planning of renewables schemes deliberative and fair decision making on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non cooperation abstract the main issues related to successful implementation policies concern the socio economic institutions that are conditional to planning in the energy policy domain but also in the domain of spatial planning successful investments and the siting of renewable power plants eventually determine the success rate of national efforts in establishing renewable capacity central planning usually has several objectives and these often have a detrimental effect on the goal of renewable energy application current problems related to implementation decisions concerning wind power schemes are an example to those who will be faced by other renewable power plants notably biomass regarding community acceptance of wind power schemes the visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on the values of the landscape is by far the most dominant factor in explaining opposition or support type of landscape fully overshadows other attitudinal attributes as well as other visual and scenic factors such as the design of wind turbines and wind farms and the number and the size of turbines planning regimes and decision making practices that really enhance the implementation processes of renewable energy require strong ecological modernization this means institutional changes that create involvement and trust of actors at the actual implementation level local opposition cannot be explained by the egotistical motives of local residents when the inclination to behave according to supposed backyard motives is investigated the scale to measure this phenomenon appears to indicate commitment to equity issues and fairness of decision making hence for wind power local involvement to represent the local values of site specific landscapes is crucial for other renewables the source specific features are different but conflicts can be expected as well because the fairness of implementation decisions will be equally significant

who formulates renewable energy policy a swedish example a broad participation by stakeholders and an extensive reliance on expert advice are often seen as preconditions for a legitimate and successfully implemented renewable energy policy however we have lacked systematic data for testing this argument this article s contribution is to examine the actors who take part in the making of swedish energy policy with the help of data on the composition of various committees of inquiry over the last twenty years 1988 2009 swedish renewable energy policy is often characterised with words like pioneering and forerunner suggesting that the policy making process in this area engages many different experts and stakeholders our data give only some support to this argument results point to a noteworthy predominance of politicians civil servants and representatives of state agencies within the policy process producers of uranium and fossils based energy have been engaged more often than producers of renewable energy experts have played a prominent role but this is mostly due to the participation of expert bureaucrats rather than of scientists the study suggests that a better understanding of the making of energy policy both in sweden and elsewhere requires greater attention to the networks and role of various state employees

wind power development in sweden global policies and local obstacles abstract recently the swedish government adopted a national planning goal of a yearly wind power generation of 10 twh by 2015 implying a substantial increase from the current 0 6 twh level in this paper we provide an economic assessment of the potential for future wind power investments in sweden in close conjunction with an analysis of the legal attitudinal and policy related uncertainties that face a wind mill investor it is shown that the economics of swedish wind power is negatively affected by a the lack of policy stability b public criticism at the local level and in particular c the legal provisions governing the assessment of the environmental impacts of wind mills and the planning procedures for mill location while national and global energy policies as well as the general public point out wind power as particularly environmentally friendly most of the objections to its expansion at the local level tend to have environmental origins the interests of those who object to wind mill installations gain strong legal protection and the municipal territorial planning monopoly in sweden implies that it is hard to make national energy policy goals heard at the local implementation stage compared to its competitors wind power is the technology that tends to have the most to loose from the risk and uncertainties created by this investment environment the paper identifies and discusses a number of ways in which the national policy interests could be strengthened at the local level we discuss the role of citizen participation as well as solutions within the realms of the legal system moreover since the diffusion of wind power encounters the most strident legal and attitudinal obstacles where it interferes with competing land uses a move offshore appears to be an efficient strategy from the perspective of a wind mill investor a stronger political commitment to wind power expansion in legal provisions as well as in the form of long run stability in policy instrument implementation will probably be necessary to attain the 2015 policy goal

can a carbon trading system promote the transformation of a low carbon economy under the framework of the porter hypothesis empirical analysis based on the psm did method abstract global warming is one of the issues of great concern in the world the large scale use of fossil fuels has led to the continuous increase in carbon emissions resulting in global energy shortages and environmental pollution reasonable and strict environmental regulation promotes technological innovation by enterprises to achieve a win win situation between the economy and environment which is the core idea of the porter hypothesis the choice of china as the world s largest energy consumer and carbon emitter is not only related to the country s own mode of economic growth but also determines the development of the world s low carbon economy we used the panel data from 2000 to 2016 of 30 provincial level administrative regions in china and adopted the propensity score matching difference in differences method to test the impact of china s carbon trading pilot system on the transformation of a low carbon economy the empirical results show that under the constraints of the established resources and environment there is a positive relationship to some extent between china s carbon trading system and low carbon economic transformation this relationship can realize the win win situation of environmental and economic benefits as advocated by the porter hypothesis and further verify the applicability of the porter hypothesis

current situation trends and potential of renewable energy in flanders abstract the current european union eu energy policy seeks to reach a balance between sustainable development competitiveness and secure supply in this sense the eu energy policy sets the target of a 13 share of renewable energy sources ress for belgium several instruments have been implemented to reach this target the objective of this study is analyzing those instruments and its effectiveness and efficiency to tackle this objective we first analyze the current status of res in flanders second we compare the situation in flanders to the national situation in belgium and to the other eu member states then we analyze the potential of each type of res finally we discuss the opportunities and problems of res related to spatial planning in flanders the main application of renewable energy is electricity production of which the main source is biomass an aspect of the flemish energy policy worth mentioning is the green certificate system which has stimulated the development of renewable energies however a greater effort to regulate this market and to decrease the cost of kwh produced has proven to be necessary the res electricity share of total consumption has increased by 3 2 between 1994 and 2008 but compared to others eu countries the share of res to gross inland consumption in flanders is small large scale facilities are necessary to reach the eu targets the development of large wind biomass and solar projects is suggested as the preferred option for flanders

diffusion of renewable energy technologies in south korea on incorporating their competitive interrelationships renewable energy technologies rets have attracted significant public attention for several reasons the most important being that they are clean alternative energy sources that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions to increase the probability that rets will be successful it is essential to reduce the uncertainty about its adoption with accurate long term demand forecasting this study develops a diffusion model that incorporates the effect of competitive interrelationships among renewable sources to forecast the growth pattern of five rets solar photovoltaic wind power and fuel cell in the electric power sector and solar thermal and geothermal energy in the heating sector the 2 step forecasting procedure is based on the bayus 1993 manage sci 39 11 1319 1333 price function and a diffusion model suggested by hahn et al 1994 marketing sci 13 3 224 247 in an empirical analysis the model is applied to the south korean renewable energy market

taxing variable cost environmental regulation as industrial policy abstract conventional wisdom has it that a country that enacts strict environmental regulations will place its firms at a competitive disadvantage this view has been challenged recently some commentators argue that stricter regulation will enhance domestic competitiveness strict regulations induce innovation we evaluate this argument in a strategic trade model in very special cases a strengthening of regulation may result in a shift of profits from foreign to domestic firms this is not a general result however environmental regulation should of course be imposed to control externalities but it is unlikely that it will serve to generate industrial advantage

union negotiations and corporate policy a study of labor concessions in the domestic steel industry during the 1980s abstract this paper studies managerial compensation financial reporting and dividend policies of the seven major domestic steel producers during requests for union concessions substantial layoffs reported losses and sacrifices by nonunion stakeholders buttressed managers case for union concessions from 1980 to 1988 sample firms reduced their work force by about 300 000 almost two thirds and annual wage payments from 16 1 to 8 6 billion reported income is lower during union negotiations controlling for cash flows as is managerial pay with average ceo salary plus bonus declining 18 dividend reductions and white collar pay cuts are substantial pervasive and clustered during union negotiations

black hole tariffs and endogenous policy theory political economy in general equilibrium preface acknowledgments list of results 1 a preview of the results 2 endogenous policy theory a diagrammatic approach part i endogenous policy theory with specific factors the theory of industry tariffs in partial equilibrium 3 the probabilistic voting model of political efficiency and powerless politicians 4 endogenous lobbying theory and the contribution specialization theorem 5 endogenous tariff theory 6 the power function model of endogenous industry lobbying 7 three simple tests of the stolper samuelson theorem 8 the invisible foot and the waste of nations lawyers as negative externalities part ii endogenous policy theory in general equilibrium a long run theory of national tariff levels 9 the 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 model of endogenous redistribution theory 10 a prisoner s dilemma theory of endogenous protection the leontief model 11 the compensation effect and the multiple equilibrium trap 12 increasing returns to politics and factor endowments economic development and brazilian vitality versus the indian disease 13 endogenous protection in the united states 1900 88 14 a cobb douglas model 15 black hole tariffs 16 the endowment effect cross national evidence on endogenous tariffs part ii postscript 17 the senile industry argument for protection 18 optimal obfuscation and the theory of the second worst the politically efficient policy mathematical appendices references author index subject index

corporate unity in american trade policy a network analysis of corporate dyad political action this essay examines factors that produce political unity among large u s corporations advocating free trade expanding on old debates these data and analyses validate the importance of organizational and class cohesion approaches to corporate political action methodologically the political unity of pairs dyads of firms in trade policy activism is analyzed with quadratic assignment procedure regression shared membership in prominent policy networks and board interlocks positively predict corporate political unity across three areas of trade policy influence from the executive branch to the legislature non network organizational indicators also significantly predicted corporate trade policy activism the findings support business unity accounts of corporate political action and suggest that higher levels of firm embeddedness within intercorporate networks facilitate collective corporate political action

israel the palestinian factions and the cycle of violence in this study we extend our previous work to examine the dynamic relationship between violence committed by palestinian factions and that committed by israel during the second intifada we find a statistically significant relationship between israeli fatalities claimed by groups associated with the ruling political party fatah and subsequent palestinian fatalities we do not find a similar relationship for israeli fatalities claimed by hamas palestinian islamic jihad and other palestinian factions we conjecture that these differences are due to the different positions of the factions vis a vis bargaining over a two state solution to the conflict as well as the organizational structures of the factions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

consumer demand for green power and energy efficiency abstract this article examines reported willingness to pay for electric utility investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency resources using the results of deliberative polls conducted by electric utilities in texas 1 age education and salary tend to affect reported willingness to pay for utility investments in these resources intensive exposure to information about energy resource issues led to an increase in the number of respondents interested in paying a modest premium to support investments in both renewable energy resources and energy efficiency however average reported premiums actually declined following the polls as very high outlier responses moved to more reasonable values following the polls these results support the contention that informed dialogue about energy alternatives will result in broader interest in providing a modest level of support for these resources

emissions trading and profitability the swedish pulp and paper industry the purpose of this paper is to develop models with and without potential emissions trading and to compare industry profits under the two regimes the model in which emissions trading is permitted is a nonparametric industry frontier model in the spirit of fare et al 1992 it is relative to this model that industry profit is computed this profit is compared to the profit without emissions trading to give an estimate of the potential gains that can be realised by allowing for emissions trading the model which is applied to data for the swedish pulp and paper industry suggests that this industry would have had up to 6 1 higher profits in 1989 1990 if emissions trading had been used instead of individual permits to achieve the same total emissions target currently there is no permit trading in this industry so our results only model the potential gains that can be made

simulating price patterns for tradable green certificates to promote electricity generation from wind abstract this article uses computer simulation to anticipate the price dynamics in a market for tradable green certificates tgcs these markets have been used in europe to promote generation of electricity from renewable resources like wind similar markets have been proposed in the united states of america usa where the certificates are called renewable energy credits recs the certificates are issued to the generating companies for each megawatt hour of renewable electricity generation the companies may sell the certificates in a market and the revenues from certificate sales provide an extra incentive to invest in new generating capacity proponents argue that this market based incentive can be designed to support government mandates for a growing fraction of electricity generation from renewable sources in the usa these mandates are set by the states and are known as renewable portfolio standards rps we simulate the price dynamics of a market designed to support an aggressive mandate for wind generation in the northwestern usa the simulations show that the certificate price climbs rapidly to the cap in the early years after the market opens investors then react to these high prices with construction of new wind capacity after a few years wind generation meets and then exceeds the requirement we show that this pattern appears again and again when the simulations are repeated with wide variations in the estimates of behavioral parameters we use the model to study the impact of different trading strategies by the wind companies and by the distribution companies we also study the simulated market response if the usa adopts the carbon allowance market envisioned in the climate stewardship act the article concludes with recommendations for policy makers involved in tgc market design

motivators for adoption of photovoltaic systems at grid parity a case study from southern germany in some countries photovoltaic pv technology is at a stage of development at which it can compete with conventional electricity sources in terms of electricity generation costs i e grid parity a case in point is germany where the pv market has reached a mature stage the policy support has scaled down and the diffusion rate of pv systems has declined this development raises a fundamental question what are the motives to adopt pv systems at grid parity the point of departure for the relevant literature has been on the impact of policy support adopters and recently local solar companies however less attention has been paid to the motivators for adoption at grid parity this paper presents an in depth analysis of the diffusion of pv systems explaining the impact of policy measures adopters and system suppliers anchored in an extensive and exploratory case study in germany we provide a context specific explanation to the motivations to adopt pv systems at grid parity

renewable energy certificate mechanism in india a preliminary assessment abstract the indian national action plan for climate change napcc envisages several measures to address global climate change one of the important measures identified involves increasing the share of renewable energy in total electricity consumption in the country this would mean napcc envisages renewable energy to constitute approximately 15 of the energy mix of india by 2020 to achieve the target set by the napcc indian ministry of power launched renewable energy certificate rec mechanism in november 2010 however participation in the rec markets is low and recs have failed to attract significant investment so far in this study a preliminary attempt has been made to assess the performance of existing rec mechanism in india after highlighting the salient features of the indian renewable energy policy framework a brief description of renewable purchase obligation rpo and source specific rpos for different states is discussed along with an overview of rec market in india to date the performance of indian rec mechanism is evaluated by cost competiveness decentralized distributed generation and renewable energy portfolio diversity and their effectiveness has also been measured on the basis of the available data although it is difficult to make any conclusive remark on the success or failure of rec mechanism due to its short experience this study examines the process to date to come out with some recommendations which can be used to fine tune the functioning of existing rec market in india for instance rec price bounds should be revised because it has been not explicitly supporting cost competiveness by offering 60 33 higher average price than the existing average feed in tariff fit it is also observed that state wise contribution in registered capacity is skewed towards few states like tamil nadu 27 maharashtra 23 and uttar pradesh 22 which puts pressure on policy makers to restructure the existing rec mechanism

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

renewable energy an efficient mechanism to improve gdp abstract this article analyzes the effects of renewable energy on gdp for 116 economies in 2003 through structural equation modeling sem approach in order to decipher the mechanism of how the use of renewables improves macroeconomic efficiency we decompose gdp by the expenditure approach although previous theory predicts positive effects of renewables on capital formation and trade balance the sem results show that renewables have a significant positive influence on capital formation only the result that renewables do not have a significant impact on trade balance implies that renewables do not have an import substitution effect thus we confirm the positive relationship between renewable energy and gdp through the path of increasing capital formation but not for the path of increasing trade balance

wind power implementation the nature of public attitudes equity and fairness instead of backyard motives abstract public attitudes anywhere in europe show moderate to strong support for the implementation of renewable energy nevertheless planning wind power developments appears to be a complicated matter in most countries the problems that have to be dealt with during decision making processes on the siting of wind turbines are usually referred to as mere communication problems however public attitudes towards wind power are fundamentally different from attitudes towards wind farms this gap causes misunderstandings about the nature of public support for renewables in particular where planners easily assume support for renewables can be generated by information campaigns emphasising the environmental benefits whereas opposition to renewable energy schemes can be explained by a selfish not in my backyard attitude both explanations used by planners authorities and unfortunately by many scholars are falsified furthermore policies that still take this common knowledge for granted can have negative consequences for the implementation rates of renewables visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on landscape values is by far the dominant factor in explaining why some are opposed to wind power and others are supporting it moreover feelings about equity and fairness appear the determinants of backyard motives instead of selfishness

institutional factors influencing strategic decision making in energy policy a case study of wind energy in france and quebec canada abstract this article studies the different institutional factors that influence a strategic wind energy decision making process through a comparative transnational study of quebec canada and france research confirms that political choices are dynamic and vary with a change in the wind energy context the balance of power between pressure groups supranational influences energy evaluation approaches and social acceptance until the 90 s an initially unfavorable national energy context combined with a neocorporatist culture as defined by szarka 2004 1 limited the place of wind energy in both jurisdictions in the 2000 s a political window opened when the private sector penetrated the market with the deregulation of the electricity sector exogenous pressure from the european union in france endogenous pressure from social actions in quebec and a more favorable energy context in both cases however this political window was short lived due to social acceptance issues in quebec political will was stronger until 2013 now the social controversy surrounding wind energy has shifted from the local to the national level projects are better accepted locally because of local financial involvement but an anticipated electricity surplus questions the relevance of new energy projects in france political support depends on the government in power between 2005 and 2013 the reduction in annual wind power installations from 1246 mw to 621 mw was due to the major influence of the anti wind lobby on a right wing government after 2013 the left wing government s arrival coincided with a phasing out of several regulatory and financial uncertainties today both jurisdictions are at a crossroads and the future energy mix will depend on the relative influence of the institutional components identified in our opinion key solutions to more sustainable political choices are conditioned by an improvement in the way projects and policies plans and programs are assessed

the impact of coalition offensive operations on the iraqi insurgency coalition offensive operations in iraq seek to disrupt insurgents and their networks but may also act as a recruitment tool for the insurgency we use data from coalition press releases and casualty reports to assess the total impact of these operations we find that two additional offensive operations come at a future cost of an additional coalition soldier s life the evidence suggests that rather than diminishing the insurgents appetite to wage counterattacks these operations may act as a recruitment tool for the insurgency we further find that while the insurgents change their level of operations in response to the coalition the coalition does not react to the insurgents

the impact of international forces on the chinese wind power industry abstract the chinese wind power industry has achieved remarkable growth in the last two decades the total installed capacity of wind power in china has now surpassed that of the united states thereby making it the country with the largest installed wind power capacity in the world the independent and innovative capability of chinese wind turbine manufacturers has undergone continuous improvement and has now reached the point where the country has the capability to produce large scale wind turbines although the chinese domestic policy incentive has played a significant role in the rapid development of the chinese wind power industry the contribution made by external international forces should not be overlooked this research aims to establish a comprehensive model reflecting the international forces that impact on the chinese wind power industry this model consists of three subsystems i e 1 the international cooperation subsystem 2 the clean development mechanism cdm subsystem and 3 the import export subsystem using the model as part of the research the findings suggest that for the international cooperation subsystem joint research and development rd however its effect in terms of the diffusion of technical information and technical capability is weak similarly the degree of dependence of chinese wind turbine manufacturing on imports is weakening as domestic wind turbine manufacturers actively explore overseas markets this comprehensive model helps both international and domestic wind power investors to understand the impact of international forces on the chinese wind power industry resulting in better investment decisions and the consequential minimization of risk

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

the politics of electricity deregulation in sweden the art of acting on multiple arenas this article investigates the deregulation of the swedish electricity industry as a political process discussions about deregulation started in the late 1980s a first step in the process was the corporatization of the swedish state owned utility vattenfall in 1992 the deregulatory process culminated with the new electricity law which entered into force in 1996 we investigate in historical depth how a diverse range of actors contributed to shaping both the new institutional environment and the political discourse the article scrutinizes not only the formal political decision making process and the activities of a variety of ministries boards and agencies but also the processes by which energy companies and other relevant industrial actors influenced the outcome of the regulatory reforms we explicitly focus on activities taking place on both political and business arenas showing that major stakeholders acted on several arenas simultaneously to influence the deregulatory process and that the large power companies were most skilful in doing so we also show that activities on the political and business arenas mutually reinforced each other in shaping the new regulatory framework

a participatory approach to sustainable energy strategy development in a carbon intensive jurisdiction the case of nova scotia the need for governments to reduce the exposure of energy consumers to future increases in fossil fuel prices places urgent pressure on policy makers to deliver fundamental transformations in energy strategies particularly in jurisdictions with high dependency on fossil fuel sources dorian et al 2006 this transformation is unlikely without a high level of stakeholder engagement in the policy development process this paper describes two policy development processes recently undertaken in nova scotia in which the inclusion of stakeholder views was central to the approach the first delivered a new institutional framework for electricity energy efficiency involving the inception of an independent performance based administrator the second required the delivery of a strategy to significantly increase renewable energy generation in the province it involved recommendations for changes in institutional arrangements financial incentives and technological options this process was followed by new commitments to renewable energy developments new infrastructure for the importation of hydro electricity and the announcement of fits for ocean energy in both cases recommendations were made by an independent academic institution and the government responded directly to a majority of recommendations the paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and the implications for future energy policy making in carbon intensive jurisdictions

wind farms where and how to place them a choice experiment approach to measure consumer preferences for characteristics of wind farm establishments in sweden this paper explores preferences among the general public in sweden for attributes related to the establishment of wind power farms the method applied is a choice experiment where people are asked to choose between two hypothetical wind farms characterized by different attributes five attributes are included in the experiment i type of landscape ii type of ownership iii the degree of local participation in the planning process iv the choice to transfer revenue to the society in a pre specified way and v a monetary cost in terms of an additional electricity certificate fee the data are analyzed with multinomial logit random parameter logit and latent class models the results indicate that consumers in sweden are more likely to accept the higher renewable electricity certificate fee if a wind power farms in areas used for recreational purposes are substantially avoided b the establishment is anchored by whole or partial ownership in the local community and c the locals are involved in the planning and implementation process our policy simulation exercise shows that respondents are willing to pay a higher electricity fee corresponding to about 0 6 euro cents per kwh to avoid wind farms located in the mountainous area and private ownership

directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities this paper propses directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities as a general concept that embraces a wide range of recently analyzed economic activities including the subset of rent seeking activities considered by krueger it then proceeds to provide a synthesis and generalization of the welfare theoretic analysis of such activities by developing a fourfold categorization of cases depending on the levels of distortions before and after the dup activity thus a unification and overview of the subject are achieved

probabilistic decision model of wind power investment and influence of green power market this paper presents results from a model of a representative wind power investor s decision making process using a monte carlo simulation of a project financial analysis data in the form of probability distribution functions pdfs for key input variables were collected from interviews with investors and other professionals active in the u s wind power industry using a formal expert elicitation protocol this study presents the first quantitative estimates of the effect of the u s voluntary renewable energy certificate rec market on renewable energy generation the results indicate that the investment decisions of wind power project developers in the united states are unlikely to have been altered by the voluntary rec market the problem with the current voluntary rec market is that it does not offer developers a reliable risk adjusted revenue stream consequently the claims by u s green power retailers and promoters that voluntary market recs result in additional wind power projects lack credibility even dramatic increases in voluntary market rec prices in the absence of long term contracts were found to have only a small effect on investor behavior

environmental regulation and green productivity growth empirical evidence on the porter hypothesis from oecd industrial sectors abstract green growth has become an important development strategy for oecd countries and governments have correspondingly implemented various environmental regulation policies whereas few studies have discussed the impacts of environmental regulation on green productivity growth in oecd countries based on a panel data of oecd countries industrial sectors this study analyzes the stringency of environmental regulation policies and measures green productivity growth using an extended sbm ddf approach the dynamic panel regression investigates the impacts and mechanism of environmental policy stringency on green productivity growth in oecd countries industrial sectors the main results are i porter hypothesis is validated that the environmental policy has a positive impact on green productivity growth within a certain level of stringency lower than 3 08 ii the impact turns to be adverse when the environmental regulation policy is stringent over a certain level as the compliance cost effect is higher than innovation offset effect the findings provide new empirical evidence for the strong version of the porter hypothesis and some implications for oecd countries to further promote green growth

green r d for eco innovation and its impact on carbon emissions and firm performance abstract over the past four decades the results of the debates about the relationship between corporate environmental performance and corporate financial performance have remained inconclusive due to the lack of theoretical underpinning and availability of data this paper examines the impact of green research and development investment for eco innovation on environmental and financial performance the research is based on the resource based view and the natural resource based view which explicitly recognize the importance of resources and capabilities using a sample of japanese manufacturing firms during the period of 2001 2010 the study focuses on green research and development investment as a key proxy of eco innovation and carbon emissions in environmental performance our results show the presence of a negative relationship between green research and development and carbon emissions while green research and development is positively related to financial performance at the firm level our findings explicitly support that in order for firms to adopt a proactive environmental strategy to manage their environmental and financial performance to the best advantage they urgently need to organise unique resources and capabilities the findings of this study provide valuable insights and basis of scientific debate on how firms to engage unique organizational resources and capabilities for superior corporate environmental and financial performance

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

the profitability of electricity generating firms and policies promoting renewable energy using a cross country firm level dataset this study empirically analyses how the implemented renewable electricity promotion systems tradable green certificates vs feed in tariffs affected the pro

who invests in renewable electricity production empirical evidence and suggestions for further research transforming energy systems to fulfill the needs of a low carbon economy requires large investments in renewable electricity production res e recent literature underlines the need to take a closer look at the composition of the res e investor group in order to understand the motives and investment processes of different types of investors however existing energy policies generally consider res e investments made on a regional or national level and target investors who evaluate their res e investments according to least cost high profit criteria we present empirical evidence to show that res e investments are made by a heterogeneous group of investors that a variety of investors exist and that their formation varies among the different types of renewable sources this has direct implications for our understanding of the investment process in res e and for the study of motives and driving forces of res e investors we introduce a multi dimensional framework for analyzing differences between categories of investors which not only considers to the standard economic dimension which is predominant in the contemporary energy literature but also considers the entrepreneurship innovation adoption and institutional dimensions the framework emphasizes the influence of four main investor related factors on the investment process which should be studied in future research motives background resources and personal characteristics

retaliating against terrorism rational expectations and the optimality of rules versus discretion the application of rational expectations theory to policies of retaliation against terrorism suggests that only unexpected retaliations will be effective in causing terrorist attacks to deviate from their natural rate and that there is a time inconsistency problem in responding to terrorism since the optimal response rate to terrorism would never be believable to the terrorists the first best policy may be for the government retaliating against terrorism to have its response rate constrained by an externally imposed rule a time series intervention model of terrorist attacks against israel supports the natural rate hypothesis and therefore also the desirability of a retaliatory rule over policy discretion israeli retaliation for the 1972 munich massacre was the first israeli retaliation of unexpectedly large magnitude and it produced a temporary deviation of terrorist attacks from the natural rate retaliation has no long term deterrent or escalation effect

public acceptance of energy technologies the effects of labeling time and heterogeneity in a discrete choice experiment public acceptance is crucial for successful implementation of energy technologies in society however studies that use the concept do so in diverse and often inconsistent ways they also often limit themselves to specific technologies and do not account for the effects of labeling time and the heterogeneity of the general public which may lead to a biased and incomplete understanding of public acceptance this study first conceptualizes three forms of public acceptance socio political acceptance market acceptance and community acceptance it then relates the concept of socio political acceptance to preference formation next it uses two discrete choice experiments that were conducted in 2010 and 2012 to investigate these concerns our results show that public preferences for energy technologies are temporally stable even in the face of exogenous shocks such as the fukushima incident using mixed logit models we further show that labeling has a profound influence on stated preferences when technology labels are revealed respondents favor renewable and natural gas technologies when labels remain unobserved nuclear energy and biomass take prominence however latent class models show that there are distinct classes of respondents tied to specific socio demographic characteristics that differ greatly in their sensitivity to labeling and in the temporal stability of their preferences it follows that changes in public acceptance are not population wide but remain limited to specific sub groups we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our findings and conclude that future studies and policy initiatives may overlook important insights if they disregard the effects of labels time and heterogeneity

new energy strategies in the swedish pulp and paper industry the role of national and eu climate and energy policies the swedish pulp and paper industry has gone through a strategic change in its approach to electricity production and consumption over the past decade this paper documents this reorientation which includes increased on site electricity production investments and investment plans for wind power and new partnerships concerning investments in electricity production assets we also assess the extent to which these changes can be attributed to key energy and climate policies our analysis shows that this strategic reorientation has been driven by changes in the underlying economic conditions for the pulp and paper industry in particular increases in the price of electricity following the swedish energy market reform in 1996 and the introduction of the eu ets the scheme for tradable renewable electricity certificates on the other hand has provided a new source of income while these market based signals and responses are the most dominant drivers of strategic change cognitive changes in the pulp and paper industry have also played a role in the strategic reorientation the cognitive changes concerning the functioning of the electricity market i e the pricing of electricity and influence of the eu ets have been particularly important in this regard

the political economy of administered protection trade restrictions are hardly ever voted directly by congress though the threat of direct congressional action is frequently present pressure for protection is usually applied through the major instruments for the administrative regulation of imports the antidumping and countervailing duty procedures and the escape clause mechanism in this paper we will examine these instruments for the administrative regulation of imports the form of the paper is not novel a theory of how these mechanisms work is developed then operational implications of this theory are deduced and tested over the record of countervailing duty antidumping and escape clause cases decided from 1975 through 1979 this is the period over which the trade act of 1974 was in force because the nature of these mechanisms is relatively unfamiliar a relatively large amount of institutional information is provided

the inadvertent consequences of al qaeda news coverage abstract this paper explores the consequences of al qaeda news coverage related to i subsequent al qaeda attacks ii the group s popularity and iii radicalization i construct a daily index of al qaeda news coverage in the us from cnn nbc cbs fox news the nyt and the wapo to isolate causality i employ an instrumental variable strategy based on disaster deaths everything else equal the us media reports less on al qaeda when more people are dying from disasters worldwide at its mean al qaeda coverage is suggested to cause 0 2 0 3 attacks per day in the upcoming 1 4 weeks i find no evidence that attacks are merely rescheduled because of diminished media exposure rather the total number of attacks increases with coverage this effect is driven by easy to plan attack types and by al qaeda attacks in iraq results are robust to an array of alternative specifications and consistent when considering news coverage on al jazeera al qaeda coverage also increases the group s online popularity and search topics that are potentially indicative of radicalization such as jihad and al qaeda s magazine inspire are receiving more attention on google nevertheless these results should be interpreted carefully as it remains difficult to fully disentangle online interest in al qaeda and sympathy with the group s mission

the political economy of international green certificate markets this paper analyzes the political economy of establishing bilateral trade in green certificate markets as one step towards harmonization of european green electricity support systems we outline some of the economic principles of an integrated bilateral green certificates market and then discuss a number of issues that are deemed to be critical for the effectiveness stability and legitimacy of such a market by drawing on some of the lessons of the fairly recent intentions to integrate a future green certificate market in norway with the existing swedish one we highlight exemplify and discuss some critical policy implementation and design issues these include for instance the system s connection to climate policy targets the role of other support schemes and the definition of what green electricity technologies should be included furthermore the establishment of an international market presumes that the benefits of renewable power e g its impacts on the environment diversification of the power mix self sufficiency etc are approached and valued from an international perspective rather than from a national one thus implying lesser emphasis on for instance employment and regional development impacts a bilateral green certificate system thus faces a number of important policy challenges but at the same time it could provide important institutional learning effects that can be useful for future attempts aiming at achieving greater policy integration in the european renewable energy sector

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

renewable energy certificate markets in india a review abstract in india the national action policy on climate change napcc 1 has set a target of 15 of electricity via renewable energy sources by 2020 to reach these ambitious targets in march 2011 the government of india launched the renewable energy certificates rec a market based mechanism to drive renewable energy development and spur further investments however a look into the actual performance of rec market trading during the first year of operation shows that though volume of trading steadily increased the number of accredited certificates issued was less than 2 5 of the technical rec demand potential indicating that the full potential of the rec markets was far from being realized we critically examine the design and implementation of the rec market in india as well as its effectiveness in meeting the desired objectives in the context of international best practices our analysis of rec market best practices reveals that though forward markets banking and price bounds are recommended for stable markets best of class methods for determining the optimal length of banking the level of floor and forbearance prices and the values of credit vintage multipliers are not fully established we then establish that the main issues with the indian rec markets appear to be demand uncertainty resulting from lack of long term targets absence of clarity on compliance and near absence of long term price signals to investors finally we present an analysis of other important features of the indian rec market in the context of well functioning rec markets such as credit multipliers set asides vintage multipliers and voluntary markets 2013 elsevier ltd

impacts of a common green certificate market on electricity and co2 emission markets in the nordic countries abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of introducing a common nordic system for tradable green certificates tgcs on the electricity market and a future market for tradable co 2 emission permits teps in the analysis the energy system model generator markal was used to model the electricity and district heating supply systems in the four nordic countries sweden norway finland and denmark it is shown that the introduction of tgc quotas reduces wholesale electricity and tep prices the impact on the latter is very pronounced retail electricity prices may become lower or higher depending on the tgc quota than if obligations to fulfill tgc quotas were absent the tgc scheme s efficiency in reducing a specific amount of co 2 emissions is also compared to the corresponding efficiency of a tep scheme involving a broader range of technologies furthermore obligations to fulfill tgc quotas affect investment incentives for new non renewable electricity supply this seems especially true for gas fired power plants finally it is indicated that electricity supply based on biomass combustion dominates the tgc scheme at least in the short run

policies and market factors driving wind power development in the united states abstract in the united states there has been substantial recent growth in wind energy generating capacity with growth averaging 24 percent annually during the past five years about 1700 mw of wind energy capacity was installed in 2001 while another 410 mw became operational in 2002 during 2003 development activity has remained strong with an estimated 1600 mw of capacity installed with this growth an increasing number of states are experiencing investment in wind energy projects currently about half of all states host at least one wind power project this paper explores the key factors at play in the 12 states in which a substantial amount of wind energy capacity has been developed or planned some of the factors that are examined include policy drivers such as renewable portfolio standards rps federal and state financial incentives as well as market drivers such as consumer demand for green power natural gas price volatility and wholesale market rules

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

choice modelling approaches a superior alternative for environmental valuation in this paper we examine some popular choice modelling approaches to environmental valuation which can be considered as alternatives to more familiar valuation techniques based on stated preferences such as the contingent valuation method a number of choice modelling methods are consistent with consumer theory and its focus on an attribute based theory of value permits a superior representation of many environmental management contexts however choice modelling surveys can place a severe cognitive burden upon respondents and induce satisficing rather than maximising behavioural patterns in this framework we seek to identify the best available choice modelling alternative and investigate its potential to solve some of the major biases associated with standard contingent valuation we then discuss its use in the light of policy appraisal needs within the eu an application to the demand for rock climbing in scotland is provided as an illustration

using conjoint analysis to quantify public preferences over the environmental impacts of wind farms an example from spain this paper focuses on the effect on people s utility of the potential environmental impacts of wind farm developments we report on research designed to provide insight into their preferences and we show how two alternative choice modelling techniques can be used to estimate them our results show that significant social costs in the form of environmental impacts can be associated with wind farm developments as relative environmental values are revealed by these methods it would be possible to develop wind farms in such a way that minimises the total social costs of the investment and which maximises its net benefits

lessons learned in france and quebec regarding financial and legal mechanisms to develop renewable energy a hybrid model as an acceptable solution for onshore wind abstract this article shows that the unfavorable context of emergence as well as neo corporatism limited the weight of wind energy in france and quebec and delayed the project development and the wind industry as a whole indeed the level of political will to wind energy development in both jurisdictions is fluctuating and characterized by a lack of continuity in policy or regulatory instruments the efficiency of the pricing mechanisms depends on its political design while the french feed in tariff is inefficient in terms of installed capacity and is deemed too expensive by opponents the first two calls for tenders in quebec fare quite well on that front however they are perceived as unacceptable due to the multinational companies involved and the implantation of large scale wind farms in inhabited areas the third community call for tender while generally better accepted locally is poorly regarded among the cooperative movement and at the national level because of the competition with the municipal sector and higher costs to society in both cases a hybrid pricing model would achieve a better balance between costs to society and local development thus promoting social acceptance through a greater diversity in ownership types and wind farms size

renewable energy investments under different support schemes a real options approach abstract this paper adopts a real options approach to analyze investment timing and capacity choice for renewable energy projects under different support schemes the main purpose is to examine investment behavior under the most extensively employed support schemes namely feed in tariffs and renewable energy certificate trading we consider both multiple sources of uncertainty under each support scheme and uncertainty with respect to any change of support scheme and we obtain both analytical when possible and numerical solutions in a nordic case study based on wind power we find that the feed in tariff encourages earlier investment nevertheless as investment has been undertaken renewable energy certificate trading creates incentives for larger projects in our baseline scenario and taking the fixed feed in tariff as a base the revenue required to trigger investments is 61 higher with renewable certificates at the same time investment capacity is 61 higher

carbon lock in rebound effects and china at the limits of statism abstract from the beginning the statist frame of the kyoto protocol has invited a focus on national carbon budgets and piecemeal mitigation within rich countries despite the clean development mechanism and other efforts to diffuse low carbon technologies to developing countries china has over the last decades continued to construct hundreds of new thermal coal power plants leading not only to skyrocketing emissions in the present but also to long term carbon lock in in light of this china is likely to continue to put strong upward pressure on global emissions for many decades to come ignoring the seriousness of this situation many rich countries have persisted to seek marginal improvements to intermittent low energy sources such as wind power rather than taking the lead in developing breakthrough baseload technologies such as nuclear fusion this paper argues that only such high energy technologies if made significantly cheaper than any fossil alternatives will be capable of breaking the current carbon lock in process in china and other developing countries

a low carbon industrial revolution insights and challenges from past technological and economic transformations recent efforts to promote a transition to a low carbon economy have been influenced by suggestions that a low carbon transition offers challenges and might yield economic benefits comparable to those of the previous industrial revolutions this paper examines these arguments and the challenges facing a low carbon transition by drawing on recent thinking on the technological economic and institutional factors that enabled and sustained the first british industrial revolution and the role of general purpose technologies in stimulating and sustaining this and subsequent industrial transformation processes that have contributed to significant macroeconomic gains these revolutions involved profound long drawn out changes in economy technology and society and although their energy transitions led to long run economic benefits they took many decades to develop to reap significant long run economic benefits from a low carbon transition sooner rather than later would require systemic efforts and incentives for low carbon innovation and substitution of high carbon technologies we conclude that while achieving a low carbon transition may require societal changes on a scale comparable with those of previous industrial revolutions this transition does not yet resemble previous industrial revolutions a successful low carbon transition would however amount to a different kind of industrial revolution

evaluating the efficiency of industrial environmental regulation in china a three stage data envelopment analysis approach abstract environmental regulation is of great concern to international academics and policy makers previous studies often regarded environmental regulation as an influencing factor when calculating eco efficiency or energy efficiency more attention should be given to the efficiency of environmental regulation especially in industrial field according to exiting studies industrial environmental regulation efficiency iere may be influenced by external environmental factors to explore the influence and obtain an actual efficiency this paper calculated iere in china by using the panel data of 30 regions from 2011 to 2015 the 12th five year plan period through the three stage data envelopment analysis approach firstly the undesirable slacks based model method was used to calculate the original iere secondly the economic base industrial structure urbanization level and education level were taken as external environmental variables and the effect of external environmental factors and stochastic disturbance were excluded thirdly the actual iere can be calculated after adjusting input values the results showed that china s iere was underestimated due to the impact from external environmental factors moreover the iere was more influenced by pure technical efficiency than scale efficiency the iere of each region varied thus targeted policies should be formulated according to local conditions this research provided a new analytical method for calculating environmental regulation efficiency the method can be applied either in other countries or in other sectors

rural versus urban preferences for renewable energy developments development of renewable energy resources such as wind farms and hydro electric schemes are being promoted as a new method of expanding and diversifying employment in rural areas however such energy projects are associated with a range of environmental impacts which might be detrimental to other economic activities such as those based on nature tourism the authors use a choice experiment to quantify peoples preferences over environmental and employment impacts that may result from the deployment of renewable energy projects in rural areas of scotland focussing in particular on any differences between the preferences of urban and rural dwellers and on heterogeneity within these groups rural and urban households are shown to have different welfare gains which are dependent on the type of renewable energy technology and on the scale of project under consideration

small investment and large returns terrorism media and the economy the study investigates the role of the media in the impact of terrorism on the economy a unique data set of the newspaper articles that reported terrorist attacks during 2002 is used to evaluate their impact on the tel aviv stock exchange an econometric analysis is performed in order to understand how a newspaper decides to cover a terrorist attack i e the number of articles positioning of articles whether to include photos and the size of headlines it was found that media coverage is an important channel through which terrorism produces economic damage the findings also showed that the economic damage caused by terrorist attacks increases monotonically with the amount of media coverage it was also found that the economic impact of the media coverage diminishes over time

when outcomes are the reflection of the analysis criteria a review of the tradable green certificate assessments abstract the tradable green certificates tgc framework is a prevalent policy support scheme enacted to stimulate investments in electricity from renewable energy sources res e in several countries including sweden and norway the tgc framework is currently under reevaluation in this process academic literature plays a crucial role in reflecting the outcomes of this policy framework the outcomes however are often limited by the analysis criteria which reflect what has been accounted for or disregarded when assessing the performance of the tgc framework the analysis criteria also stress what is considered as a successful outcome given the importance of such criteria this paper presents an extensive and systemic literature review of academic publications assessing the performance of the tgc framework the findings are to provide an overview of the publications analysis criteria and outline their outcomes we also provide descriptive statistics for the publications and examine the average citation record of the publications that use various analysis criteria in order to explore their relative impact on later studies these findings can help policymakers put the assessments into perspective when reevaluating a country s tgc system they also suggest several intriguing directions for future studies in this field

rent seeking protectionism and innovation in the american steel industry trade protection in a declining industry can cause damages beyond those revealed in the usual trade diagram analysis using data on the us steel firms we show that trade protection in that industry rewards poor performance reduces incentives to innovate and frustrates the normal schumpeterian process of creative destruction free trade gives consumers the lowest prices nonetheless protectionism in various guises is pervasive this we show is probably due to political rentseeking by groups that expect to lose as trade patterns adjust to innovation and altered economic conditions these groups invest in political lobbying to secure future returns in trade protection we find empirical evidence that trade protection returns private benefits to the shareholders senior workers and ceo s of lobbying firms perhaps more disturbingly trade protection also appears to reward less innovative firms and may thus frustrate the schumpeterian development of an industry we examine us steelmakers among the most active lobbyers in recent decades steel firms that lobby congress for protection tend to be larger older less diversified and less profitable than non lobbyers they pay their workers and ceos more and their ceos have longer tenure and are more likely to have risen through the ranks of their companies this suggests the owners managers and workers of less dynamic steel firms stand to lose from free trade the announcement of protection raises the stock prices of us steelmakers but by much more for lobbyers than non lobbyers when comprehensive and enduring protection was finally announced lobbyers more than non lobbyers cut jobs while maintaining or possibly increasing wages once comprehensive protection is in place protection also leads to large pay increases for lobbyers ceos this seems consistent with rent seeking and inconsistent with protection helping lobbyers mitigate social consequences of downsizing like unemployment our most striking finding is that high past r d spending is negatively correlated with stock price changes when proteption is announced and positively correlated with subsequent exit from the industry this seems inconsistent with protection providing a hiatus for retooling rather it suggests

industrial electricity demand and energy efficiency policy the role of price changes and private r d in the swedish pulp and paper industry abstract the objective of this paper is to analyze electricity demand behaviour in the swedish pulp and paper industry in the context of the increased interest in so called voluntary energy efficiency programs in these programs tax exemptions are granted if the participating firms carry out energy efficiency measures following an energy audit we employ a panel data set of 19 pulp and paper firms and estimate both the own and cross price elasticities of electricity demand as well as the impact of knowledge accumulation following private r d on electricity use the empirical results show that electricity use in the swedish pulp and paper industry is relatively own price insensitive and the self reported electricity savings following the voluntary so called pfe program support the notion of important information asymmetries at the company level however the results display that already in a baseline setting pulp and paper firms tend to invest in private r d that have electricity saving impacts and our model simulations suggest that up to about one third of the industry sector s self reported electricity savings in pfe could be attributable to pure baseline effects future evaluations of voluntary energy efficiency programs must increasingly recognize the already existing incentives to reduce energy use in energy intensive industries

environmental labelling of electricity delivery contracts in sweden abstract competition in the electricity market allows customers to choose between suppliers as a consequence customers may demand electricity from specified sources of energy in sweden the swedish society for nature conservation ssnc operates a system of environmental labelling of electricity delivery contracts since 1996 labelling is available for suppliers offering electricity from renewable sources of energy with some additional criteria companies may acquire a licence to use the label by showing ability to deliver such electricity and by agreeing to be audited the system is private independent it is operating on the bases of credibility earned by the ssnc during 90 years as an environmental organisation and 10 years as operator of environmental labelling of consumer products the system is market oriented compatible with wto and eu market principles and independent of governmental environmental restrictions subsidy or quota systems it is relying on voluntary agreements the results are desirable if only a few by electricity under labelled contracts as well as if every customer do so the market is growing a majority of the suppliers have a license and may offer labelled contracts in the year 2000 7 of all electricity sold to final consumers was sold under labelled contracts

foreign subsidization and excess capacity abstract the u s steel industry has long held that foreign subsidization and excess capacity has led to its long run demise yet no one has formally examined this hypothesis in this paper we incorporate foreign subsidization considerations into a model based on staiger and wolak s 1992 cyclical dumping framework and illustrate testable implications of both cyclical excess capacity and structural excess capacity stemming from foreign subsidization we then use detailed product and foreign country level data on steel exports to the u s market to estimate these excess capacity effects while the full sample results provide evidence of both cyclical and structural excess capacity effects for exports to the u s market these effects are confined to such a narrow range of country product combinations that it is unlikely that such effects were a significant factor in the fortunes of u s steel firms over the past decades

assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies the non combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature the indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology availability of renewable sources efficiency of energy conversion land requirements water consumption and social impacts the cost of electricity greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source the social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development it was found that wind power is the most sustainable followed by hydropower photovoltaic and then geothermal wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs

the effect of financial constraints technological progress and long term contracts on tradable green certificates tradable green certificates tgcs have recently become a diffuse instrument to support renewable electricity in oecd countries although it is perhaps too early to draw a conclusive judgement on the effectiveness of this instrument in increasing renewable capacity and decreasing the price of certificates one view in the literature maintains that long term contracts are of particular importance for tgcs to be effective this paper contributes to this debate by analysing how financial constraints and technological progress can induce investors to hold pessimistic expectations of their ability to sell green certificates and still make a profit clearly these expectations will prevent investors from building new capacity to fulfil the quota comprised in tgcs and will keep the price of certificates traded in the market high as this kind of expectation is not influenced by most design features of tgcs one can conclude that long term contracts are particularly important in determining the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of these instruments some attention should therefore be paid to the features of the tgcs which induce obliged parties to offer long term contracts to renewable generators

structural dynamics of innovation networks funded by the european union in the context of systemic innovation of the renewable energy sector innovation in the renewable energy re sector relies on the concept of systemic innovation which requires interaction between two innovation aspects technology exploration and market exploitation the european union eu has introduced political instruments for systemic re innovation by integrating resources from different thematic and geographic areas however using these instruments to establish an ecosystem for systemic innovation remains unexplored this study develops a framework for evaluating the systemic innovation performance of networks through a time series analysis of network structural properties overall eu funded innovation networks have not evolved in a systemic direction first the network exhibits densely connected local clusters for technology exploration and market exploitation of re innovation which are disconnected from each other over time the gap between the two phases has weakened with increasing connectivity but the local clusters supporting either explorative or exploitative activities have diminished the existing networking linkages among organizations are considered ineffective because their positions in the network tend to display a mismatch with their innovation patterns this research presents policy suggestions for optimizing the exploration and exploitation activities in the eu s funding program and their complementarities to establish a systemic innovation environment in the re sector

cost effects of international trade in meeting eu renewable electricity targets abstract the european market for renewable electricity received a major stimulus from the adoption of the directive on the promotion of renewable electricity the directive specifies the indicative targets for electricity supply from renewable energy sources res e to be reached in european union eu member states in the year 2010 it also requires member states to certify the origin of their renewable electricity production this article presents a first eu wide quantitative evaluation of the effects of meeting the targets using an eu wide system for tradable green certificates tgc we calculate the equilibrium price of green certificates and identify which countries are likely to export or import certificates cost advantages of participating in such an eu wide trading scheme are determined for each of the member states moreover we identify which choice of technologies results in meeting targets at least costs results are obtained from a model that quantifies the effects of achieving the res e targets in the eu with and without trade the article provides a brief insight in this model as well as the methodology that was used to specify cost potential curves for renewable electricity in each of the 15 eu member states model calculations show that within the eu wide tgc system the total production costs of the last option needed to satisfy the overall eu res e target equals 9 2 eurocent kwh assuming that the production price of electricity on the european power market would equal 3 eurocent kwh in the year 2010 the indicative green certificate price equals 6 2 eurocent kwh we conclude that implementation of an eu wide tgc system is a cost efficient way of stimulating renewable electricity supply

renewable financial support systems and cost effectiveness abstract this paper analyses the performance of market based and feed in tariff systems of renewable energy procurement and comments on the impact of different procurement systems on investment in renewable energy the market based british renewables obligation ro is not more cost effective compared to the german feed in tariff although the nominal rates of payment per kwh of renewable energy are higher in germany this is more than offset by lower wind speeds in germany producing a lower return on investment compared to the uk a harmonised eu wide market based system would not improve cost effectiveness and may serve to reduce rather than increase local investment in renewable energy on the other hand nationally based green electricity certificate systems like the ro are not intrinsically biased against locally owned or co operative ventures systems are needed which encourage a diversity of investment in renewable energy from local as well as institutional sources

the value of administered protection a capital market approach the focus of this paper i s on the escape clause petitions filed under the trade act of 1974 section 201 first the capital marketevent study method is used to analyze the effects of protection decisions then cross section regressions are performed to examine the influence of key variables on the observed market reaction the authors conc lude that while protection is beneficial to beleaguered industries the extent o f such benefits is quite narrowly circumscribed and is conditional on internal v ariables for each firm protection is thus not the panacea that its advocates cl aim copyright 1986 by mit press

the cycle of violence an empirical analysis of fatalities in the palestinian israeli conflict thomas c schelling s the strategy of conflict 1960 laid the groundwork for thinking about conflicts as non zero sum games in which each side may choose to exercise or threaten violence in order to deter or incapacitate the opponent or simply to exact revenge it has been difficult however to test many of the predictions formulated by schelling and others because of the lack of data on the strategic choices of the two sides engaged in a conflict observed at a high enough frequency for statistical tests to have any power this paper uses daily frequency data to analyze the dynamics of violence during four years of the second intifada the most recent outburst of the palestinian israeli conflict

a review of industrial energy and climate policies in japan and sweden with emphasis towards smes abstract the threat of increased global warming resulting from the use of fossil fuels stresses decision makers to formulate and adopt policies towards different sectors of the economy in light of the great earthquake in japan 2011 energy efficiency also plays an important role in meeting the challenge of power supply shortage energy policies towards industry are of particular importance as a major part of the energy in the economy is used in industrial production the number of papers investigating and presenting experience from energy end use policies are scarce furthermore for those present they often only include a very brief analysis from a public point of view evaluations of energy programs are of major importance to measure the performance of the programs from an energy policy designer point of view it is of major importance to not only see the cost effectiveness of the policy but also to understand the fundamental mechanisms for the success or failure of an industrial energy program in order to learn how to improve future programs the aim of this paper is to present a review of energy end use policy instrument in japan and sweden towards the industrial sector from 1990 to 2014 with special emphasis on industrial smes from the results presented some general conclusions can be made 1 results show that the cost effectiveness differs substantially between the evaluated programs and 2 that from a governmental point of view subsidies towards energy audit programs seem like the most cost effective policy in addition to this 3 the results from the review also stress the importance of a clear strategy for every energy program on how the program is going to be evaluated ex ante or ex post and how the performance of the program is to be measured this structure should be included from the start of the program

an empirical pooling approach for estimating marketing mix elasticities with pims data the pims profit impact of marketing strategies data entail sparse time series observations for a large number of strategic business units sbus in order to estimate disaggregate marketing mix elasticities of demand a natural solution is to pool different sbus the traditional a priori approach is to pool together those sbus which one believes in advance to be very similar with respect to their marketing mix elasticities we propose an alternative maximum likelihood latent pooling method for simultaneously pooling estimating and testing linear regression models empirically this method enables the determination of a fuzzy pooling scheme while directly estimating a set of marketing mix elasticities and intertemporal covariances for each pool of sbus our analyses reveal different magnitudes and patterns of marketing mix elasticities for the derived pools pool membership is influenced by demand characteristics business scope and order of market entry

habitual and occasional lobbyers in the u s steel industry an em algorithm pooling approach bernard yeung using u s steel firm data we find that lobbying for import protection appears to be habit forming to identify heterogeneity in lobbying behavior among firms we use an expectation maximization algorithm to sort our firms into groups with different propensities to lobby and estimate the determinants of lobbying in each group a two pool model emerges occasional lobbyers lobbying depends on their market performance and habitual lobbyers lobbying only depends on past lobbying the latter tends to be larger steel firms whose business is more focused in steel our evidence is consistent with dynamic economies of scale in protection seeking breeding protection dependent firms jel f13 1 introduction rent seeking activities plausibly have dynamic economies to scale past rent seeking experience should reduce the cost of further rent seeking and increase its return thus rent seekers may over time become more prone to further rent seeking and even become dependent on it given the large welfare losses theoretically associated with rent seeking e g bhagwati 1982 1988 and magee et al 1989 a better understanding of actual rent seeking behavior is required in particular empirical verification of the self sustaining nature of rent seeking is of fundamental importance lobbying for protection from import competition is a form of rent seeking this article uses data on lobbying for protection by firms in the steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s to show that a habit forming effect does exist in a preliminary investigation we pool all firm level data and find that past lobbying increases the current tendency to lobby however not all firms have the same propensity to lobby to allow heterogeneity among firms dependence on past lobbying we apply an expectation maximization em algorithm approach dempster et al 1977 to a lagged dummy model heckman 1982a 1982b this lets our firms sort themselves into groups according to the determinants of their lobbying activity our statistical results suggest that an acceptable division of our data is a division into two groups occasional lobbyers whose lobbying depends on the firm s market performance and habitual lobbyers whose lobbying is essentially unrelated to the firm s business situation and depends mainly on past lobbying firms that never lobby for protection end up in the first group greater firm size and greater focus in steel production are associated with increased lobbying in both groups but the influence is stronger for occasional lobbyers past sales growth and spending on modern equipment are associated with curtailed lobbying by occasional rent seekers but are unrelated to lobbying by habitual rent seekers changes in cash flow have no influence in either generally habitual lobbyers are larger firms whose business is more concentrated on steel they are naturally more inclined than occasional lobbyers to initiate lobbying however their lobbying appears to have become a habit divorced from their market pe rformance these results are consistent with the presence of economies of scale in rent seeking and with rent seeking being habit forming e g magee et al 1989 in the next section we describe the intensive lobbying for protection in the u s steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s we justify our contentions that lobbying for protection by steel firms in the sample period may be habit forming and that different groups of firms should have dissimilar propensities to lobby for protection in section iii we explain the em algorithm approach we explain the data in the fourth section and report our results in section v section vi concludes ii habitual and occasional lobbying in the u s steel industry in the united states domestic firms under import competition pressure often complain to the government about unfair foreign practice