of corrective actions during the project help bioenergy producers to respond to market uncertainties this effect is shown to compromise the economic effectiveness of bioenergy policies the paper compares the effectiveness of financial and regulatory incentive programs aiming to stimulate production of crop based biogas a stylized stochastic real options based investment model is developed to analyze the investment behavior of biogas producers under alternative policies the model is solved by a numerical approach combining stochastic simulations and the genetic algorithm technique unless bioenergy schemes account for structural characteristics of the bioenergy industry they will tend to encourage investments in unused production capacities this would cause additional welfare costs and benefit mainly crop producers

the moderating effect of relationship norm salience on consumers loss aversion people are said to be loss averse when their pain of losing something exceeds their joy of gaining it this research proposes and tests a new moderator of loss aversion the type of relationship norms salient at the time the loss or the gain is experienced we suggest that mere salience of the norms of a communal relationship based on concern for the partner relative to those of an exchange relationship based on quid pro quo leads to a greater degree of loss aversion a typical endowment effect study supports our overall thesis and shows that differences across relationship norms are stronger in selling prices willingness to accept than in buying prices willingness to pay

the indirect land use impacts of united states biofuel policies the importance of acreage yield and bilateral trade responses recent work has highlighted agricultural land conversion as a significant debit in the greenhouse gas accounting of ethanol as an alternative fuel this work has at the same time sparked considerable debate on the role of crop yield growth as a means of avoiding rapid land conversion we examine the agricultural land use impacts of mandate driven ethanol demand increases in the united states in a formal economic equilibrium framework which allows us to examine the importance of yield price relationships we find that the standard assumption of trend yield growth is likely restrictive for analysis of equilibrium response to significant demand increases for fuel feedstocks furthermore we identify both the acreage response and bilateral trade specification of a multi country model as important sources of variability in terms of parametric uncertainty in predicting global land use change from the biofuels boom

an ethanol blend wall shift is prone to increase petroleum gasoline demand abstract in 2010 the u s environmental protection agency announced a waiver allowing an increase in the fuel ethanol blend limit the blend wall from 10 e10 to 15 e15 justifications for the waiver are reduced vehicle fuel prices and less consumption of petroleum gasoline leading to greater energy security empirical investigations of this waiver using monte carlo simulations reveal an anomaly where a relaxation of this blend wall elicits a demand response under a wide range of elasticities this demand response can actually increase the consumption of petroleum gasoline and thus lead to greater energy insecurity the economics supporting this result and associated policy implications are developed and discussed

generalized optimal hedge ratio estimation a generalized approach to estimating optimal hedge ratios on futures markets is developed the generalized approach is not difficult to apply and provides a framework for evaluating the appropriateness of conventional simple regression approaches to optimal hedge ratio estimation in an application to storage hedging of corn soybeans and wheat it is found that simple regression using price levels or returns leads to errors in optimal hedge ratio estimation but that simple regression using price changes provides reasonably accurate estimates

macro economic impact of large scale deployment of biomass resources for energy and materials on a national level a combined approach for the netherlands biomass is considered one of the most important options in the transition to a sustainable energy system with reduced greenhouse gas ghg emissions and increased security of enegry supply in order to facilitate this transition with targeted policies and implementation strategies it is of vital importance to understand the economic benefits uncertainties and risks of this transition this article presents a quantification of the economic impacts on value added employment shares and the trade balance as well as required biomass and avoided primary energy and greenhouse gases related to large scale biomass deployment on a country level the netherlands for different future scenarios to 2030 this is done by using the macro economic computable general equilibrium cge model leitap capable of quantifying direct and indirect effects of a bio based economy combined with a spread sheet tool to address underlying technological details although the combined approach has limitations the results of the projections show that substitution of fossil energy carriers by biomass could have positive economic effects as well as reducing ghg emissions and fossil energy requirement key factors to achieve these targets are enhanced technological development and the import of sustainable biomass resources to the netherlands

does organic command a premium when the food is already local the emergence of community supported agriculture csa farms has been recognized as a new way for small farms to remain competitive while engaging in their local community through direct marketing in this study we report on first revealed preference valuation of csa attributes using data on share prices and csa characteristics for the summer 2012 growing season using data covering 453 csa farms in michigan new york ohio and pennsylvania we develop a hedonic model based on firm level prices to reveal consumer valuations of csa attributes including various types of organic certification we also test for competition in the csa market using a model of firm entry to evaluate whether firms appear perfectly competitive which is a requirement when using firm level prices in our hedonic analysis our results reveal a price premium of approximately 7 for usda organic certification although this value is heterogeneous across states we find no premium associated with competing certified naturally grown programs finally we find that csa farms exhibit little market power and appear to act competitively even with few market entrants

the limits of fungibility relational schemata and the value of things four experiments test predictions on endowment and mental accounting effects of a theoretical perspective that stresses the symbolic relational significance for consumer transactions and that posits the placement of qualitative boundaries on fungibility although people accepted proposals to buy objects acquired in market pricing relationships as routine the same proposals in communal sharing authority ranking and equality matching relationships triggered distress and erratically high dollar valuations symbolic ownership history also moderated valuations in a purely market setting and the effects of symbolic relational source of income extended even to spending decisions examination of the model s ordinal predictions revealed stronger effects for equality matching than for authority ranking relationships

effects of scale economies and production seasonality on optimal hub locations the case of regional fresh produce aggregation interest in supporting local and regional food systems is rising and food hubs have attracted considerable attention among federal state and local policymakers this study explores the problem of endogenous hub location in fresh produce value chains in the northeastern united states to overcome limitations in the literature we incorporate the effects of economies of scale and production seasonality into our models three experimental models are designed to examine the effects of alternatively applying yearly quarterly and monthly data on model solutions we explicitly assess how interactions of scale economies and seasonality influence the structure and spatial attributes of an optimal regional produce aggregation hub system the three models generate marketed different solutions and in many respects they lead to different conclusions about developing local regional supply chains the monthly model allows for production seasonality and actual hub operation cycle frequency and thus leads to more efficient hub solution with rich policy implications

the structuration of socio technical regimes conceptual foundations from institutional theory abstract in recent years socio technical transitions literature has gained importance in addressing long term transformative change in various industries in order to account for the inertia and path dependency experienced in these sectors the concept of the socio technical regime has been formulated socio technical regimes denote the paradigmatic core of a sector which results from the co evolution of institutions and technologies over time despite its widespread acceptance the regime concept has repeatedly been criticized for lacking a clear operationalization as a consequence empirical applications tend to depict regimes as too monolithic and homogenous not adequately considering persistent institutional tensions and contradictions these are however crucial for assessing transition dynamics in this paper we revisit two concepts from institutional theory that enable an explicit identification of socio technical regimes and more generally a specification of the semi coherence of socio technical systems first we will show that levels of structuration can be conceptualized as degrees of institutionalization thereby treating institutionalization as a variable with different effects on actors the stability of the system and thus the potential for change secondly we draw on the institutional logics approach to characterize the content of various structural elements present in a system and to trace conflicts and contradictions between them we illustrate this approach with an empirical in depth analysis of the transformation of the australian urban water sector since the 1970ies

pre marital confinement of women a signaling and matching approach abstract parents in several cultures discipline their daughters to inculcate the supposedly feminine virtues and improve their prospects in the marriage market this process invariably involves imposing restrictions on their behavior movement and social relations we refer to such practices as pre marital confinement and provide a unified game theoretic framework which encompasses the different arguments that have been advanced by social scientists to explain pre marital confinement the proposed framework views confinement by parents as an intrinsically valueless or valuable signal of some unobservable characteristic of their daughters which is valued by men in the marriage market we focus on identifying the conditions that lead to a societal norm of confinement we also show that behind a veil of ignorance where gender is unknown agents will choose to prohibit rather than permit confinement if it is intrinsically valueless and the parameters characterizing the society are such that the ex post equilibrium would involve pooling

integrating bioenergy into computable general equilibrium models a survey in the past years biofuels have received increased attention since they were believed to contribute to rural development energy security and to fight global warming it became clear though that bioenergy cannot be evaluated independently of the rest of the economy and that national and international feedback effects are important computable general equilibrium cge models have been widely employed in order to study the effects of international climate policies the main characteristic of these models is their encompassing scope global models cover the whole world economy disaggregated into regions and countries as well as diverse sectors of economic activity such a modelling framework unveils direct and indirect feedback effects of certain policies or shocks across sectors and countries cge models are thus well suited for the study of bioenergy biofuel policies one can currently find various approaches in the literature of incorporating bioenergy into a cge framework this paper gives an overview of existing approaches critically assesses their respective power and discusses the advantages of cge models compared to partial equilibrium models grouping different approaches into categories and highlighting their advantages and disadvantages is important for giving a structure to this rather recent and rapidly growing research area and to provide a guidepost for future work

decomposing local a conjoint analysis of locally produced foods increasingly foods are marketed as locally grown we use stated preference data from a choice based conjoint instrument to address two issues surrounding consumer demand for locally produced goods 1 what is the geographical extent of local and 2 is the value consumers place on local production distinct from other factors that are often confounded with locally produced foods such as farm size and product freshness we find our subjects place similar value on products produced in state and nearby and that consumers willingness to pay for local production is independent from values associated with product freshness and farm size copyright 2008 oxford university press

impacts of ethanol policy on corn prices a review and meta analysis of recent evidence abstract the literature on the impacts of biofuels on agricultural commodity prices is characterized by contradictory findings we review studies published between 2007 and 2014 that estimate the effects of u s corn ethanol policy on corn prices and find estimates ranging from nil to over 80 such divergent results make it difficult to assess the merits of alternative biofuel policies to bring more clarity to the issue and facilitate comparisons across studies we assemble a database of over 150 medium to long run estimates of the effect of corn ethanol production on corn prices from 29 published studies we first normalize corn price impacts by the change in corn ethanol volume to control for the large differences in ethanol quantities across scenarios we then conduct a meta analysis to identify the factors that drive the remaining variation in corn price impacts across studies in addition to ethanol volumes we find that modeling framework projection year inclusion of ethanol co products and biofuel production from other feedstocks explain much of the differences in price effects the results indicate that a one billion gallon expansion of the us corn ethanol mandate in the year 2015 would lead to a three to four percent increase in corn prices with smaller price changes projected in future years

energy production from biogas in the italian countryside policies and organizational models abstract in recent years italy has witnessed a proliferation of agricultural biogas plants this article argues that institutional factors have played an important role in their diffusion it describes the state and evolution of agricultural biogas in italy and then investigates the extent to which institutional pressures have been influential in shaping organizational models of biogas production it finds that the dominance of one particular organizational model is the result of an isomorphic process in which a monopolistic market legal structures and subsidies play a role the prevalence of this organizational model however does not lead to the effective use of biogas production and furthermore it results in low environmental efficiency for a more sustainable development of bioenergy italian policy makers should reform the existing institutional framework by reorganizing subsidies liberalizing the management of gas grids and involving farmers in local projects

estimating equilibrium models of sorting across locations while there is growing interest in measuring the size and scope of local spillovers it is well understood that such spillovers cannot be distinguished from unobservable local attributes using solely the observed location decisions of individuals or firms we propose an empirical strategy for recovering estimates of spillovers in the presence of unobserved local attributes for a broadly applicable class of equilibrium sorting models our approach relies on an iv strategy derived from the internal logic of the sorting model itself we show practically how the strategy is implemented provide intuition for our instruments discuss the role of effective choice set variation in identifying the model and carry out a series of monte carlo simulations to demonstrate performance in small samples

biogas and eu s 2020 targets evidence from a regional case study in italy abstract the provision of renewable energy by agriculture so called agroenergy is a key element of the europe 2020 strategy and has sparked public and research debates on the bio based economy hot topics involve direct and indirect land use change and the ability of agroenergy to foster or hinder food and energy security worldwide research has dealt with these and other issues associated with the sustainability of the diffusion of agroenergy generation systems but the subject is still open this paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the sustainability of agroenergy we propose an empirical model to simulate the diffusion of farm biogas installations and estimate a set of indicators covering the economic environmental and social dimensions of sustainability at the regional level model results show that the current incentive mechanism does not allow to meet eu s energy targets at the local level to do so the policy mix needs an improved design accounting for regional peculiarities across the eu model results show that agroenergy production can help farmers stabilise their income and keep viable rural areas despite some trade offs among socioeconomic and environmental indicators major drawbacks are environmental risks associated with farming intensification

sacred versus pseudo sacred values how people cope with taboo trade offs psychologists have documented widespread public deference to sacred values that communities formally or informally exempt from tradeoffs with secular limits like money this work has however been largely confined to low stakes settings as the stakes rise deference must decline because people can t write blank checks for every sacred cause shadow pricing is inevitable which sets the stage for political blame games of varying sophistication in a rational world citizens would accept the necessity of such tradeoffs but the attraction to moral absolutes is strong perhaps even essential for social cohesion

on the accuracy of the mean variance approximation for futures markets abstract simple approximate fomulae for the volume and gains from futures trading are derived using the mean variance model the errors involved are exactly quantified and shown to be negligible for the futures price and welfare gains though potentially larger for volumes

institutional work and climate change corporate political action in the swedish electricity industry this paper utilises qualitative methods to examine factors that influence corporate political actions cpa linked to climate policy in the swedish electricity industry cpa strategies are examined in connection to two policy instruments the eu emission trading scheme and the swedish electricity certificate scheme these instruments are the main drivers of climate related investments in the sector the study treats cpa as a form of institutional work and examines reasons for companies to seek to maintain disrupt institutions the study finds that cpa is driven primarily by the need to manage external resource dependencies and that where risks are more acute companies are more likely to seek to disrupt regulative institutions however the study also shows that respondents appraisals of policy instruments are based on a convergent set of shared values cognitive institutions that form the basis of cpa and which actors do not seek to disrupt despite resource based risks cpa is thus characterised as a means to transmute cognitively held values and beliefs into regulative institutions the study concludes with implications for policymakers and theory

industry self regulation without sanctions the chemical industry s responsible care program industry self regulation the voluntary association of firms to control their collective action has been proposed as a complement to government regulation proponents argue that the establishment of

looking towards policies supporting biofuels and technological change evidence from france abstract the increasing constraints on crude oil resources contribute to the emergence of liquid biofuels as an alternative for road transport fuels the european union eu parliament called for a 7 limit on crop based biofuels by 2030 and proposed increasing the incorporation target for advanced biofuels within the proposals under discussion in relation to the post 2020 eu renewable energy directive red ii by 2021 2030 the main objective of this work is to assess the economic impacts of the eu parliament s decision concerning first generation biofuels we also determine the conditions under which advanced biofuels could become available by examining the evolution of oil prices and public subsidies we employ a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model calibrated on the french economy advanced biofuels are modelled as latent technology and we include biofuel by products our simulations provide guidelines for public decision makers to design alternative fiscal policies to support biofuels in a context of regulatory uncertainty

biomass price developments inhibit biofuel investments and research in germany the crucial future role of high yields abstract the competitiveness of conventional and advanced second generation biofuels is a critical issue for the implementation of a sustainable transport strategy we model biofuel competition under different feedstock cost development scenarios assessing what costs and cost developments can be expected for energy crops in germany and how these feedstock cost developments affect the competitiveness between biofuels perennial poplar was found to be the least cost energy crop with non perennial silage maize being strongly competitive at increasing feedstock price developments assuming increasing feedstock costs for the future neither conventional biodiesel from rape seed nor advanced biodiesel were found to be competitive in the long run feedstock costs were found to overshadow all other factors leading to costs for advanced biodiesel to be between 27 0 and 53 6 gj 1 in 2030 which is above most expectations of the advanced biofuels only synthetic natural gas was cost competitive under some circumstances but biomethane from silage maize and bioethanol from sugar beet were the strongest options as they combine high yields with high conversion efficiencies while avoiding the high upfront costs of advanced biofuels and the risk of switching to perennial crops however such a transition leads to less mobile feedstocks being used than presently and in the case of gaseous fuels requires stimulation of the demand side in order to function the high dependence on and increasing relevance of feedstock costs is characteristic for the biobased renewables only and is detrimental and inhibiting for investments and research and development efforts in contrast to for e g wind and solar photovoltaics and must be considered when designing policy for any sector of the bioeconomy

analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems a scheme of analysis various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical studies of innovation systems in order to understand their current structure and trace their dynamics however policy makers often experience difficulties in extracting practical guidelines from studies of this kind in this paper we operationalize our previous work on a functional approach to analyzing innovation system dynamics into a practical scheme of analysis for policy makers the scheme is based on previous literature and our own experience in developing and applying functional thinking it can be used by policy makers not only to identify the key policy issues but also to set policy goals

informal institutions and absorptive capacity a cross country meta analytic study the informal institutions construct has not been well understood in prior research we contribute to the informal institutions literature by developing a generalized two by two conceptualization of institutions that juxtapose the dimension of behavioral uncertainty versus environmental uncertainty and the dimension of informal institutions versus formal institutions in particular we theorize informal institutions based on the extent to which they reduce behavioral uncertainty or environmental uncertainty as well as their alignment with the formal institutional environment with respect to the two types of uncertainty leveraging this fourfold typology we shed new light on the importance of informal institutional conditions in theories of firms absorptive capacity and performance using a cross country meta analytical approach we find that a firm s absorptive capacity is more positively related to performance outcomes in countries with informal institutions that reduce behavioral uncertainty and environmental uncertainty furthermore the misalignment between informal and formal institutions with respect to behavioral uncertainty and environmental uncertainty weakens the relationship between absorptive capacity and performance outcomes overall by re emphasizing the fundamental role of informal institutions in reducing behavioral and environmental uncertainties our typology offers a fine grained perspective to conceptualize informal institutions and constitutes an opportunity to advance theory in informal institutions and international business

economic impact of ethanol promotion in mexico a general equilibrium analysis abstract in this paper we analyze the economic impact of a decision to produce ethanol in mexico comparing the effect of a subsidy to initiate ethanol production with that of alternative public policies public support of biofuels has been a public policy goal since 2008 and the promotion of ethanol remains an active part of the government agenda the evidence used to encourage or alter the policy is by necessity chiefly based on international experience in this study we use a computable general equilibrium model cge to estimate the impact of ethanol production on the mexican economy using cost data from brazil we introduce ethanol into a mexican social accounting matrix and insert a latent sector into the model to analyze ethanol promotion our results show that subsidies to ethanol would increase agriculture production but at the expense of aggregate welfare by contrast alternative clean energy policies appear to advance economic growth to a greater extent

innovation processes in large technical systems market liberalization as a driver for radical change abstract electricity supply is a large technical system which exhibits strong path dependencies and high barriers for radical innovations recent market liberalization however has initiated a fundamental restructuring the paper analyzes how liberalization has altered innovation processes in the field of electricity supply we examine three radical innovations under monopoly conditions and contrast the findings with the results from a survey on the innovation behavior of electric utilities in liberalized markets we argue that the selection environment for innovations has changed in various respects in our sample new options open to innovation activities have emerged at the level of the firm and utility strategies turn out to be more heterogeneous this may be interpreted as an increase in the variety of search processes which may lead to a mid term decrease of path dependencies

effects of changes in italian bioenergy promotion schemes for agricultural biogas projects insights from a regional optimization model italy has witnessed an extraordinary growth in biogas generation from livestock effluents and agricultural activities in the last few years as well as a severe isomorphic process leading to a market dominance of 999 kw power plants owned by entrepreneurial farms under the pressure of the economic crisis in the country the italian government has restructured renewable energy support schemes introducing a new program in 2013 in this paper the effects of the previous and current support schemes on the optimal plant size feedstock mix and profitability were investigated by introducing a spatially explicit biogas supply chain optimization model which accounts for different incentive structures by applying the model to a regional case study homogenization observed to date is recognized as a result of former incentive structures considerable reductions in local economic potentials for agricultural biogas power plants without external heat use are estimated new plants are likely to be manure based and due to the lower energy density of such feedstock wider supply chains are expected although optimal plant size will be smaller the new support scheme will therefore most likely eliminate past distortions but also slow down investments in agricultural biogas plants

tax policy and u s agriculture a general equilibrium analysis this article emloys a computable general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of eliminating farm and food tax preferences in 1977 tax differentials on capital income labor payments and production and sales taxes are each examined results indicate that these combined preferences lowered food costs by about 4 5 billion while enhancing after tax returns to farm land labor and capital the associated general equilibrium tax expenditure is estimated to have been between 5 5 and 6 6 billion

biomass feedstock contracts role of land quality and yield variability in near term feasibility abstract in the absence of an infrastructure for the harvest storage and purchase of cellulosic biomass contracting is an important mechanism through which biorefineries can ensure adequate feedstock supply we develop an optimization model to assess the economic potential of dedicated energy crops when profit maximizing farmers allocate croplands of varying quality toward biomass in response to multi year contracts we evaluate the economic competitiveness of perennial grasses with traditional commodity crops in a case study of switchgrass production in tennessee assuming short term contracts we consider the importance of payment structure land quality energy crop yield and projected commodity crop returns on a farmer s decision to accept a contract for biomass production we find that a wholesale contract in which the farmer is guaranteed a price per unit biomass is most effective on the highest quality of land while a contract in which the farmer is guaranteed a price per acre is most effective on lower quality land from the biorefinery perspective a wholesale contract is most effective for short term contracts while an acreage contract is most effective for long term contracts breakeven pricing will only secure feedstock from farmers who produce commodity crops with unfavorable price outlooks on lower quality land therefore the contract price must include a premium in order to compete for space in the crop mix the yield profile of energy crops has a significant effect on the terms at which short term contracts will be accepted and land allocated toward feedstock production the extent to which energy crop yields observed in field trials can be maintained at commercial scale also has a substantial effect on the scale at which farmers would be willing to participate in energy crop production

coupling economic and ghg emission accounting models to evaluate the sustainability of biogas policies abstract the aim of this study is to evaluate and quantify the impacts of different biogas and related policies on the agricultural sector as well as their performance in terms of climate change mitigation and associated costs to do so we coupled the partial equilibrium approach simulating the market clearing process with the perspective of life cycle assessment of ghg applying it to the well documented lombardy case results show that the recent italian biogas policy prompting manure utilization and reducing the average subsidy per kwh effectively increased the environmental sustainability of the system which only now seems able to counteract global warming synergies are observed when the recent common agricultural policy greening reform is simultaneously considered by the model

the impact of energy prices on the volatility of ethanol prices and the role of gasoline emissions abstract the contribution of renewable energy resources is vital for a country s economic growth by providing high efficiency in energy as well as an effective tool for the confrontation of climate change in particular concerning the eu an increase in the consumption of renewable energy resources as a proportion of the total energy consumption by its member states was set as an objective until 2020 ethanol has been widely used as a substitute to conventional energy like gasoline and oil the present paper surveys the role of alternative energy prices and gas emissions in the formation of the ethanol prices the results of the empirical survey confirmed the existence of a sole relationship among the variables employed according to the results obtained an increase in the volume of emissions or in gasoline prices results in an increase in ethanol prices while the opposite is confirmed in the case of crude oil he elasticity of ethanol prices to the increase of the emissions is another result worth mentioning indicative of the significant role of the emissions in the formation of ethanol prices

production hedging and speculative decisions with options and futures markets this paper analyzes production hedging and speculative decisions when both futures and options can be used in an expected utility model of price and basis uncertainty when futures and option prices are unbiased optimal hedging requires only futures options are redundant options are used together with futures as speculative tools when market prices are perceived as biased straddles are used to speculate on beliefs about price volatility and to hedge the futures position used to speculate on beliefs about the expected value of the futures price mean variance analysis in general is not consistent with expected utility when options are allowed one extension of sandmo s expected utility model of the competitive firm under price uncertainty considers the use of futures or forward contracts danthine holthausen and feder just and schmitz show that without basis uncertainty the optimal output level is not affected by price risk also with an unbiased futures price the optimal hedging level of the competitive firm is the full hedge while a biased futures price will result in a partly speculative hedge related works include batlin who allows for basis risk in the form of imperfect time hedging paroush and wolf and antonovitz and nelson who consider basis risk with the simultaneous availability of futures and forward contracts grant honda losq newbery and stiglitz and rolfo who allow for production uncertainty chavas and pope who allow for production uncertainty and hedging costs and karp who considers the problem in a dynamic setting this paper provides a further extension of this analysis by allowing options as a means of coping with price risk with the introduction of commodity options on futures for many commodities in the 1980s this problem appears relevant to a number of production settings especially in agriculture specifically this paper considers the simultaneous choice of a production level and of hedging levels of futures and options within the general expected utility model the model allows for basis uncertainty but the production process is assumed to be nonstochastic

policy options for non grain bioethanol in china insights from an economy energy environment cge model abstract the chinese government has been issuing numerous incentive policies to promote non grain bioethanol development to address the problem of excessive energy consumption and environmental pollution in this study we divide the incentive policies into five categories subsidies on bioethanol production non grain feedstocks planting marginal land reclamation and utilization bioethanol consumption in more cities and consumption tax on gasoline use the objective of the paper is to evaluate and compare the economic energy and environmental effects of the incentive policies to help the government choose the optimal policies to promote bioethanol in china the results show that subsidies on bioethanol production and consumption can boost gdp and simultaneously decrease crude oil and gasoline consumption and reduce co2 emissions however the increase in bioethanol consumption is combined with the rise in coal and electricity consumption subsidies on bioethanol production can promote gdp and reduce energy consumption and co2 emission but have less effect on bioethanol development than that under the scenario of subsides on bioethanol consumption on the contrary although subsidies on non grain feedstocks planting and marginal land reclamation and utilization can improve macro economy but have a negative effect on energy saving and co2 emission reduction therefore appropriate subsidies on bioethanol production and consumption can promote bioethanol consumption with economic energy and environmental benefits the chinese government should further pay more attention to the coordination of different policy options by policy tools and intensities

futures hedging under price basis and production risk we consider the hedging problem of a firm that has three sources of risk price basis and yield uncertainty an exact solution for the optimal futures hedge is derived under the assumption that the three random variables are jointly normally distributed and that utility is of the cara type unlike the mean variance approximation applied in previous research we show that the optimal hedge does depend on risk attitudes even when the agent perceives the futures price as being unbiased the theoretical results are applied empirically to the problem of hedging soybean production in iowa the exact solution relying on cara and normality is compared with numerical solutions under lognormal distributions and crra utility

regime destabilisation as the flipside of energy transitions lessons from the history of the british coal industry 1913 1997 this paper investigates a neglected aspect of the transitions literature the destabilisation of existing regimes and industries it presents an analytical perspective that integrates four existing views on destabilisation and conceptualizes the process as a multi dimensional and enacted phenomenon involving technical economic political and cultural processes this perspective is illustrated with two historical cases of the british coal industry 1913 1967 1967 1997 these cases are also used to articulate five lessons regarding the overall destabilisation process and five lessons regarding the economic and socio political environments of industries the conclusion section translates the historical lessons into insights with relevance for the contemporary challenge of climate change and transitions to low carbon energy systems

dynamic hedging with uncertain production this paper provides a closed form rule for dynamic hedging with production uncertainty the rule is obtained by considering a discret e time control problem in the limit as the interval between hedging opportunities goes to zero price may be expected to increase or decrease so that a speculative motive is present in the absence of this motive and of discounting the optimal hedge is myopic for a given expected rate of change in price the hedge may be expected to rise or fall depending on the degree of risk aversion copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association