some macroeconomic implications of alternative compensation systems a basic theme of this paper is the idea that some structural reform of employee compensation arrangements is necessary to make reasonable price stability compatible with reasonably full employment in this view even the best designed macroeconomic policies are much too aggregative to get at the heart of the stagflation problem the ultimate solution involves going inside the workings of a modern capitalist economy and correcting the underlying structural flaw directly on the level of the individual firm stagflation represents an especially intractable policy dilemma for macroeconomics without a decisive tendency of the economic system to remain near full employment there is a strong prima facie case for fighting recessions by exogenously stimulating aggregate demand but the usual keynesian expansionary policies tend to impart an inflationary inertia that is difficult to choke off and of course the basic strategy for fighting inflation is to cool down the economy by restrictive monetary and fiscal policy thereby increasing unemployment and closing the viscous circle because the practical macroeconomic policies for dealing with unemployment and inflation are so diametrically opposed stagflation is a pervasive structural problem when for whatever reason there is basically an unfavourable short run tradeoff between unemployment and inflation economic policy tends to vacillate between expansion of demand to fight unemployment and restriction of demand to fight inflation polarising the electorate and distracting society from dealing effectively with its underlying real economic problems even the difficulty of attaining external balance in foreign accounts is largely a spillover into the international payments arena of an inability to achieve an acceptable internal balance between full employment and price stability this paper takes what might be called a comparative systems approach to the problem of stagflation at the heart of modern industrial capitalism is an incredibly complicated system of overlapping monopolistic competitors 2 a starting point for the paper is the realisation that the coordination difficulty which can cause some systems to suffer involuntary unemployment is not inherent in laissez faire private enterprise per se it is closely tied to one particular property of a conventional wage payment system namely compensation of each firm s employees is stuck to an outside numeraire whether money or a cost of

imperfect competition and the keynesian cross abstract this paper presents a simple general equilibrium model in which the only non walrasian feature is imperfect competition in the goods market the model is shown to exhibit various keynesian characteristics in particular as competition in the goods market becomes less perfect the fiscal policy multipliers approach the values implied by the textbook keynesian cross

are there multiple bubbles in the ethanol gasoline price ratio of brazil this paper tests for the existence of bubbles in the ethanol gasoline price ratio in brazil from 2000 to 2012 using right tailed adf tests results suggest the existence of two bubbles one which has already burst during the re election of president lula and one which has been ongoing since 2010 thus corroborating empirical and anecdotal evidence in the brazilian sugarcane industry freezing gasoline prices not only depressed ethanol prices but also depressed investments in new sugarcane crops and distillation plants

emerging economic viability of grid defection in a northern climate using solar hybrid systems high demand for photovoltaic pv battery and small scale combined heat and power chp technologies are driving a virtuous cycle of technological improvements and cost reductions in off grid electric systems that increasingly compete with the grid market using a case study in the upper peninsula of michigan this paper quantifies the economic viability of off grid pv battery chp adoption and evaluates potential implications for grid based utility models the analysis shows that already some households could save money by switching to a solar hybrid off grid system in comparison to the effective electric rates they are currently paying across the region by 2020 92 of seasonal households and 75 of year round households are projected to meet electricity demands with lower costs furthermore 65 of all upper peninsula single family owner occupied households will both meet grid parity and be able to afford the systems by 2020 the results imply that economic circumstances could spur a positive feedback loop whereby grid electricity prices continue to rise and increasing numbers of customers choose alternatives sometimes referred to as a utility death spiral particularly in areas with relatively high electric utility rates utility companies and policy makers must take the potential for grid defection seriously when evaluating energy supply strategies

limited rationality and strategic interaction the impact of the strategic environment on nominal inertia much evidence suggests that people are heterogeneous with regard to their abilities to make rational forward looking decisions this raises the question as to when the rational types are decisive for aggregate outcomes and when the boundedly rational types shape aggregate results we examine this question in the context of a long standing and important economic problem the adjustment of nominal prices after an anticipated monetary shock our experiments suggest that two types of bounded rationality money illusion and anchoring are important behavioral forces behind nominal inertia however depending on the strategic environment bounded rationality has vastly different effects on aggregate price adjustment if agents actions are strategic substitutes adjustment to the new equilibrium is extremely quick whereas under strategic complementarity adjustment is both very slow and associated with relatively large real effects this adjustment difference is driven by price expectations which are very flexible and forward looking under substitutability but adaptive and sticky under complementarity moreover subjects expectations are also considerably more rational under substitutability

when do households invest in solar photovoltaics an application of prospect theory abstract while investments in renewable energy sources res are incentivized around the world the policy tools that do so are still poorly understood leading to costly misadjustments in many cases as a case study the deployment dynamics of residential solar photovoltaics pv invoked by the german feed in tariff legislation are investigated here we report a model showing that the question of when people invest in residential pv systems is found to be not only determined by profitability but also by profitability s change compared to the status quo this finding is interpreted in the light of loss aversion a concept developed in kahneman and tversky s prospect theory the model is able to reproduce most of the dynamics of the uptake with only a few financial and behavioral assumptions

an introduction to the law and economics of intellectual property although economists have written on topics of intellectual property for a long time the impact of economics on public policy in this area has been slight especially as compared to the influence of professional writings in areas such as antitrust and taxation we believe that too few of the profession s resources have been devoted to these issues and that of those resources that have been employed too few have been devoted to empirical analyses we hope that this introductory essay and the three papers that follow will stimulate interest in this subject this introductory essay first describes some of the basic economic tradeoffs involved in intellectual property law and then describes the framework of the law in the six areas described above patent copyright semiconductor protection trademark trade secret and misappropriation it is intended both to provide thumbnail descriptions of the various intellectual property regimes to economists working in this area and to indicate where additional economic research might be useful

on monopolistic competition and involuntary unemployment in a simple temporary general equilibrium model it is shown that if the number of firms is small imperfect price competition in the markets for goods may be responsible for the existence of unemployment at any given positive wage in our examples involving two firms facing their true demand curves total monopolistic labor demand remains bounded as the wage rate goes to zero and unemployment prevails for a sufficiently large inelastic labor supply in the competitive case total labor demand would go to infinity and intersect labor supply at a positive wage

a comprehensive ex post assessment of res deployment in italy jobs value added and import leakages abstract taking a retrospective look at italy s experience over the period 2006 2014 this paper investigates to what extent the deployment of renewable energy sources res contributed to value added and employment in the economy from the methodological point of view our study combines an input output approach with a comprehensive bottom up analytical model in which detailed product information from external trade statistics is used to account for imports although during the period under consideration italy experienced an expansion in res capacity that went beyond the rosiest expectations it appears that the resulting demand for plant components was met to a very significant extent by imports we find that the contribution to sectoral value added and employment was not as large as envisioned by ex ante analyses in net terms the resources absorbed by res plants in the construction installation and manufacturing phase seem to have made a smaller contribution to the domestic economy than they would have in several counterfactual scenarios the opposite is true for the resources used in the subsequent operation and management phase finally our results suggest that variation in domestic content of manufactured products may limit the portability of res employment and value added factor estimates across countries

residential energy efficiency and distributed generation natural partners or competition abstract residential energy efficiency and distributed generation seem to be natural partners in our journey towards a more sustainable energy future a growing range of energy efficient consumer technologies and extraordinary declines in photovoltaics system prices has seen household electricity demand fall whilst a growing proportion of the remaining load is provided by household self generation australia is a particularly interesting example of these developments with around 15 of households now possessing a pv system while per capita household demand has also fallen markedly however existing retail electricity tariffs and regulatory arrangements can create mixed incentives for households contemplating both pv and energy efficiency options and for their network service providers this is certainly the case in australia with net metering arrangements that value self consumption of pv far more than pv exports to the grid there are also complex benefits for the electricity network created by these household energy resources that can be significant in this paper we use real household load and pv data from sydney households to model the potential implications of existing electricity tariff arrangements on the financial attractiveness of pv and energy efficiency we model these options separately and in combination for both households implementing these options and their network service providers our results highlight how inappropriate tariffs may well adversely impact on the value that the combination of energy efficiency and pv offers not only to households but also to their network service providers and suggest ways that such impacts might be ameliorated by acknowledging the benefits that these resources can offer to the electricity network

an economic perspective on experience curves and dynamic economies in renewable energy technologies this paper analyzes dynamic economies in renewable energy technologies the paper has two contributions the first is to test the robustness of experience in solar photovoltaic solar thermal and wind energy to the addition of an explicit time trend which has been done in experience studies for other industries but not for renewable energy technologies estimation is carried out on the assumption that cumulative capacity industry production average firm production and electricity generation affect experience and thus the fall in price the second contribution is to test the impact of r d on price reduction in general cumulative experience is found to be highly statistically significant when estimated alone and highly statistically insignificant when time is added to the model the effect of r d is small and statistically significant in solar photovoltaic technology and statistically insignificant in solar thermal and wind technologies

segmented trends and non stationary time series since the influential work of charles r nelson and charles plosser 1982 many empirical studies have concluded that macroeconomic time series are difference stationary this paper proposes the segmented trend model as an alternative in which the series is the sum of a nonstationary trend and a stationary cycle and where the trend shows infrequent shifts the paper proposes tests between the difference stationary and segmented trends models and applies these to the data of nelson and plosser in general the results indicate that prices are difference stationary but quantities follow segmented trend processes copyright 1989 by royal economic society

james tobin an appreciation of his contribution to economics jim tobin who died on march 11 2002 at the age of 84 was one of giants of economics of the second half of the twentieth century and the greatest macroeconomist of his generation tobin s influence on macroeconomic theory is so pervasive so much part of our professional acquis that many younger economists often are not even aware that it is his ideas they are elaborating testing criticising refuting or re inventing in this appreciation i consider tobin s scholarly contributions made over a period of more than 50 years tobin received the 1981 nobel memorial prize for his analysis of financial markets and their relations to expenditure decisions employment production and prices i consider his contributions to mean variance portfolio demand and asset pricing theory especially the portfolio separation theorem pitfalls in financial model building portfolio balance and flow of funds models and the credit channel the life cycle model and social security econometric methodology including the tobit estimator and his pioneering work using both time series and cross sectional data to estimate food demand functions economic growth tobin s q the tobin tax the monetary and fiscal policy effectiveness debate first with milton friedman and then with the new classical macroeconomics and real business cycle schools and tobin s approach to methodological questions including microfoundations and aggregation

intellectual property the law and economics approach he traditional focus of economic analysis of intellectual property has been on reconciling incentives for producing such property with concerns about restricting access to it by granting exclusive rights in intellectual goods that is by propertizing them thus enabling the owner to charge a price for access that exceeds marginal cost for example patentability provides an additional incentive to produce inventions but requiring that the information in patents be published and that patents expire after a certain time limit the ability of the patentee to restrict access to the invention and so a balance is struck is it an optimal balance this question and the broader issue of trading off incentive and access considerations has proved intractable at the level of abstract analysis with the rise of the law and economics movement the focus of economic analysis of intellectual property has begun to shift to more concrete and manageable issues concerning the structure and texture of the complicated pattern of common law and statutory doctrines legal institutions and business practices relating to intellectual property among the issues discussed in this paper are the length of protection for intellectual property the rules that allow considerable copying of intellectual property without permission of the originator the rules governing derivative works and alternative methods of providing incentives for the creation of intellectual property the emphasis is on copyright law which perhaps because of its complex legal structure and the relative neglect by economists of the arts and entertainment has tended to be slighted in the conventional economic analysis of intellectual property relative to patent law where economic analysis can draw on an extensive literature concerning the economics of innovation i also srichard a posner is a judge of the u s court of appeals for the seventh circuit and a

monopolistic competition risk aversion and equilibrium recessions this paper considers a model with monopolistic competition and multiple equilibria rankable by output employment and the pareto criterion while papers in the literature assume a linear production technology and derive a continuum of equilibria we assume a standard diminishing returns production function and find a finite set of equilibria our new feature is the assumption that firms behave in a risk averse manner a low level equilibrium is sustainable because firms at the low profits level associated with the equilibrium become extremely cautious in their employment decisions

collective learning effective demand loss of work and loss of direction the growing regional divide within the uk mackay r r and davies r collective learning effective demand loss of work and loss of direction the growing regional divide within the uk regional studies the local economy relies on a division of labour that develops highly specialized skills in searching for an understanding of the growing work gap within the united kingdom emphasis is placed on recessions that connect to loss and redundancy of physical and human capital high levels of regional unemployment following deindustrialization convert into high levels of regional non work in later years the loss of an economic base leaves a gap in the community and economy that people struggle to bridge market forces work strongly against certain groups in society including those at some disadvantage in the labour market mackay r r and davies r

complementary credit networks and macroeconomic stability switzerland s wirtschaftsring abstract the swiss wirtschaftsring economic circle credit network founded in 1934 provides residual spending power that is highly counter cyclical individuals are cash short in a recession and economize by greater use of wir credits a money in the production function mipf specification implies that transactions in wir form a stabilizing balance that makes up for the lack of ordinary currency thus unlike the ordinary money wir money is negatively correlated with gdp in the short run this implication is confirmed by empirical estimates such credit networks play a stabilizing role that should be considered in monetary policy

exploring the impact of permitting and local regulatory processes on residential solar prices in the united states abstract this article statistically isolates the impacts of city level permitting and other local regulatory processes on residential pv prices in the united states we combine data from two scoring mechanisms that independently capture local regulatory process efficiency with the largest dataset of installed pv prices in the united states we find that variations in local permitting procedures can lead to differences in average residential pv prices of approximately 0 18 w between the jurisdictions with the least favorable and most favorable permitting procedures between jurisdictions with scores across the middle 90 of the range i e 5th percentile to 95th percentile the difference is 0 14 w equivalent to a 700 2 2 difference in system costs for a typical 5 kw residential pv installation when considering variations not only in permitting practices but also in other local regulatory procedures price differences grow to 0 64 0 93 w between the least favorable and most favorable jurisdictions between jurisdictions with scores across the middle 90 of the range the difference is equivalent to a price impact of at least 2500 8 for a typical 5 kw residential pv installation these results highlight the magnitude of cost reduction that might be expected from streamlining local regulatory regimes

patterns of attention to renewable energy in the british farming press from 1980 to 2013 abstract the farming sector is a major actor in developing renewable energy providing sites feedstock and investment media coverage can both drive and reflect levels of interest in renewable energy and affect policy support and farmer decision making about deployment this paper presents a content analysis of attention to renewable energy in the british farming press from 1980 to 2013 identifying the topics which sparked sustained media interest cycles of increased attention to specific types of renewable energy are made evident through quantification of article frequencies and qualitative analysis of content the findings contribute to the explanation of the role of information in the diffusion of renewable energy wind energy and liquid biofuels have received the most attention with multiple attention cycles whereas photovoltaics and anaerobic digestion have received focused attention only in recent years policy changes particularly support measures emerge as the most important driver of media attention although public controversies particularly in relation to wind energy lead to longer periods of attention attention typically increases when opportunities in renewable energy emerge and then quickly shifts to a longer stage of focused attention in which opportunities problems and solutions are explored and advice is offered before attention declines the media thus clearly play a role in informing farmers about opportunities arising in relation to renewable energy technology and policy developments but are less helpful in providing on going and consistent information about recurrent and more complex problems thus the farming press appears likely to have the strongest impact on early adopters of renewable technologies but is unlikely to contribute to diffusion at later stages when potential adopters are less willing to bear uncertainties

location taxation and governments an exchange theory of intellectual property abstract the standard economic model of intellectual property is an efficient property rights solution to a market failure problem of investment in a non rival and non excludable good we propose an exchange theory of intellectual property based on a contracting approach in the context of market making and enforcement of economic rights in exchange for monopoly taxation rights we use a hotelling 1929 type spatial model to show the relationship between location and pricing decisions of innovating firms under differing intellectual property institutional quality and taxation regimes

on the sources of technological change assessing the evidence this paper uses a selective review of the economic literature on technological change to support four points that are important for interpreting and incorporating technological change into formal models of energy and the environment the review 1 supports the notion that no single source dominates the process of technological change it supports roles for rd 3 indicates that these spillovers are often indirect requiring own industry activities to utilize and 4 indicates that simple experience curve calibrations often used in formal models likely include a range of sources of technological change in addition to learning by doing some of which might not be induced by the sorts of policies typically considered in the climate context

a review of learning rates for electricity supply technologies a variety of mathematical models have been proposed to characterize and quantify the dependency of electricity supply technology costs on various drivers of technological change the most prevalent model form called a learning curve or experience curve is a log linear equation relating the unit cost of a technology to its cumulative installed capacity or electricity generated this one factor model is also the most common method used to represent endogenous technical change in large scale energy economic models that inform energy planning and policy analysis a characteristic parameter is the learning rate defined as the fractional reduction in cost for each doubling of cumulative production or capacity in this paper a literature review of the learning rates reported for 11 power generation technologies employing an array of fossil fuels nuclear and renewable energy sources is presented the review also includes multi factor models proposed for some energy technologies especially two factor models relating cost to cumulative expenditures for research and development r d as well as the cumulative installed capacity or electricity production of a technology for all technologies studied we found substantial variability as much as an order of magnitude in reported learning rates across different studies such variability is not readily explained by systematic differences in the time intervals geographic regions choice of independent variable or other parameters of each study this uncertainty in learning rates together with other limitations of current learning curve formulations suggests the need for much more careful and systematic examination of the influence of how different factors and assumptions affect policy relevant outcomes related to the future choice and cost of electricity supply and other energy technologies

least squares learning and the stability of equilibria with externalities this paper studies the stability of competitive equilibria in a model of aggregate employment when the representative agent uses a least squares forecasting procedure it is shown that the pareto inferior low employment steady state is always unstable under least squares learning even if it is stable under perfect foresight the high employment steady state is stable under learning if and only if it is saddle point stable under perfect foresight this weakens multiple equilibrium theories of coordination failure that purport to explain persistently high unemployment the pareto superior high employment steady state will be the focal point of individual forecasting

corporate debt overhang and macroeconomic expectations one way in which corporate financial structure affects macroeconomic performance is by creating debt overhang debt overhang occurs when existing debt deters new investment because the benefits from new investment will go to the existing creditors not to the new investors if the economy is booming debt overhang will not bind because the returns to investing are high if the economy is stagnant debt overhang will bind because the returns to investing are low as a result high levels of debt can create multiple expectational equilibria in which animal spirits determine economy activity copyright 1995 by american economic association

when should we use intellectual property rights the economic analysis of property rights proceeds in two steps the first distinguishes rival from nonrival goods the second contrasts the welfare effects of property rights for these two types of goods for rival goods strong property rights lead to efficient outcomes for nonrival goods property rights involve the trade off formalized by william nordhaus 1969 weak property rights lead to under provision strong property rights create monopoly distortions recent discussions of copyright protection for recorded music have obscured the underlying economic issues interested firms deny that music sharing will reduce the incentives for firms to release new recordings artists and recording companies never acknowledge the efficiency costs of prices that far exceed marginal cost it is left to economists with no stake in the outcome to clarify these issues full disclosure i have not consulted for anyone in the napster case the stakes in the battle over the music business are small enough to get lost in rounding

the case against patents evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity unless productivity is identifi ed with the number of patents awarded which as productivity is identifi ed with the number of patents awarded which as evidence shows has no correlation with measured productivity this disconnect is evidence shows has no correlation with measured productivity this disconnect is at the root of what is called the patent puzzle in spite of the enormous increase in at the root of what is called the patent puzzle in spite of the enormous increase in the number of patents and in the strength of their legal protection the us economy the number of patents and in the strength of their legal protection the us economy has seen neither a dramatic acceleration in the rate of technological progress nor a has seen neither a dramatic acceleration in the rate of technological progress nor a major increase in the levels of research and development expenditure major increase in the levels of research and development expenditure both theory and evidence suggest that while patents can have a partial equiboth theory and evidence suggest that while patents can have a partial equilibrium effect of improving incentives to invent the general equilibrium effect on librium effect of improving incentives to invent the general equilibrium effect on innovation can be negative the historical and international evidence suggests that innovation can be negative the historical and international evidence suggests that while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side effects while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side effects strong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side effects more generstrong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side effects more generally the initial eruption of innovations leading to the creation of a new industry from ally the initial eruption of innovations leading to the creation of a new industry from chemicals to cars from radio and television to personal computers and investment chemicals to cars from radio and television to personal computers and investment banking is seldom if ever born out of patent protection and is instead the fruit of a banking is seldom if ever born out of patent protection and is instead the fruit of a competitive environment it is only after the initial stage of rampant growth ends that competitive environment it is only after the initial stage of rampant growth ends that mature industries turn toward the legal protection of patents usually because their mature industries turn toward the legal protection of patents usually because their internal growth potential diminishes and they become more concentrated these internal growth potential diminishes and they become more concentrated these observations supported by a steadily increasing body of evidence are consistent with observations supported by a steadily increasing body of evidence are consistent with

revisiting the techno economic analysis process for building mounted grid connected solar photovoltaic systems part two application part one in this two part paper identified monte carlo analysis as an improved approach over traditional deterministic techno economic methods for solar pv prosumers in deregulated markets in this

costs prices and profitablity in uk manufacturing the 1984 input output tables make it possible to estimate directly the cost structure of any industrial sector the results of this calculation are presented for the non food manufacturing sector for the period 1970 87 this cost estimate is found to be part of a co integrating set with output prices in contrast to the specification implied by a cobb douglas production function the other elements of the equilibrium vector are an index of capacity utilization positively related to the mark up and the variance of inflation proxying inflation uncertainty which is negatively related import prices have an indirect effect on the mark up via demand

fiscal policy multipliers the role of monopolistic competition scale economies and intertemporal substitution in labour supply a dynamic macroeconomic model of monopolistic competition is developed for the closed economy forward looking consumers demand differentiated goods supply labour and save part of their income in the form of shares producers manufacture the differentiated goods by using labour and capital we study the short run transition and long run effects of fiscal policy comparisons with the new classical case of perfect competition are made simple expressions far multipliers are derived the sensitivity of the multipliers for diversity preference and ethier productivity effects intratemporal and intertemporal substitution effects and markup effects under free and restricted entry are also studied

imperfect competition and the suboptimality of rational expectations abstract this paper investigates whether nonrational expectations can lead to outcomes which other things being equal pareto dominate rational expectations outcomes in order to carry out this investigation we construct an intertemporal micro based macroeconomic model with the two following strong points a it accommodates both rational and non rational expectations b both prices and quantities are determined by optimizing agents in particular prices are determined by explicit price setters using objective demand curves in this model the first theorem of welfare holds so that the walrasian equilibrium with rational expectations cannot be pareto dominated this conclusion is extremely fragile however and we show that as soon as some degree of imperfect competition is present rational expectations are suboptimal in the sense that they are dominated by irrational expectations

theoretical foundations for sticky wages abstract the paper compares three different types of theoretical explanation of sticky wages they are implicit contracts efficiency wage models and insider outsider models it then reconsiders keynes rationale for sticky wages which focuses on relative wage issues finally the paper considers possible directions for future research

endogenous technological change and the policy mix in renewable power generation abstract this paper introduces the renewable power generation module which complements large scale macro econometric input output models by introducing technological change endogenously into the model so far technological change in renewable power generation technologies is either set exogenously autonomous energy improving technological change or price induced in economic models introducing endogenous technological change is necessary to adequately analyze not only the direct effects but also the indirect effects on important macro economic indicators such as growth employment welfare and trade as well as their feedback to the electricity sector the development of pv module and wind turbine prices is modeled using learning curves at the global scale i e depending on global capacity installed of each of these technologies national capacity additions in turn depend on global prices national policies and economic development while demand pull policies enhance capacity installations technology push policies do not seem to have a significant direct influence the empirical results confirm the overshooting of pv installations in germany which can be slowed down by introducing degression of feed in tariffs over time

existence of dreze equilibrium under set up costs abstract a fixed number of firms operate under technologies which are described as the union of the origin and a compact convex set disjoint from the origin increasing returns thus prevail over some range it is shown that a zero trade parametric price quantity constrained dreze equilibrium exists at all prices and non trivial equilibrium will exist at some prices if in particular the consumer side of the economy is replicated sufficiently following recent work by weddepohl the objective is to provide a logically consistent and useful tool for the analysis of increasing return economies

evaluating the causes of cost reduction in photovoltaic modules abstract photovoltaic pv module costs have declined rapidly over forty years but the reasons remain elusive here we advance a conceptual framework and quantitative method for quantifying the causes of cost changes in a technology and apply it to pv modules our method begins with a cost model that breaks down cost into variables that changed over time cost change equations are then derived to quantify each variable s contribution we distinguish between changes observed in variables of the cost model which we term low level mechanisms of cost reduction and research and development learning by doing and scale economies which we refer to as high level mechanisms we find that increased module efficiency was the leading low level cause of cost reduction in 1980 2012 contributing almost 25 of the decline government funded and private r d was the most important high level mechanism over this period after 2001 however scale economies became a more significant cause of cost reduction approaching r d in importance policies that stimulate market growth have played a key role in enabling pv s cost reduction through privately funded r d and scale economies and to a lesser extent learning by doing the method presented here can be adapted to retrospectively or prospectively study many technologies and performance metrics besides cost

the dynamics of solar pv costs and prices as a challenge for technology forecasting an effective energy technology strategy has to balance between setting a stable long term framework for innovation while also responding to more immediate changes in technology cost and performance over the last decade rather than a steady progression along an established learning curve pv costs and prices have been volatile with increases or plateaus followed by rapid reductions the paper describes and considers the causes of recent changes in pv costs and prices at module and system level both international trends and more place specific contexts it finds that both module and system costs and price trends have reflected multiple overlapping forces established forecasting methods experience curves and engineering assessments have limited ability to capture key learning effects behind recent pv cost and price trends production scale effects industrial re organization and shakeouts international trade practices and national market dynamics these forces are likely to remain prominent aspect of technology learning effects in the foreseeable future and so are in need of improved more explicit representation in energy technology forecasting

economic overview of the use and production of photovoltaic solar energy in brazil abstract the technology of photovoltaic power generation has been increasingly regarded in many countries as an alternative to reduce the environmental impacts associated with climate changes and dependence on fossil fuels countries such as germany and other european countries have been developed specific regulatory mechanisms to encourage its use either by government programs or by financial and or tax incentives in brazil despite the large existing solar potential the encouragement to technology is still incipient this paper aims to demonstrate the key aspects of the evolution of regulatory incentives to use photovoltaic solar energy in brazil and present the technologies and characteristics of photovoltaic power generation

sectoral balance in development a survey abstract this paper surveys the literature on sectoral balance to see how sectoral imbalances can retard economic development it examines definitions of sectors and balance provides background facts theories and planning tools reviews the debate on balanced growth and surveys two sector models of agriculture industry consumption investment and luxury basics interaction the open economy and the role of service nonmarket and unproductive sectors it argues that the examination of important development issues requires multisectoral analysis incorporating the insights of several of these models and that alternative models with different structural characteristics deserve attention

horizontal and vertical differentiation the launhardt model we show how the spatial duopoly proposed by launhardt in 1885 where firms have access to different transportation technologies allows one to model in a simple and elegant way the two major types of product differentiation i e horizontal and vertical we consider the cases where firms are located near the market end points or near the market center launhardt s analysis of price determination is then extended by allowing firms to choose strategically their transportation rates subgame perfect nash equilibria involve minimum maximum vertical product differentiation when horizontal product differentiation is large small enough

increasing returns and the foundations of unemployment theory current approaches to macroeconomic theory divide roughly into two basic schools of thought one approach typically associated with rational expectations views the economy as basically at or near walrasian market clearing equilibrium in which case it becomes very difficult to explain away convincingly the undeniable persistence at times of involuntary unemployment another approach views the underemployed economy as being in a state of temporary fixed price disequilibrium in which case aside from having to repress suspicions that the essence of effective demand failure might not have to do with prices fixed at wrong values there is a lot of rationalising to be done about why profitable adjustments are so slow this paper argues that something like an internally consistent theory of steady state involuntary unemployment is possible and even plausible the cornerstone of this third approach is increasing returns to scale which blocks unemployed agents from breaking out of a low level equilibrium trap unless there is overall coordination or stimulation a simple model is presented which contains the basic ideas

international protection of intellectual property we study the incentives that governments have to protect intellectual property in a trading world economy we consider a world economy with ongoing innovation in two countries that differ in market size and in their capacities for innovation after describing the determination of national patent policies in a non cooperative regime of patent protection we ask why is intellectual property better protected in the north than in the south we also study international patent agreements by deriving the properties of an efficient global regime of patent protection and asking whether harmonization of patent policies is necessary or sufficient for global efficiency jel o34 f13 during the 1980 s and early 1990 s the united states and several european countries expressed strong dissatisfaction with what they deemed to be inadequate protection of intellectual property in many developing countries the developed countries made the upgrading of intellectual property rights iprs one of their highest priorities for the uruguay round of trade talks their efforts bore fruit in the agreement on traderelated aspects of intellectual property rights trips which was approved as part of the final act of the uruguay round trips establishes minimum standards of protection for several categories of intellectual property for example in the area of new technology it essentially harmonizes

macroeconomic issues for latin america abstract recent macroeconomic issues in latin america are reviewed with an emphasis on theory topics covered include multiple equilibria from hysteresis or increasing returns exchange rate management and the output and asset market effects of devaluation speculation interest rate management and financial reform government behavior income distribution and growth inertial inflation and heterodox policy shocks and disequilibrium theories

implementing the share economy in a recent series of papers and books weitzman 11 12 13 has put forward a new policy prescription for the macroeconomy in weitzman s view significant improvements in the performance of the macroeconomy can be achieved by altering key structural relationships specifically the wage contract between workers and firms weitzman labels this approach the share economy because workers wages are no longer contracted for in nominal terms but vary with an index of the firm s performance usually profits that is the workers share in the firm s success or failure the point of weitzman s work is not that participation increases worker s motivation or productivity in weitzman s view share contract wage agreements create a pool of latent excess demand for labor within firms firms then behave in the labor markets as buyers who would expand employment at the going wage if they could this contrasts with the more familiar case where firms are willing to expand employment only if the wage is reduced weitzman s claims for economies implementing share contracts are impressive lower natural unemployment rates less susceptibility to layoffs caused by macroeconomic shocks and reduced inflation in weitzman s world firms are monopolistic competitors operating under increasing returns to scale it is these two features that lead to wage and price inflexibility and therefore to potential unemployment 10 weitzman makes his case for the share economy by examining a transition economy where conversion from a wage system to an equivalent profit sharing system yields the same pay 13 945 even in this case where total payments to workers are identical weitzman shows that the share economy expands output and employment while lowering price 13 945 although conversion to a share economy may seem desirable from a macroeconomic view