modeling household cooking fuel choice a panel multinomial logit approach we use three rounds of a rich panel data set to investigate the determinants of household cooking fuel choice and energy transition in urban ethiopia we observe that the expected energy transition did not occur following economic growth in ethiopia during the decade 20002009 regression results from a random eects multinomial logit model suggest that households economic status price of alternative energy sources and education are important determinants of fuel choice in urban ethiopia the results also suggest the use of multiple fuels or fuel stacking behavior by households we argue that policy makers could target these policy levers to encourage transition to cleaner energy sources

income and price elasticities of energy consumption in egypt a time series analysis abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide empirical estimates of the price and income elasticities of energy consumption in egypt it fills an important gap since policy discussion of energy pricing issues has so far been based more on assumptions than on hard evidence the paper shows that the real relative price of energy has been falling steadily since 1972 while per capita energy consumption rose some 50 over the decade 1972 81 evidence produced in this exercise indicates quite clearly that price and income elasticities of energy consumption are significantly much lower than was generally believed

petroleum policy issues in developing countries abstract petroleum is of vital importance to most developing countries either in their capacity as producers or consumers on both counts they are heavily exposed to the impact of the large oil price fluctuations which have characterized the last 20 years and are likely to be prevalent in the foreseeable future to optimize their benefits in government take and investment producing countries should place emphasis on profit related fiscal instruments consuming countries should ensure that oil prices reflect their opportunity costs the design of consumption taxes on petroleum products should take into account a their revenue raising potential b their distributional effects c the need to correct for externalities in the use of petroleum and d the energy security price vulnerability aspects

a general equilibrium model of congressional voting in this paper we specify a model in which congressmen constituents and campaign contributors simultaneously decide on behavior constituents and contributors desire to influence the voting behavior of congressmen congressmen on the other hand want to be elected and vote accordingly we empirically test this model using roll call voting on eight bills dealing with economic regulation and find support for the model our results indicate that part of the voting behavior of congressmen may be explained by noneconomic factors we also find that unions and businesses as campaign contributors are sometimes influential unions are more often influential than is business ideological factors are also important in explaining voting

electricity planning and implementation in sub saharan africa a systematic review abstract universal electricity access is an important development objective and the focus of a number of key global un initiatives while robust electricity planning is widely believed to be a prerequisite for effective electrification to date no comprehensive overview of electricity planning research has been undertaken on sub saharan africa the world region with the lowest access rates this paper reviews quantitative and qualitative electricity planning and related implementation research considering each of the 49 sub saharan african countries the four regional power pools and the sub continent as a whole applying a broad understanding of electricity planning and a practical limit of 20 reviewed articles per country and region 306 relevant peer reviewed journal articles are included in this review a general classification scheme is introduced that classifies the planning literature along the addressed value chain depth number of different analysed criteria and number of evaluated decision alternatives the literature is found to be strongly clustered in a few countries with less than 5 identified relevant articles in 36 of the 49 countries the total amount of articles per year is clearly increasing over time addressing technology choice operation distribution and implementation analyses although including different high level criteria in analysing electricity systems is common the literature is only starting to use formalised multi criteria decision making mcdm tools the review indicates that 63 of relevant articles favour renewable energy technologies for their given problems frequently mentioned success factors for electrification in sub saharan africa include adequate policy design sufficient finance and favourable political conditions while considerable regional and methodological literature gaps are apparent the literature in this review identifies a rich and fruitful ground for future research to fill these gaps

quality quantity and spatial variation of price this paper develops and implements a method for estimating price elasticities of demand using cross sectional household survey data geographically clustered households report unit values which when corrected for quality effects and for measurement error indicate the underlying spatial variation in prices and can be matched to variation in demand patterns a simple model of quality choice is proposed while the correction for measurement error exploits the clustered design of such surveys data from a 1979 household survey from the ivory coast are used to estimate price elasticities for beef meat fish cereals and starches copyright 1988 by american economic association

from linear fuel switching to multiple cooking strategies a critique and alternative to the energy ladder model abstract promoting sustainable development requires evaluating the technical and policy options that will facilitate the adoption and use of energy efficient and less polluting cooking stoves and practices the transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices has been explained by the energy ladder model that suggests that with increasing affluence a progression is expected from traditional biomass fuels to more advanced and less polluting fuels in this paper we evaluate the energy ladder model utilizing data from a four year 1992 96 case study of a village in mexico and from a large scale survey from four states of mexico we show that an alternate multiple fuel model of stove and fuel management based on the observed pattern of household accumulation of energy options rather than the simple progression depicted in the traditional energy ladder scenario more accurately depicts cooking fuel use patterns in rural households the multiple fuel model integrates four factors demonstrated to be essential in household decision making under conditions of resource scarcity or uncertainty a economics of fuel and stove type and access conditions to fuels b technical characteristics of cookstoves and cooking practices c cultural preferences and d health impacts this model also allows better estimates of the expected fuelwood demand and indoor air pollution in rural households

divorce comes at a price an ex ante welfare analysis of ownership unbundling of the distribution and commercial companies in the dutch energy sector vertical unbundling in the electricity sector is a hot political topic in the european union the european commission has decided that the ownership unbundling of transmission networks from other stages in the value chain is the most effective way to ensure fair network access and infrastructure investment while this european unbundling debate has not ended yet and most countries still do not have an independent transmission system operator tso the dutch government has already taken one step further in 2008 it decided that distribution companies should be completely separated from commercial activities that are part of the same holding generation trade and supply this governmental decision has been fiercely debated although the goal is to improve competition as well as security of supply these benefits are uncertain nevertheless it is certain that ownership unbundling comes at a cost in this paper we present an ex ante cost benefit analysis of the dutch unbundling act we conclude that it is unlikely that this act is welfare enhancing divorce comes at a price

on measuring energy poverty in indian households summary the relationship between energy and poverty is obvious and goes both ways recognizing this this paper provides a short overview of different approaches to measuring energy poverty it then presents a novel two dimensional measure of energy poverty and energy distribution that combines the elements of access to different energy types and quantity of energy consumed an assessment of the extent of energy poverty and changes in energy distribution pattern are analyzed by applying this measure to indian household survey data for 1983 2000 the analysis shows a significant reduction in the level of energy poverty and a rapidly developing subcontinent the new measure is a good complement to conventional monetary measures and is general enough to be applied to other developing countries

price elasticity block tariffs and equity of natural gas demand in china investigation based on household level survey data abstract on the basis of a newly established database from the chinese residential energy consumption survey this paper estimates the price elasticity of natural gas demand for the households and investigates the factors that affect residential natural gas consumption in china to address the endogeneity problems the non residential natural gas price has been adopted as the instrumental variable for residential natural gas price results demonstrate that the natural gas demand of chinese households respond significantly to price change with an overall price elasticity coefficient of 0 898 in the meanwhile 1 increase in family members would cause 0 159 rise in natural gas demand and household in the south consumes 28 8 more natural gas than that in the north recognizing the heterogeneity of residential natural gas price elasticity for different households quantile regression technique has further been applied to analyze the distributional effect of natural gas consumption the simulation suggests that the gini coefficient drops from 0 49 to 0 40 after introducing an increasing block tariff scheme to replace the original flat tariff system confirming a price reform has potential to improve the energy equity situation by reshaping the energy consumption pattern

legislative monopoly and the size of government if the economics profession had a fetish it would surely be competition unrestricted competition allows resources to flow to their most productive uses and maximizes the net welfare of society one of the few points virtually all modem economists would agree on is that with the possible exception of a few well defined special cases e g money production and public utilities they have never met an entry barrier they did not want to eliminate entry barriers facing potential competitors in markets reduce economic efficiency and generate social waste in a classic article tullock 2 extended this reasoning to the political process he makes the following argument lower entry barriers into politics e g lowered costs of entry into the legislature for potential entrants makes governmental decision making more competitive and tends to make p mc 2 competitive government will supply a higher level of public goods at lower tax prices taxes will therefore be lower holding other things equal in political jurisdictions which are more competitive while taxes will be higher in monopoly jurisdictions which will seek to exploit monopoly rents from taxpayers this reasoning makes the assumption that it is appropriate to model government as a kind of firm which provides public goods in exchange for tax revenues from taxpayer voters in such a setting increased competition would most likely produce increased efficiency in the provision of public goods and increase net social welfare buchanan 6 made a very different argument which while not directly intended to apply to the problem of the behavior of government may have direct bearing on those problems he was concerned with the social welfare effects of the monopolization of crime by organized criminal

preferences for domestic fuel analysis with socio economic factors and rankings in kolkata india abstract the choice of domestic fuel is a matter of great concern for households and policy makers in india this paper investigates the demand for domestic fuels when households face four choices fuelwood coal kerosene and lpg the study is based on a survey of 500 households in kolkata india the demand estimates are conducted using a two stage process where the first stage investigates choice and the second the quantity used determinants of fuel demand are identified and their relative importance shown extending the study the paper also analyses the choice of the main cooking fuel in terms of the households stated rankings of six fuels for five attributes the policy discussion indicates that subsidies have less potential to reduce polluting fuels such as coal and fuelwood due to weak cross price elasticities while increased availability of lpg and potentially also increased awareness of indoor air pollution have greater prospect

nairobi households and their energy use an economic analysis of consumption patterns abstract this paper describes and analyses the results of an urban household energy survey conducted in nairobi kenya during 1981 aggregate data on fuel and energy demand are examined in light of the problems facing urban areas in developing countries such as the increases in petroleum prices in the 1970s and the depletion of non commercial energy resources such as wood the paper provides a disaggregation of urban household fuel demand by income group using regression analysis the results confirm that there is a high income elasticity for electricity approximately 1 6 while charcoal exhibits a negative income elasticity of 0 23 gas energy consumption is primarily explained by price movements

elasticities of electricity demand in urban indian households abstract in the past several electricity demand studies have been published for india based on aggregate macro data at the country or sub national state level since the underlying theory of consumer demand is based on the behaviour of individual agents the use of micro data which reflects individual and household behaviour more closely can shed greater light on the nature of consumer responses in this paper seasonal price and income elasticities of electricity demand in the residential sector of all urban areas of india are estimated for the first time using disaggregate level survey data for about 30 000 households three electricity demand functions have been econometrically estimated using monthly data for the winter monsoon and summer season in order to understand the extent to which factors like income prices household size and other household specific characteristics influence variations observed in individual households electricity demand the results show electricity demand is income and price inelastic in all three seasons and that household demographic and geographical variables are significant in determining electricity demand

one price doesn t fit all an examination of heterogeneity in price elasticity of residential electricity in india abstract although well designed consumer electricity pricing can improve access contribute to higher metering increase penetration of energy efficient technologies limit extent of the rebound effect and influence viability of electricity distribution utilities in india there has been no comprehensive policy relevant assessment of price elasticities of electricity demand in the country the objective of this study is to estimate price elasticity of residential electricity consumption and disaggregate it by state rural and urban residence and income categories to provide evidence for electricity tariff setting in india we combine survey data from five rounds of nationally representative household consumption expenditure surveys covering the period 2005 2012 with administrative data on electricity deficit and improve on methods applied in previous studies by estimating price elasticities using a quadratic form to account for constraints in electricity supply we find that while the average price elasticity at the national level is 0 39 95 confidence interval 0 46 0 31 it varies significantly by state rural and urban residence and income categories our results indicate that a one price fits all policy may not be an effective approach to electricity tariff setting in india and a data driven understanding of heterogeneities in price elasticities can better inform residential electricity tariff design in the country

revisiting electricity liberalization and quality of service empirical evidence from new zealand abstractwhat effect does the firm structure have on the quality of service delivered by networks and infrastructure industries we answer this question by empirically assessing the impacts of complete vertical separation such as ownership unbundling on the quality of service delivered by a liberalized network industry electricity distribution utilities in new zealand are considered for this purpose and are analysed using panel data econometrics the results show robust evidence that ownership unbundling contributed to a fall in the duration and frequency of supply interruptions in electricity distribution however the results also show that unbundling has no effect on reducing distribution network losses these results overall highlight the nonsimple impacts of ownership unbundling on the quality of electricity distribution we suggest that the quality of service may largely improve when considered in the economic regulation of electricity networks than completely relying on specific reform measures

bargaining laws as a cause and consequence of the growth of teacher unionism this study analyzes state level data for 1959 78 to determine whether the rapid growth of teacher unionism during those years was primarily a result or a cause of the public sector bargaining laws adopted during the same period the author finds contrary to the view of some scholars that the enactment of laws requiring public sector employers to bargain with majority representatives of their employees was the single most important cause of the growth in the proportion of teachers covered by union contracts although the growth in teacher unionism in turn encouraged the adoption of some new or stronger bargaining laws this effect was relatively weak more important predictors of new bargaining laws included the extent of political patronage in a state and the bargaining laws adopted by neighboring states

the theory of economic regulation and public choice and the determinants of public sector bargaining legislation in this study we used the theory of economic regulation and public choice to derive a model to explain the pattern of public sector bargaining laws among the states we find this type of legislation is influenced by the following demand factors 1 the extent of public sector union membership which represents the interest group hypothesis has a positive influence on pro union legislation 2 the extent of employer opposition to unions as measured by unfair labor practice charges against employers in representation elections has a negative effect on bargaining laws 3 two taste variables the salaries of public employees and the percent of nonwhite employment in the state have a positive influence on these laws a result which will be surprising to many people is that the extent of private sector union membership has no significant influence on the passage of public sector bargaining legislation

estimation of elasticities for domestic energy demand in mozambique abstract in mozambique households consume a mix of energy sources to satisfy their needs for lighting and cooking and for wealthier households other domestic necessities such as refrigeration the domestic energy mix depends on the prices of the sources and on the capability of the household to invest in the energy consuming appliances required to satisfy those needs based on data from a household survey carried out in mozambique during 2002 3 iaf this paper calculates the price and the income elasticities of demand for domestic energy using an econometric method developed by deaton the calculations are made for all households at the national level differentiating for urban and rural households and for the northern households of mozambique in the econometric formulation proxies for the ownership of energy appliances per household are used allowing a simple evaluation of the effects of asset ownership on the demand for energy own and cross price elasticities for five individual domestic sources are obtained low grade sources such as firewood and charcoal are less elastic elasticities of 0 41 and 0 28 respectively than candles kerosene and electricity respectively 0 88 0 79 and 0 60 income elasticities are respectively 0 45 0 32 0 93 0 84 and 0 69 placing firewood and charcoal as the less responsive to income variations and candles and kerosene as the most responsive we also comment on the factors influencing domestic energy transition

household energy demand in kenya an application of the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids abstract this paper estimates price and fuel expenditure elasticities of demand by applying the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids to 3665 households sampled across kenya in 2009 the results indicate that motor spirit premium msp automotive gas oil ago and lubricants are price elastic while fuel wood kerosene charcoal liquefied petroleum gas lpg and electricity are price inelastic kerosene is income elastic while fuel wood charcoal lpg electricity msp and ago are income inelastic the results also reveal fuel stack behaviour that is multiple fuel use among the households main policy implications of the results include increasing the penetration of alternative fuels as well as provision of more fiscal incentives to increase usage of cleaner fuels this not withstanding however the household income should be increased beyond a certain point for the household to completely shift and use a new fuel

household fuel use in developing countries review of theory and evidence because of recent concerns about the negative externalities of traditional fuel use on the environment and health the issue of the household fuel transition in developing countries from dirty fuels towards clean fuels has received growing research attention this paper provides an up to date survey of the economic literature on household fuel use in these countries first we present the conceptual and theoretical frameworks then we discuss the empirical results that show how a wide range of factors drive the household fuel transition finally we suggest priorities for policy initiatives and highlight areas of future research

public and private sector wages interactions in a general equilibrium model it is common wisdom that public sector wages are not determined in the same way as private sector wages at the same time the empirical evidence available for oecd countries finds a strong positive correlation between public and private sector wages in this paper we develop a model that is consistent with a political economy view of the determination of public sector wages and employment while being consistent with the said empirical evidence public finance constraints are crucial in booms governments expand employment and wages while in downturns lack of tax revenues forces the government to cut back the wage bill

the price elasticity of electricity demand in south africa this paper examines the effects of price on the demand for electricity in south africa over the period 1950 83 emphasis is placed on the estimation of the long run own price elasticity of electricity demand an unconstrained distributed lag model is used and the 12 years elasticity is estimated to be 0 90 the policy implications of this finding are discussed

the market for laws an economic analysis of legislation considerable insight into the workings of government has been gained in recent years by analyzing political behavior in the same way that economists analyze market behavior such analysis has led to at least two actually several distinguishable but often overlapping developments one might be labeled the interest group theory of government 1 4 10 11 12 16 while the second could be referred to as the economic theory of legislatures 4 5 10 15 18 the purpose of the following presentation is to combine these two theoretical developments and treat the legislative process as a market for laws then by simultaneously considering interest group characteristics and legislative production costs hypotheses concerning both the level of interest group pressure and the magnitude of legislative output are examined in particular the primary issues to be addressed are 1 what determines the number of interest groups formed in a state and 2 what impact does the number of interest groups have on the level of legislative output in the process the developing economic approach to government is extended in two directions first this study contains what appears to be the first direct empirical examination of the question of what factors lead to or limit aggregate interest group demands for legislation and second the level of interest group pressure and the constraints on or costs of legislative decision making are considered to simultaneously determine the aggregate output of the legislative process virtually all previous studies of interest group legislation examine the impact of specific interests on specific legislation 2 the following presentation is divided into five sections in addition to this introduction in order to explore the issues suggested above section ii characterizes the political process as a market in order to justify the theoretical hypotheses to be tested section iii details the theoretical

institutional reform and technological practice the case of electricity this article proposes a framework for categorizing possible interrelations between technological and institutional change and applies this framework to the case of the restructuring of the electricity sector it is argued that there is a need for coherence between institutions and technological practice so as to safeguard the satisfactory functioning of electricity infrastructure the identification of possible incoherences between institutions and technological practice allows for a better understanding of the potential drivers for change and the evolutionary processes of which they may be part this article attempts to elaborate the nature of this co evolution in somewhat more detail using specific levels of analysis that are exemplified in a four level model in the case of the restructuring of the electricity sector the institutional framework has changed from a public utility oriented towards a market oriented system however the technological practice remained unchanged a system oriented approach that relies on centralized planning control and operation this discrepancy between institutions and technological practice leads to significant frictions in the functioning of the electricity sector but it also offers opportunities for innovation in order to make liberalization a success it might be necessary to stimulate certain technical developments i e distributed generation and intelligent networks

household energy elasticities and policy implications for pakistan abstract this study estimates fuel expenditure and price elasticities of household fuels in pakistan the burning of biomass is harmful to health and the environment and may cause preventable morbidity and mortality it is important to investigate how households fuel choices are linked to prices so that governments can consider appropriate steps to enhance the consumption of clean fuels using three pooled cross sectional surveys from pakistan and applying the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids model we found that all fuel types except natural gas were price inelastic at the national level and for urban households in rural areas natural gas and lpg were found to be more price elastic compared to urban areas simple policy simulations based on our results suggest that in order to reduce indoor air pollution by encouraging the adoption of clean fuels lpg and piped natural gas governments should subsidies clean fuels rather than imposing taxes on solid fuels moreover in the case of pakistan a subsidy for lpg should be preferred over a subsidy for piped natural gas as it produces a more cost effective reduction in solid fuel use

determinants of income diversification amongst rural households in southern mali abstract household level panel data from a representative sample of rural households in southern mali describing the different sources of household income are used to examine the determinants of income diversification a conditional fixed effects logit model is employed in the analysis to control for household specific effects we find evidence that poorer households have fewer opportunities in non cropping activities such as livestock rearing and non farm work and hence less diversified incomes this appears to reflect their relative lack of capital which makes it difficult for them to diversify away from subsistence agriculture the results also indicate that households in remote areas are less likely to participate in the non cropping sector than their counterparts closer to local markets while households with educated heads are more likely to participate in the non farm sector than those with illiterate heads the significance of entry constraints in explaining portfolio diversification suggests that the role of government in making assets as well as improved infrastructure available to poorer households is still essential in promoting income diversification

estimation of elasticities for electricity demand in brazilian households and policy implications abstract this paper aims to identify the demand elasticity in energy consumption by brazilian families by using an original household level sample we are the first to identify the average price and income elasticities for brazil we also investigate heterogeneous effects across different quantiles through a quantile regression qr analysis finally we extend the results of the qr analysis and combine them with aggregated data to assess the effects of two price policies a cross subsidy and the recently adopted tariff flags the primary data comes from the household budget survey pof for two periods 1998 99 and 2008 13 conducted in the metropolitan area of sao paulo the price and income elasticities range from 0 46 to 0 56 and from 0 20 to 0 32 respectively the qr results indicate that households behavioral response to a price increase is non uniform across groups and that the reaction is stronger for the lower quantiles additionally tariff flags lead to a more significant reduction in consumption for the low income residences therefore representing a regressive policy on the other hand a cross subsidy that increases the energy price to ordinary residences by 1 could mean a decrease in electricity prices of between 7 5 and 12 4 to low income families

urban fuelwood challenges and dilemmas abstract this paper explores the use of fuelwood in third world cities the importance of fuelwood and the factors which condition its use in cities are set out and three fuelwood problems are identified the cost to urban consumers fuel supply security and the impact of urban fuelwood markets on rural areas urban fuelwood interventions are evaluated with four categories identified interventions in marketing conservation increased wood production and fuel switching of these fuel switching by improved supply systems and increased production from smallholders and better management of natural woodlands appear to have the greatest potential the need for flexibility community participation in planning is stressed

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

determinants of electricity demand for newly electrified low income african households access to clean affordable and appropriate energy is an important enabler of development energy allows households to meet their most basic subsistence needs it is a central feature of all the millennium development goals mdgs and while a lack of access to energy may not be a cause of poverty addressing the energy needs of the impoverished lets them access services which in turn address the causes of poverty while much is known about the factors affecting the decisions made when choosing between fuel types within a household few quantitative studies have been carried out in south africa to determine the extent to which these factors affect energy choice decisions it is assumed that the factors traditionally included in economic demand such as price and income of the household affect choice tastes and preferences as well as external factors such as distance to fuel suppliers are expected to influence preferences this study follows two typical low income rural sites in south africa antioch and garagapola where the electricity basic services support tariff ebsst was piloted in 2002 the ebsst is set at 50 kwh month per household for low domestic consumers this is worth approximately r20 1 7us 3 this subsidy is a lifeline tariff where households receive the set amount of units per month free of charge irrespective of whether more units are purchased these data collected in 2001 and 2002 recently collated with detailed electricity consumption data allow us to determine the drivers of electricity consumption within these households the sample analysed is taken from the initial phase of the study when no fbe had been introduced to the households this enabled the study presented here to make use of the well populated datasets to assess what affects the electricity use decision in these households this paper attempts to assess which factors affected the decision making process for electricity consumption within these households a brief history of the electricity industry and the electrification is provided and the theoretical background for the electricity consumption model is provided it was found that income woodfuel usage iron ownership and credit obtained were significant in determining consumption levels within these households price and cross price elasticities were difficult to assess due to lack of data within the sample the results have many possible implications for policy including the effect that easily obtained credit has for low income households

legislators and interest groups how unorganized interests get represented this paper derives a supply price for public policy using a constrained maximization model in the model three sets of agents each have preferences over outcomes organized interest groups offer campaign contributions to improve their own wealth voters offer votes to obtain outcomes closer to their most preferred outcomes and legislators seek both campaign contributions and votes to obtain reelection a given legislator s supply price for policy is shown to depend on the productivity of his effort as determined by committee assignments priority and ability and by the preferences of his unorganized constituency in the home district two extreme assumptions about the effectiveness of campaign spending in eliciting votes are used to illustrate the comparative statics properties of the model the prediction of the model is that interest groups will in general seek out legislators whose voters are indifferent to the policy the interest group seeks thus voters who do have preferences over policy are in effect represented even though they are not organized

introducing mozleap an integrated long run scenario model of the emerging energy sector of mozambique since recently mozambique is actively developing its large reserves of coal natural gas and hydropower against this background we present the first integrated long run scenario model of the mozambican energy sector our model which we name mozleap is calibrated on the basis of recently developed local energy statistics demographic and urbanization trends as well as cross country based gdp elasticities for biomass consumption sector structure vehicle ownership and energy intensity we develop four scenarios to evaluate the impact of the anticipated surge in natural resources exploration on aggregate trends in energy supply and demand the energy infrastructure and economic growth in mozambique our analysis shows that until 2030 primary energy production is likely to increase at least six fold and probably much more this is roughly 10 times the expected increase in energy demand most of the increase in energy production is destined for export as a result mozambique may well become one of the leading global producers of natural gas and coal we discuss the opportunities and challenges that this resource wealth poses for the country

ownership unbundling in electricity distribution the case of the netherlands this paper addresses the merits of ownership unbundling of distribution networks as exemplified in the case of the netherlands in essence this problem concerns the question of whether the operation and management of electricity distribution networks in this country will evolve into a market driven commodity business or remain a genuine public utility task in order to deal with this problem a framework is developed that enables the classification of different institutional regimes depending on the nature of the institutional regime this case of the netherlands illustrates how certain aspects of the liberalisation of the electricity sector can become vitally important to the continuing process of restructuring

can the urban poor afford modern energy the case of ethiopia abstract comparing rough measures of costs of using modern fuels and purchasing power of the urban poor in ethiopia this article finds that while kerosene is relatively cheap even for the very poor electricity is extremely expensive even for the relatively well to do the upper stratum of the poor may have the purchasing power to access butane gas in addition the article examines the relevance of the energy ladder hypothesis generally both at the aggregate level and for individual urban areas the prediction from the hypothesis holds but our results indicate that the relevance of the hypothesis weakens on lower levels of aggregation implying significant inter city variations finally demand equations for each fuel are econometrically estimated and the elasticities are used to examine price and income effects the budget elasticities indicate that with economic growth the demand for traditional fuels will increase in addition the cross price elasticities show that increase in the price of a traditional fuel mainly shifts demand towards other traditional fuels rather than towards modern fuels this slows down the transition towards modern fuels the article concludes by presenting policy recommendations arising from the analysis

household strategies and rural livelihood diversification this article reviews the recent literature on diversification as a livelihood strategy of rural households in developing countries with particular reference to sub saharan africa livelihood diversification is defined as the process by which rural families construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities in order to survive and to improve their standards of living the determinants and effects of diversification in the areas of poverty income distribution farm output and gender are examined some policy inferences are summarised the conclusion is reached that removal of constraints to and expansion of opportunities for diversification are desirable policy objectives because they give individuals and households more capabilities to improve livelihood security and to raise living standards

distributed generation and distribution market diversity in europe the unbundling of the electricity power system will play a key role on the deployment of distributed generation dg in european distribution systems evolving towards smart grids the present paper firstly reviews the relevant european union eu regulatory framework specific attention is paid to the concept of unbundling of power distribution sector in europe afterwards the focus is on the current state of penetration of dg technologies in the eu member states and the corresponding interrelations with distribution features a comparison between the unbundling of the distribution and supply markets using econometric indicators such as the herfindahl hirschmann ihh and the shannon wiener isw indices is then presented finally a comparative analysis between these indices and the current level of penetration of distributed generation in most eu is shown policy recommendations conclude the paper