aggregate demand for electricity in south africa an analysis using the bounds testing approach to cointegration abstract electricity demand in south africa has grown at a very rapid rate over the past decade as part of reform initiatives to enhance long term sustainability of the country s electricity industry south africa s authorities have in recent years sought to develop an electricity pricing framework that is cost reflective and forms the cornerstone of demand management schemes meant to foster changes in consumption behaviour and enhance efficiency in resource use the effects of any pricing policy on aggregate electricity consumption will depend on a useful understanding of the factors that influence electricity demand and the magnitude to which electricity demand responds to changes in such factors in this context this paper applies the bounds testing approach to cointegration within an autoregressive distributed lag framework to examine the aggregate demand for electricity in south africa during the period 1960 2007 the results indicate that in the long run income is the main determinant of electricity demand with electricity prices having an insignificant effect on aggregate electricity demand future pricing policies will need to ensure that electricity prices are cost reflective and enhance efficiency of electricity supply and use

elements for the development of public policies in the residential sector of mexico based in the energy reform and the energy transition law abstract mexico has entered in an important dynamic of structural changes in the energy area proof of this it is the energy reform 2013 and the energy transition law published the last december 24th 2015 thus it is important to carry out studies of the impacts of future politics in the consumption of the population so this study estimate an energy demand system using microdata collected from 97 817 households in a national households income and expenditure survey enigh acronyms in spanish encuesta nacional de ingresos y gastos de los hogares in the 20 years period from 1994 to 2014 the magnitudes of all the fuels are smaller than one indicating that electricity lpg gasoline and public transport are normal goods while lpg is the most inelastic energy source the geographic factor shows that households in the north of mexico tend to consume more gasoline whereas in the south of the country the lowest share of lpg expenditure is reported the rigorous evaluation of energy demanded in households will help policy makers to put forward more efficient reforms

determinants of household electricity demand a two stage probit approach considerable interest on the part of policy makers in both the public and private sectors has spawned numerous studies of the determinants of residential electricity demand as a result of increased attention given to the possibility of adjusting household electricity consumption patterns through price manipulation as in the various peak load pricing experiments particular emphasis has been placed on obtaining an accurate estimate of the price elasticity of demand unfortunately ols applied to the conventional linear or log linear demand specification is biased and inconsistent when the sample includes households that face declining block rate schedules the inconsistency results from the fact that in the presence of declining block rates observed marginal price is a stochastic regressor that is negatively correlated with the regression error term some researchers have suggested that consistent ols estimation can be achieved by merely respecifying the demand equation to include particular combinations of marginal price average price rate of decline of the price schedule and real income corrected for intra marginal price differences 1 7 8 others realizing the futility of such an approach have developed and applied instrumental variable iv techniques 4 6 11 these iv methods however all involve an artificial linearization of the rate schedule which produces spurious negative correlation between the price variable and the random error term as a result such iv methods tend to overcompensate for actual correlation consequently the iv estimated coefficients of the various demand determinants will exhibit biases opposite in sign to those of their ols counterparts for example in the presence of declining block rates ols tends to overestimate the price elasticity of demand in absolute value while iv methods produce elasticity estimates that are downward biased a two stage probit tsp method developed by terza and welch 10 is not subject to the bias that plagues iv methods because tsp does not require a linear approximation to the rate schedule instead the discrete and discontinuous nature of household responses to declining block pricing is captured by incorporating an ordinal probit model that is based on a theory of consumer choice in the present paper a linear electricity demand model is estimated using the tsp ols and iv methods to demonstrate the effectiveness of the tsp method

reforming residential electricity tariff in china block tariffs pricing approach the chinese households that make up approximately a quarter of world households are facing a residential power tariff reform in which a rising block tariff structure will be implemented and this tariff mechanism is widely used around the world the basic principle of the structure is to assign a higher price for higher income consumers with low price elasticity of power demand to capture the non linear effects of price and income on elasticities we set up a translog demand model the empirical findings indicate that the higher income consumers are less sensitive than those with lower income to price changes we further put forward three proposals of chinese residential electricity tariffs compared to a flat tariff the reasonable block tariff structure generates more efficient allocation of cross subsidies better incentives for raising the efficiency of electricity usage and reducing emissions from power generation which also supports the living standards of low income households

macroeconomic features of the french revolution this paper describes aspects of the french revolution from the perspective of theories about money and government budget constraints we describe how unpleasant fiscal arithmetic gripped the old regime how the estates general responded to reorganize france s fiscal affairs and how fiscal exigencies impelled the revolution into a procession of monetary experiments ending in hyper inflation

energy demand in ghana a disaggregated analysis this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of energy demand in ghana by estimating demand functions for key disaggregated energy components including gasoline diesel liquefied petroleum gas lpg kerosene biomass residual fuel oil rfo and electricity our results show that energy prices income urbanization and economic structure are significant demand drivers of the different energy types in ghana with varying estimated elasticities further there is evidence of high degree of inter fuel substitution in energy demand in ghana particularly from gasoline diesel and kerosene towards lpg consumption we recommend among different policy options a customization of energy price subsidization policies especially on lpg to reduce the unintended beneficiary dilemma or spillover effect of current government policy other policies such as intensification of energy conservation programs and market entry of independent power trading companies to enhance energy service delivery through competition are also discussed

untangling the complexity of the direct and indirect determinants of the residential energy consumption in france quantitative analysis using a structural equation modeling approach abstract about a quarter of french energy demand is for residential use this study mobilises a multidisciplinary approach and a non linear modeling strategy to examine the total direct and indirect effects of households and housing units in designing french energy consumption based on micro level data from the new french 2012 phebus survey this research implements a structural equation model to tease out the effects of both dwelling characteristics household attributes climate and behaviours on the domestic energy use findings confirm that the direct effect of household related attributes on domestic energy demand is notably lower than the corresponding effect from the dwelling attributes nevertheless considering for the indirect effect of household factors on energy use across housing choices the total impact of household related attributes on the french domestic energy consumption is just slightly lower than that of dwelling characteristics therefore to highlight the spectrum of residential energy use this research calls to incorporate both direct and indirect effects of household attributes and choices this study suggests several key insights on how to incorporate housing policy into residential energy policy and reduce energy related greenhouse gas emissions

the misleading effect of energy efficiency information on perceived energy friendliness of electric goods the european union energy label informs consumers at the point of sale about the energy efficiency and electricity consumption of various electric goods the label should enable consumers to purchase energy friendly products i e products with low energy consumption thereby making a significant contribution to the reduction of overall energy consumption this paper offers a systematic analysis of consumers interpretation of the energy label the results of a set of experimental studies revealed that consumers tend to base their estimates of a product s energy consumption mainly on the energy efficiency class e g a communicated on the energy label and largely ignore information about annual electricity consumption e g 120 kwh year thereby consumers potentially overestimate the energy friendliness of a product assigned a high energy efficiency rating this also holds true when consumers directly compare two products in terms of energy friendliness thus participants chose a higher consuming product because it had a high energy efficiency rating high energy efficiency ratings e g a can distort consumers perceptions of product categories that consume excessively e g freezers participants were seduced into thinking that a high energy efficiency rating e g a means the energy consumption of energy hogs is no longer problematic this paper provides evidence that the energy label could have a contrary effect than the one intended due to people s susceptibility to an energy efficiency fallacy this misinterpretation of the energy label could further explain why overall energy demand is increasing despite enhanced energy efficiency finally implications for policy makers and further research for enhancement of the energy label are discussed

managing the maturity structure of government debt abstract it is known that a government can implement the optimal complete market ramsey allocations by issuing non contingent bonds of different maturities the implied optimal maturity structure is time and state invariant i e it is not actively managed i construct a model where the ramsey allocations can be implemented with active management of the maturity structure in a numerical example that reflects the time series properties of the british government s expenditure during the 18th century its historic pattern of maturity management is replicated

from frugal jane to wasteful john a quantile regression analysis of swiss households electricity demand abstract in this article we investigate the heterogeneity in the responsiveness of swiss household electricity demand to changes in prices and income we focus on segments of consumers with different intensities of electricity consumption by using a panel quantile regression approach this estimation strategy is applied to a rich micro level longitudinal data set of 3880 observations from more than 1400 households matched with a unique price data set extracted from the swiss electricity regulator s online sources while the findings show an inelastic electricity demand across all groups an interesting pattern of variation emerges between lower and upper quantiles of electricity demand respectively frugal and intensive users results show that households in the first conditional quartile and at the median react significantly to changes in prices while those at the lowest quantile and upper quantiles exhibit insignificant price elasticities the main policy implications of this work concern the design of price based measures for reducing electricity consumption in the residential sector and the possibility of accounting for individual responses in tailoring policies for specific consumer segments

normal markets market imperfections and energy efficiency abstract the conventional distinction between economic and engineering approaches to energy analysis obscures key methodological issues concerning the measurement of the costs and benefits of policies to promote the adoption of energy efficient technologies the engineering approach is in fact based upon firm economic foundations the principle of lifecycle cost minimization that arises directly from the theory of rational investment thus evidence that so called market barriers impede the adoption of cost effective energy efficient technologies implies the existence of market failures as defined in the context of microeconomic theory problems of imperfect information and bounded rationality on the part of consumers for example may lead real world outcomes to deviate from the dictates of efficient resource allocation a widely held contrary view that the engineering view lacks economic justification is based on the fallacy that markets are normally efficient

a robust analysis of the relationship between renewable energy consumption and its main drivers we provide a comprehensive and robust analysis of the drivers of renewable energy consumption for a panel of 64 countries using both the static pooled ols panel fixed and random effects and dynamic difference and system gmm panel data estimation approaches we show that the dynamic panel data model provides more efficient estimators than the static ones and that increases in per capita co2 emissions and per capita trade with foreign partners mainly drive the changes in per capita renewable energy consumption we also find limited evidence of oil price effects on renewable energy consumption which reflects the fact that renewable energy is just a complement and not a perfect substitute of crude oil at least in the short run

short and long run elasticities in energy demand a cointegration approach abstract short and long run energy demand elasticities are estimated on danish annual data for 1948 1990 energy consumption the real price of energy and real gdp appear to be non stationary variables cointegration and error correction methods are therefore applied all estimated parameters have the expected signs and magnitudes and no evidence is found of a structural break in energy demand caused by the increases in real energy prices since 1973 74

real time pricing when some consumers resist in saving electricity successful real time electricity pricing depends firstly upon consumers willingness to subscribe to such terms and secondly on their ability to curb consumption levels the present paper addresses both issues by considering consumers differentiated by their electricity saving costs half of whom resist saving electricity we demonstrate that when consumers are free to adopt real time prices producers prefer charging inefficient prices and in so doing discriminate against that portion of the consumer population which faces no saving costs we also find that efficient marginal cost pricing is feasible but is incompatible with mass adoption of real time prices

the causal relationship between energy use and economic growth in switzerland abstract this paper investigates the relationships between energy consumption and economic growth in switzerland over the period 1950 2010 we apply bounds testing techniques to different energy types separately robustness tests are performed by including additional variables and restricting the analysis to the period after 1970 the results show that there exist robust long run relationships going from real gdp toward heating oil and electricity consumption the relationship between heating oil and gdp is in fact bidirectional although weaker from heating oil toward gdp than in the reverse direction when investigating the period 1970 2010 only the estimate of the long run income elasticity of electricity consumption loses statistical significance and that for heating oil becomes negative those results imply a possible decoupling between gdp growth and energy consumption so that energy conservation policies are not necessarily expected to have a negative impact on swiss economic growth

short run and long run elasticities of import demand for crude oil in turkey abstract the aim of this study is to attempt to estimate the short run and the long run elasticities of demand for crude oil in turkey by the recent autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration as a developing country turkey meets its growing demand for oil principally by foreign suppliers thus the study focuses on modelling the demand for imported crude oil using annual data covering the period 1980 2005 the bounds test results reveal that a long run cointegration relationship exists between the crude oil import and the explanatory variables nominal price and income but not in the model that includes real price in domestic currency the long run parameters are estimated through a long run static solution of the estimated ardl model and then the short run dynamics are estimated by the error correction model the estimated models pass the diagnostic tests successfully the findings reveal that the income and price elasticities of import demand for crude oil are inelastic both in the short run and in the long run

loads of green washing can behavioural economics increase willingness to pay for efficient washing machines in the uk the eu energy efficiency labelling scheme has successfully increased demand for efficient appliances by providing a prominent letter rating to consumers during their product search behavioural economics be suggests the adoption of efficient appliances could be accelerated further by i monetising efficiency ii directly communicating the link between efficiency and carbon emissions iii communicating the long term e g operational life financial and environmental impact of product choices and iv framing the information as avoided losses extra rather than gains savings this study tested these hypotheses via an online stated preference survey of 465 uk residents using actual market pricing and efficiency data for washing machines the provision of information about either running costs or running emissions did encourage selection of more expensive and efficient products strongly correlated variables in the choice set and actual market p 001 r 30 41 with no statistically significant difference between their impact providing lifetime running cost information also nudged respondents towards more expensive efficient products than annual information p 006 027 r 15 18 finally loss framed running emissions information encouraged selection of more expensive efficient products than gain framed information p 05 r 13 16 the eu label is an impracticable means of communication but digital communication channels e g price comparison websites may offer potential for inexpensive localisation and personalisation of the information the results suggest that successful communication could benefit the private sector whilst making a contribution to reducing carbon emissions

the structure of residential energy demand in greece abstract this paper attempts to shed light on the determinants of residential energy demand in greece and to compare it with some other oecd countries from the estimates of the short run and long run elasticities of energy demand for the period 1965 1999 we find that residential energy demand appears to be price inelastic also we do not find evidence of a structural change probably because of the low efficiency of the energy sector we find however that the magnitude of the income elasticity varies substantially between greece and other oecd countries

consumer supplier government triangular relations rethinking the uk policy path for carbon emissions reduction from the uk residential sector abstract the uk residential household sector is responsible for approximately 30 of total carbon dioxide emissions and is often seen as the most promising in terms of early reductions as most direct household emissions come from only two fuel sources this paper critically examines how existing emissions reduction policies for the sector shape and are shaped by relations between the three main groups of actor in this policy domain central government gas and electricity suppliers and energy users focusing on relations between three dyads government suppliers suppliers consumers and consumers government enables us to examine aspects of demand reduction that have often been overlooked to date by relations we refer to services power relationships and flows of capital and information as well as less easily defined elements such as loyalty trust and accountability the paper argues that the chosen government policy path to deliver demand reduction which heavily emphasises the suppliers role suffers from principal agent problems fails to align consumers and supplier interests toward emissions reduction and does not yet portray a lower carbon future in positive terms it suggests that more attention should be paid to government consumer relations recognising that energy consumers are also citizens

residential electricity demand dynamics in turkey abstract this article provides fresh empirical evidences for the income and price elasticies of the residential energy demand both in the short run and long run for turkey over the period 1968 2005 using the bounds testing procedure to cointegration the computed elasticities of income and price are consistent with the previous studies and as expected the long run elasticities are greater than the short run elasticities an augmented form of granger causality analysis is implemented among residential electricity income price and urbanization in the long run causality runs interactively through the error correction term from income price and urbanization to residential energy but the short run causality tests are inconclusive the parameter stability of the short run as well as long run coefficients in the residential energy demand function are tested the results of these tests display a stable pattern

decision making in electrical appliance use in the home this paper presents the results of a survey as well as an argument from the viewpoint of behavioral economics with the aim of clarifying how consumers make decisions about electrical appliance use in the home a survey of consumers showed that most have little awareness of the energy efficiency of appliances the price of the services produced by electrical appliances or electricity rates these findings indicate that price does not function as a signal in electricity consumption through electrical appliance use rather we found that consumer decision making in electricity consumption is dependent on the characteristics of the particular electrical appliances they use additionally we argue that the payment system for home electricity consumption plays an important role in decision making causing biases due to aspects of human psychology discussed here in terms of satisficing and heuristics payment decoupling and budgeting we conclude that decision making about electrical appliance use and electricity consumption in the home is not always rational and is affected both by the particular characteristics of appliances and the payment system for electricity consumption along with human psychology

long and short run elasticities of residential electricity consumption in china a partial adjustment model with panel data abstractwhile it has stabilized in developed world the per capita residential electricity consumption rec in developing countries such as china is growing very rapidly and this trend is very likely to continue built upon a provincial level panel data we employ a partial adjustment model to investigate the future trend of rec in china and factors that affect it we estimate the income and price short term and long term elasticities for urban and rural china respectively and compare the results with rec studies in other countries or regions the findings provide useful information to understand how the rec would grow in china as household income increases and how effective that price could be as an intervention tool

optimal maturity of government debt without state contingent bonds abstract this paper shows that state contingent debt can be synthetically constructed using non contingent debt of different maturities a main policy implication of this principle is that the ramsey allocation with complete markets can be sustained with non contingent debt only by properly managing its maturity structure the numerical experiments however suggest that this policy implication ought to be taken with care we find that the debt positions that sustain the ramsey allocation are very high on the order of a few hundred times total gdp for a very simple four state economy and increasing in the number of states in addition they are very sensitive to small variations in the parameters of the model

understanding the spectrum of residential energy consumption a quantile regression approach abstract residential energy consumption accounts for 22 of the total energy consumption in the us however the impacts of local planning policies such as increasing density and changing the housing type mix on residential energy consumption are not well understood using residential energy consumption survey data from the energy information administration quantile regression analysis was used to tease out the effects of various factors on entire distribution on the energy consumption spectrum instead of focusing on the conditional average results show that while housing size matters for space conditioning housing type has a more nuanced impact self reported neighborhood density does not seem to have any impact on energy use furthermore the effects of these factors at the tails of the energy use distribution are substantially different than the average in some cases differing by a factor of six some not all types of multifamily housing offer almost as much savings as reduction in housing area by 100 m 2 compared to single family houses

adolescents and electricity consumption investigating sociodemographic economic and behavioural influences on electricity consumption in households with respect to changes in the energy systems of many countries electricity consumption in households is an important topic extensive research has investigated the various determinants of electricity consumption however insights into how specific sociodemographic behavioural and attitudinal determinants influence residential electricity consumption are still scarce in this study we used hierarchical regression analysis to systematically investigate these determinants including household engagement in electricity saving along with a wide range of other measures in a sample of german households n 763 special attention was given to households with adolescents and children by analysing the influence of the number of adolescents on electricity consumption in a path model our results indicate that sociodemographic influences can be explained by the purchasing and use behaviours of residents our findings also suggest that the use of behavioural information provides a more detailed picture of the conditions of electricity consumption and thus allows for more appropriate policy planning

mental budgeting and consumer decisions consumers often set budgets for categories of expenses e g entertainment and track expenses against their budget because budgets cannot perfectly anticipate consumption opportunities people may earmark too much or too little money for a particular category this leads them to overconsume or underconsume goods in that category the results of three studies suggest that consumers do indeed set budgets and that budgeting may lead to underconsumption to show that consumers track expenses the studies demonstrate that budgeting effects are larger for purchases that are highly typical of their category such purchases reduce the amount people spend in a category and block the purchase of other typical items the studies control for satiation and income effects thus budgeting adds predictive power to standard economic consumer theory

electrical energy usage over the business cycle causality from macroeconomic conditions to electrical usage overall and in the residential commercial industrial and other sectors is examined the paper shows that changes in macroeconomic conditions cause significant changes in electrical usage in the commercial and industrial sectors and overall in addition the paper shows that causality occurs at business cycle frequencies and that there are asymmetries over the business cycle an implication is that forecasts used to assess the probability of exceeding capacity constraints should incorporate forecasts of macroeconomic conditions asymmetries over the cycle and how the commercial and industrial sectors will respond to such changes

opportunities and challenges in energy demand reduction for canadian residential sector a review abstract developing energy independent and sustainable communities has gained a high level of global interest in recent times the federal sustainable development strategy for canada fsds has defined the addressing of climate change and the shrinking of the environmental footprint as priority themes in its sustainable development approach in the pursuit of planning net zero to net positive community energy systems reducing the energy demand of the residential buildings is the first priority particularly as the residential sector accounts for 17 of the secondary energy use in canada various technical behavioural and policy level interventions are available for reducing residential energy consumption in this review demand reduction interventions have been categorised as efficiency saving and conservation measures the benefits limitations and challenges present in adopting those strategies are discussed for various regions in canada even though there is an advanced level of knowledge available on energy demand reduction the scattered information needs to be brought together to develop a combined and inclusive approach for residential demand management collected knowledge will inform decision makers engaged in the design of residential buildings and planning of sustainable communities to identify the interventions which can be implemented in a given locality this review aims to address the above gaps through a comprehensive review on potential energy demand reduction methods especially for canada the implications of the findings to canadian residential energy sector as a whole are discussed in the final part of the review

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

short and long run elasticities in us residential electricity demand a co integration approach abstract co integration techniques show promise in the analysis of short and long run effects of economic variables on energy use we use these techniques to develop an error correction model of annual us residential electricity demand we construct equipment stock indices and estimate the model for 1949 1993 our analysis suggests a structural shift in consumption during the 1960s we discuss reasons for this shift report the short and long run elasticities provide forecasts for 1994 1995 and compare the model s forecasts with other published forecasts

energy models for demand forecasting a review abstract energy is vital for sustainable development of any nation be it social economic or environment in the past decade energy consumption has increased exponentially globally energy management is crucial for the future economic prosperity and environmental security energy is linked to industrial production agricultural output health access to water population education quality of life etc energy demand management is required for proper allocation of the available resources during the last decade several new techniques are being used for energy demand management to accurately predict the future energy needs in this paper an attempt is made to review the various energy demand forecasting models traditional methods such as time series regression econometric arima as well as soft computing techniques such as fuzzy logic genetic algorithm and neural networks are being extensively used for demand side management support vector regression ant colony and particle swarm optimization are new techniques being adopted for energy demand forecasting bottom up models such as markal and leap are also being used at the national and regional level for energy demand management

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

housing related lifestyle and energy saving a multi level approach abstract a new instrument for measuring housing related lifestyle hrl is introduced and employed for identifying national and cross national hrl segments in 10 european countries n 3190 the identified hrl segments are profiled and the practical importance of hrl for everyday energy saving efforts in the home and for the energy consumer s openness to new energy saving opportunities i e energy saving innovativeness is investigated the hrl instrument s 71 items load on 16 dimensions within five lifestyle elements multi group confirmatory factor analysis reveals that the instrument possesses metric but not scalar measurement invariance across the 10 countries multilevel latent class analysis is used to classify participants to hrl segments and the 10 countries into regions with similar segment structure the optimal solution has seven hrl segments and three country classes which are profiled in terms of relevant background characteristics a multivariate glm analysis reveals that when differences in housing related lifestyles are controlled neither country of residence nor the interaction between lifestyle and country of residence influence energy saving innovativeness or everyday energy saving efforts however these two behavioural tendencies vary significantly and substantially between lifestyle segments the study shows that hrl segmentation is a useful tool for creating more targeted and effective energy saving campaigns

politicians taxes and debt the standard analysis of the efficient management of income taxes and debt assumes a benevolent government and ignores potential distortions arising from rent seeking politicians this paper departs from this framework by assuming that a rent seeking politician chooses policies if the politician chooses extractive policies citizens throw him out of power we analyse the efficient sustainable equilibrium unlike in the standard economy temporary economic shocks generate volatile and persistent changes in taxes along the equilibrium path this serves to optimally limit rent seeking by the politician and to optimally generate support for the politician from the citizens taxes resembling those of the benevolent government are very costly since the government over saves and resources are wasted on rents political distortions thus cause the complete debt market to behave as if it were incomplete however in contrast to an incomplete market economy in the long run taxes do not converge to zero and under some conditions they resemble taxes under a benevolent government

optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital abstract this paper is concerned with the structure and time consistency of optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital in a dynamic context optimal taxation means distributing tax distortions over time in a welfare maximizing way for a barter economy our main finding is that with debt commitments of sufficiently rich maturity structure an optimal policy if one exists is time consistent in a monetary economy the idea of optimal taxation must be broadened to include an inflation tax and we find that time consistency does not carry over an optimal inflation tax requires commitment by rules in a sense that has no counterpart in the dynamic theory of ordinary excise taxes the reason time consistency fails in a monetary economy is that nominal assets should from a welfare maximizing point of view always be taxed away via an immediate inflation in a kind of capital levy this emerges as a new possibility when money is introduced into an economy without capital

understanding the spectrum of residential energy saving behaviours french evidence using disaggregated data analysing household energy saving behaviours is crucial to improve energy consumption predictions and energy policy making how should we quantitatively measure them what are their determinants this study explores the main factors influencing residential energy saving behaviours based on a bottom up multivariate statistical approach using data from the recent french phebus survey firstly we assess energy saving behaviours on a one dimension scale using irt secondly we use linear regression with an innovative variable selection method via adaptive lasso to tease out the effects of both macro and micro factors on the behavioural score the results highlight the impact of five main attributes incentivizing energy saving behaviours based on cross variable analyses energy price household income education level age of head of household and dwelling energy performance in addition our results suggest that the analysis of the inverted u shape impact of age enables the expansion of the energy consumption life cycle theory to energy saving behaviours abstract analysing household energy saving behaviours is crucial to improve energy consumption predictions and energy policy making how should we quantitatively measure them what are their determi nants this study explores the main factors influencing residential energy saving behaviours based on a bottom up multivariate statistical approach using data from the recent french phebus survey firstly we assess energy saving behaviours on a one dimension scale using irt secondly we use linear regression with an innovative variable selection method via adaptive lasso to tease out the effects of both macro and micro factors on the behavioural score the results highlight the impact of five main attributes incentivizing energy saving behaviours based on cross variable analyses energy price household income education level age of head of household and dwelling energy performance in addition our results suggest that the analysis of the inverted u shape impact of age enables the expansion of the energy consumption life cycle theory to energy saving behaviours

electricity demand in tunisia this paper examines the global electricity demand in tunisia as a function of gross domestic product in constant price the degree of urbanization the average annual temperature and the real electricity price per kwh this demand will be examined employing annual data over a period spanning almost thirty one years from 1976 to 2006 a long run relationship between the variables under consideration is determined using the vector autoregressive regression the empirical results suggest that the electricity demand in tunisia is sensitive to its past value any changes in gross domestic product and electricity price the electricity price effects have a negative impact on long run electricity consumption however the gross domestic product and the past value of electricity consumption have a positive effect moreover the causality test reveals a unidirectional relationship between price and electricity consumption our empirical findings are effective to policy makers to maintain the electricity consumption in tunisia by using the appropriate strategy

short and long run elasticities of gasoline demand in india an empirical analysis using cointegration techniques abstract in developing countries like india consumption of petroleum products has implications on its balance of payments economic growth and fiscal deficit gasoline is one of the prime petroleum products in this paper the relationship between gasoline demand national income and price of gasoline is empirically examined using cointegration and error correction techniques the time frame of the analysis is from 1972 1973 to 1993 1994 it has been found that gasoline demand is likely to increase significantly for a given increase in the gross domestic product the increase will be larger in the long run 2 682 than in the short run 1 178 gasoline demand is relatively inelastic to price changes both in the long and short terms the error correction model has shown that gasoline demand adjusts to their respective long run equilibrium at a relatively slow rate with about 28 of adjustment taking place in the first year

the ex post impact of an energy tax on household energy demand this paper presents an econometric study dealing with household demand for energy in the netherlands the main objective of the paper is to present an estimation of the actual impact of an already implemented energy tax introduced in the netherlands in 1996 the approach differs from the existing literature in that 1 it uses panel data for the same period in which the tax was introduced and 2 it estimates a demand function that controls for a large set of variables such as outside temperature type of house and of house insulation household cooking behavior and an extensive number of durable goods and electrical appliances the study concludes that in the short term the energy tax had a small but significant impact on energy consumption in the netherlands concretely the yearly average demand reduction was of 8 for electricity and 4 4 for gas additionally the influence of variables other than price and income on household energy demand is discussed using this information the impact that the energy tax had on household energy use can be compared with the energy reduction that could have been achieved when using other policy instruments

a review of time use models of residential electricity demand residential electricity demand in most european countries accounts for a major proportion of overall electricity consumption the timing of residential electricity demand has significant impacts on carbon emissions and system costs this paper reviews the data and methods used in time use studies in the context of residential electricity demand modelling it highlights key issues which are likely to become more topical for research on the timing of electricity demand following the roll out of smart metres

energy demand and environmental taxes the case of greece the purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects that energy taxes may have on reducing environmental pollution in greece we study the demand for residential energy for the period 1965 1998 and on the basis of these estimates we make forecasts for co2 emissions in the coming years furthermore we develop alternative scenarios for tax changes and study their effects on co2 emissions according to our findings the harmonization of the greek energy taxes to the average european union levels implies an increase of total co2 emissions by 6 annually if taxes are raised however to the highest european union levels the co2 emissions are restricted significantly these empirical findings may indicate that environmental taxation cannot be the unique instrument for combating pollution

electricity consumption in g7 countries a panel cointegration analysis of residential demand elasticities this article applies recently developed panel unit root and panel cointegration techniques to estimate the long run and short run income and price elasticities for residential demand for electricity in g7 countries the panel results indicate that in the long run residential demand for electricity is price elastic and income inelastic the study concludes that from an environmental perspective there is potential to use pricing policies in the g7 countries to curtail residential electricity demand and thus curb carbon emissions in the long run

baseline of the projection under a structural change in energy demand abstract this article investigates the long term energy demand and energy policy measures when undergoing structural changes in energy demand initially the statistical test shows the possibility of the structural change from the late 2000s therefore we developed the energy demand model to forecast the energy demand by 2030 that considers the structural change the results show that there may be a 12 reduction in the energy demand in 2030 compared to the reference case in the japanese government s outlook which is equal to about 86 0 of the effect of the planned policy measures by the government but also that it is difficult to achieve energy originated co2 emissions in the national target our analysis suggests that mitigation policies are required but those in the planned policy measures are not completely required to achieve the goal

the influences of financial and non financial factors on energy saving behaviour a field experiment in japan abstract this study examines the influences of financial and non financial factors on electricity conservation behaviour a random sample of 236 japanese households participated in the field experiment and the participants were offered two interventions such as monetary rewards depending on their reduction in electricity consumption and comparative feedback the average saving rates of the i reward intervention group 5 9 and the ii reward with comparative feedback group 8 2 are statistically larger than those of the iii control group 1 7 our study demonstrates the following first our econometric analysis confirmed a significant response by households to financial incentives but a more inconclusive response to the treatment that provided non financial additional information second we found a positive influence of treatment externalities across time and households on energy saving third there is a heterogeneous treatment effect in the reward intervention group with the households having a high new ecological paradigm nep score being more likely to respond to the reward programme and save electricity than those that do not finally and most interestingly differences in responses to the questionnaire before and after the experiment suggest that the participants had underestimated the marginal costs of saving electricity before they actually started to do so

renewable energy consumption co2 emissions and oil prices in the g7 countries abstract economic and societal issues related to energy security and global warming is placing greater emphasis on the consumption of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates an empirical model of renewable energy consumption for the g7 countries panel cointegration estimates show that in the long term increases in real gdp per capita and co2 per capita are found to be major drivers behind per capita renewable energy consumption these results are robust across two different panel cointegration estimators oil price increases have a smaller although negative impact on renewable energy consumption deviations from equilibrium are driven mostly by the error correction term as opposed to short term shocks short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take anywhere from between 1 3 years france and 7 3 years japan to correct

electricity demand and conservation potential in the chinese nonmetallic mineral products industry newhuadu business school research fund ministry of education foundation 10jzd0018 10jbg013 china sustainable energy program g 1103 13921 national social science foundation 09zd050

how many times again will we examine the energy income nexus using a limited range of traditional econometric tools during the last three decades following closely the developments in econometric theory energy and environmental economists have empirically examined the energy income nexus for different countries and time periods however today in spite of the growing interest in this area the state of knowledge is still controversial and unsettled this viewpoint paper attempts to highlight some of the issues related to the existing literature on the long run relationship and causality between energy consumption and economic growth in particular it discusses how it is difficult to make policy recommendations on the basis of inconsistent and conflicting results in the published literature on the subject in order to do so the paper first illustrates the increasing trend in the number of studies published in this area providing also a brief comparison of the conventional methods used to estimate the energy income nexus it then deals with new directions and different viewpoints on the same issue

optimal time consistent government debt maturity this paper develops a model of optimal debt maturity in which the government cannot issue statecontingent debt as the literature has established if the government can perfectly commit to fiscal policy it fully insulates the economy against government spending shocks by purchasing short term assets and issuing long term debt these positions are quantitatively very large relative to gdp and do not need to be actively managed by the government our main result is that these conclusions are not robust when lack of commitment is introduced under lack of commitment large and tilted debt positions are very expensive to finance ex ante since they ex post exacerbate the government s problem stemming from a lack of commitment in contrast a flat maturity structure minimizes the cost entailed by a lack of commitment though this structure also limits the ability to insure against shocks and increases the volatility of fiscal policy distortions we show that the optimal time consistent maturity structure is nearly flat because reducing average borrowing costs is quantitatively more important for welfare than reducing fiscal policy volatility thus under lack of commitment the government actively manages its debt positions and can approximate optimal policy by confining its debt instruments to consols

on the electricity shortage price and electricity theft nexus abstract pakistan is facing severe electricity shortfall of its history since 2006 several measures have been implemented in order to mitigate electricity shortage the focus has been on raising the installed capacity of electricity generation and transmission the present policy results in expensive thermal electricity generation mostly using expensive and environmentally hazardous furnace oil and inability of utilities to recover their cost of supply although there is unprecedented rise in electricity tariffs this study concentrates on the electricity demand and traces the relationship between electricity shortfalls tariff rate and electricity theft in the background of recent electricity crisis using the data for the period 1985 2010 we employed the granger causality test through error correction model and out of sample causality through variance decomposition method empirical evidence shows that electricity theft greatly influences electricity shortfalls through lowering investment and inefficient use of electricity the study concludes that electricity crisis cannot be handled without combating rampant electricity theft in the country

the impact of systematic changes in weather on the supply and demand of beverages abstract weather especially temperature plays an important role in determining the supply and demand for a vast variety of goods and services though the economic impact of extreme weather is often measured and reported the impact of systematic changes in weather such as long term temperature trends or short term heat and cold waves are seldom quantified in this research we posit that such systematic changes in temperature impact the profitability of firms and we develop a two step econometric model to quantify the impact the proposed two step model estimates the impact that temperature has on the profitability of firms and partitions this impact into a long term and a short term component we take up the case of six liquid refreshment beverages lrbs for illustrating the impact that systematic change in temperature has on demand the results indicate that a the demand for lrbs is increasing by about 0 21 63 million gallons from year to year on account of the rising temperature trend and b there is an asymmetry in the effect of a heat wave versus a cold wave on beverage demand i e the weekly demand for beverages increases by about 2 1 per degree on account of a heat wave while the weekly demand decreases by only 0 4 per degree on account of a cold wave we also illustrate how these estimates of the impact of the long term temperature trends could be linked to strategic decisions such as facility location and the estimates of the impact of the short term temperature aberrations could be linked to operational decisions such as the inventory order quantity in a week when there is a temperature aberration

residential energy demand in the united states analysis using static and dynamic approaches abstract the residential sector is the main consumer of energy in the united states and reducing energy consumption is an important goal for policymakers in each state to know how reducing residential energy demand could be achieved this study develops a set of static and dynamic models to investigate and identify the impact of socio economic and demographic characteristics building age energy prices and weather conditions on residential energy demand at the state level from 2005 to 2013 next this study proposes two alternative scenarios to reduce residential energy demand based on the most precise model for every 10 000 dollars of per capita income in each state 1 increasing residential electricity price by 1 cent per kw h and 2 decreasing average building age by 1 in the first scenario the findings indicate that annual residential electricity demand would decrease by 7 3 on average with the highest reductions in washington 11 9 north dakota 10 9 and idaho 9 7 in the second scenario residential gas demand would decrease by an average of 15 8 annually with the highest reduction in connecticut 33 2 followed by new york 33 0 and massachusetts 30 7 these proposed scenarios assist policymakers in optimizing decisions and investments to reduce residential energy consumption

residential electricity consumption in seattle abstract recent empirical research for different regions of the united states indicates that residential electricity may be an inferior good whose consumption is negatively correlated with income that is a provocative result that runs counter to what many earlier econometric studies indicate given that it makes sense to examine how electricity consumption behaves in different regional service areas even if residential electricity is an inferior good whose usage declines as income rises there is no guarantee that this will be the case across all service areas this study examines residential electricity consumption for seattle washington the largest metropolitan economy in the northwestern region of the united states results from a dynamic error correction modeling approach indicate that residential electricity consumption reacts in statistically significant manners to changes in real price real income and cold weather in the short run residential electricity is a normal good in this metropolitan economy in the long run residential electricity appears to be an inferior good in seattle all else equal whenever real per capita income growth exceeds 1 2 per capita residential electricity usage declines in seattle

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

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

information and communication technologies a new round of household electrification abstract information and communication technologies icts increasingly permeate everyday life in industrialized societies the aim of this paper is to explore ict related transformations of everyday practices and discuss the implications particularly for residential electricity consumption the present socio technical changes are seen in a historical perspective and it is argued that the integration of ict into everyday practices can be seen as a new round of household electrification comparable to earlier rounds that also led to higher electricity consumption a case study carried out in denmark in 2007 2008 explores the present changes in everyday life based on qualitative interviews the study focuses on people s ways of integrating icts into their everyday practices on any significant changes in these practices and on the influence of the changed practices on electricity consumption the paper concludes with a discussion on the implications for energy policy

capital taxation and ownership when markets are incomplete this paper is a normative investigation of the properties of optimal capital taxation in the neoclassical growth model with aggregate shocks and incomplete markets the model features a representative agent economy with linear taxes on labor and capital i first allow the government to trade only a real risk free bond optimal policy has the following features labor taxes fluctuate very little capital taxes are volatile and feature a positive negative spike after a negative positive shock to the government budget and capital taxes average to roughly zero across periods i then consider the implications of allowing the government to trade capital

understanding the spectrum of domestic energy consumption empirical evidence from france abstract this article focuses on residential energy consumption in france using a bottom up statistical approach this analysis explores determinants of household energy consumption using data from the most recent national housing survey the primary objective is to tease out the impacts of various factors on the domestic energy consumption spectrum across different population groups the aim of this approach is to neutralize conventional factors affecting energy consumption age of house total area etc to finely analyze the impact of other determinants including those relating to household characteristics and other control variables first we define homogeneous consumption groups of households by using multivariate statistical techniques namely the multiple correspondence analysis and ascending hierarchical classification second we use standard ols regression to explore the effects of various factors on domestic energy consumption among homogeneous groups of households this multivariate analysis exercise has led us to identify four main consumption typologies results revealed that energy prices were the most important factors determining domestic energy consumption in addition this study showed that occupant characteristics significantly affect domestic energy use results of this research call for combine all efforts multiple strategies and smart policies to incorporate household and consumption behaviors in managing domestic energy consumption

credit cards as spending facilitating stimuli a conditioning interpretation four experiments and one study were conducted to test the hypothesis that stimuli associated with spending can elicit spending responses in all experiments credit card stimuli were either present or absent in situations in which subjects were given an opportunity to spend credit card stimuli directed spending such that the probability speed or magnitude of spending was enhanced in the presence of credit card cues a conditioning explanation was used to interpret the results

regionally varying and regionally uniform electricity pricing policies compared across four usage categories the objective of our research is to predict how electricity demand varies spatially between status quo regionally uniform electricity pricing and hypothetical regionally varying electricity pricing across usage categories we summarize the empirical results of a case study of electricity demand in south korea with three key findings and their related implications first the price elasticities of electricity demand differ across usage categories specifically electricity demands for manufacturing and retail uses are price inelastic and close to unit elastic respectively while those for agricultural and residential uses are not statistically significant this information is important in designing energy policy because higher electricity prices could reduce electricity demands for manufacturing and retail uses resulting in slower growth in those sectors second spatial spillovers in electricity demand vary across uses understanding the spatial structure of electricity demand provides useful information to energy policy makers for anticipating changes in demand across regions via regionally varying electricity pricing for different uses third simulation results suggest that spatial variations among electricity demands by usage category under a regionally varying electricity pricing policy differ from those under a regionally uniform electricity pricing policy differences in spatial changes between the policies provide information for developing a realistic regionally varying electricity pricing policy according to usage category

state level renewable electricity policies and reductions in carbon emissions abstract a wide range of renewable electricity policies has been adopted at the state level in the united states but to date there has been no large scale empirical assessment of the effect of these policies on carbon emissions such an assessment is important because scholars have pointed out that increases in renewable electricity will not necessarily lead to declines in carbon emissions we examine the effects of a range of policies across 39 states we find significant and robust decreases in carbon emissions associated with the introduction of public benefit funds a form of carbon tax adopted by 19 states to date our aim in this paper is not to provide a final judgment on these policies many of which may not have been in place long enough to show strong effects but to shift the attention of the research community away from proximate measures such as increases in clean electricity generation and onto measurement of lower carbon emissions

the determinants of domestic energy consumption in france energy modes habitat households and life cycles this article explores the question of domestic energy consumption it concentrates on the example of france and using micro data from the 2002 and 2006 national housing surveys conducted by insee national institute of statistics and economic studies the empirical analysis is divided into three stages the first verifies the correspondences between modes of energy consumption household profiles and housing profiles in order to classify consumer mode types the second looks at the stabilities and variations over time of each of these types the last seeks to identify the causes of these changes the findings reveal sharp divergences between the factors affecting global consumption consumption per m2 and per person these variations can be explained by the impact of the demographic characteristics of households residential mobility and life cycles therefore these findings demonstrate the flexibility over time of domestic energy consumption which is still too often approached as a static variable solely associated with building characteristics they need to be taken further through a longitudinal and multidisciplinary approach to energy consumption patterns

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

testing viability of cross subsidy using time variant price elasticities of industrial demand for electricity indian experience abstract indian electric tariffs are characterized by very high rates for industrial and commercial classes to permit subsidized electric consumption by residential and agricultural customers we investigate the viability of this policy using monthly data for 1997 2003 on electric consumption by a few large industrial customers under the aegis of a small distribution company in the state of uttar pradesh for a given price cost ratio it can be shown that if the cross subsidizing class electricity demand is sufficiently elastic increasing the class rates fail to recover incremental cross subsidy necessary to support additional revenues for subsidized classes this suboptimality is tested by individually estimating time variant price elasticities of demand for these industrial customers using box cox and linear regressions we find that at least for some of these customers cross subsidy was suboptimal prior to as late as october 2001 when rates were changed following reforms

study on cross strait energy cooperation under the new circumstance abstract the paper systematically reviews the conditions of energy supply and demand in taiwan and further investigates the energy issues it has been confronted with as well as its objective of energy policy adjustment in view of the trend of supply side reform in mainland china energy sector under the new normal economy and the background of the belt and road initiative the paper points out the significance and development prospects of cross strait energy cooperation main contributions of this paper are by forecasting the future trend of power demand growth in taiwan the power shortage in the future of taiwan is analyzed on this basis the paper analyzes the existing contradictions between taiwan s energy transition policy and its current problem of power shortage and the feasibility as well as the significance of electricity transmission to taiwan for the first time

rational choice under an imperfect ability to choose we consider an individual who lacks the information processing capacity required for a direct comparison of all feasible allocations instead of finding at once a best allocation the individual myopically adjusts his current allocation toward higher utility the individual makes adjustment errors inversely proportional to his ability to choose we compare the stationary state of this process with the standard model we see how an imperfect ability to choose modifies both positive and normative predictions of the standard model and how the standard model can be obtained from our more general one as the special case corresponding to perfect ability jel d 11

saving power to conserve your reputation the effectiveness of private versus public information environmental damage is often an unseen byproduct of other activities disclosing environmental impact privately to consumers can reduce the costs and or increase the moral benefits of conservation behaviors while publicly disclosing such information can provide an additional motivation for conservation cultivating a green reputation in a unique field experiment in the residence halls at the university of california los angeles we test the efficacy of detailed private and public information on electricity conservation private information was given through real time appliance level feedback and social norms over usage and public information was given through a publicly visible conservation rating our analysis is based on 7 120 daily observations about energy use from heating and cooling lights and plug load for 66 rooms collected over an academic year our results suggest that while private information alone was ineffective public information combined with private information motivated a 20 percent reduction in electricity consumption achieved through lower use of heating and cooling public information was particularly effective for above median energy users

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

price and expenditure elasticities of residential energy demand during urbanization an empirical analysis based on the household level survey data in china abstract urbanization one of the most obvious characteristics of economic growth in china has an apparent lock in effect on residential energy consumption pattern it is expected that residential sector would become a major force that drives china s energy consumption after urbanization process we estimate price and expenditure elasticities of residential energy demand using data from china s residential energy consumption survey crecs that covers households at different income levels and from different regional and social groups empirical results from the almost ideal demand system model are in accordance with the basic expectations the demands for electricity natural gas and transport fuels are inelastic in the residential sector due to the unreasonable pricing mechanism we further investigate the sensitivities of different income groups to prices of the three types of energy policy simulations indicate that rationalizing energy pricing mechanism is an important guarantee for energy sustainable development during urbanization finally we put forward suggestions on energy pricing reform in the residential sector based on characteristics of china s undergoing urbanization process and the current energy consumption situations

estimating short and long term residential demand for electricity new evidence from sri lanka this study investigates the short run dynamics and long run equilibrium relationship between residential electricity demand and factors influencing demand per capita income price of electricity price of kerosene oil and price of liquefied petroleum gas using annual data for sri lanka for the period 1960 2007 the study uses unit root cointegration and error correction models the long run demand elasticities of income own price and price of kerosene oil substitute were estimated to be 0 78 0 62 and 0 14 respectively the short run elasticities for the same variables were estimated to be 032 0 16 and 0 10 respectively liquefied petroleum lp gas is a substitute for electricity only in the short run with an elasticity 0 09 the main findings of the paper support the following 1 increasing the price of electricity is not the most effective tool to reduce electricity consumption 2 existing subsidies on electricity consumption can be removed without reducing government revenue 3 the long run income elasticity of demand shows that any future increase in household incomes is likely to significantly increase the demand for electricity and 4 any power generation plans which consider only current per capita consumption and population growth should be revised taking into account the potential future income increases in order to avoid power shortages ill the country

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

lifestyle factors in u s residential electricity consumption abstract a multivariate statistical approach to lifestyle analysis of residential electricity consumption is described and illustrated factor analysis of selected variables from the 2005 u s residential energy consumption survey recs identified five lifestyle factors reflecting social and behavioral patterns associated with air conditioning laundry usage personal computer usage climate zone of residence and tv use these factors were also estimated for 2001 recs data multiple regression analysis using the lifestyle factors yields solutions accounting for approximately 40 of the variance in electricity consumption for both years by adding the household and market characteristics of income local electricity price and access to natural gas variance accounted for is increased to approximately 54 income contributed 1 unique variance to the models indicating that lifestyle factors reflecting social and behavioral patterns better account for consumption differences than income geographic segmentation of factor scores shows distinct clusters of consumption and lifestyle factors particularly in suburban locations the implications for tailored policy and planning interventions are discussed in relation to lifestyle issues

the residential demand for electricity in australia an application of the bounds testing approach to cointegration this paper reports estimates of the long and short run elasticities of residential demand for electricity in australia using the bounds testing procedure to cointegration within an autoregressive distributive lag framework in the long run we find that income and own price are the most important determinants of residential electricity demand while temperature is significant some of the time and gas prices are insignificant our estimates of long run income elasticity and price elasticity of demand are consistent with previous studies although they are towards the lower end of existing estimates as expected the short run elasticities are much smaller than the long run elasticities and the coefficients on the error correction coefficients are small consistent with the fact that in the short run energy appliances are fixed

the impact of singapore s residential electricity conservation efforts and the way forward insights from the bounds testing approach abstract this article provides fresh empirical evidence of residential electricity demand in singapore over the period of 1980 2014 using the bounds testing procedure to cointegration the residential electricity demand comprises of income price temperature rainy days old age dependency and the impact of energy efficiency policies our results are consistent with previous studies where income and price elasticities are inelastic hence from a policy perspective subsidies will not be effective in reducing electricity demand we also found that old age dependency is an important determinant that reduces electricity consumption at least in the short run suggesting that policies that target the younger population may bring more savings the model findings suggest that in general energy efficiency interventions introduced after 2007 which comprises of both informational strategies and efficiency standards were effective in reducing household electricity consumption however in order to realise greater electricity reduction potential policy efforts have to intensify into the future with the main objectives being to permanently change energy habits and consider the role of hassle costs when rolling out energy saving measures

the nerc fan a retrospective analysis of the nerc summary forecasts summary forecasts of the growth in demand for electricity published annually since 1974 by the north american electric reliability council have proved to be excessively optimistic although the projected growth rate has been revised downward each year should forecasters have been able to do a better job of predicting the slowdown in demand growth since the early 1970s should they have responded more quickly as actual demand growth fell short of projections our objective in this article is to provide some partial answers to these questions by comparing the published nerc summary forecasts nsf with benchmark forecasts provided by simple models representing well established techniques one alternative forecast is provided by the exponential smoothing box jenkins method es bj and another by a simple dynamic demand equation that uses real price and real income as explanatory variables we conclude that relative to es bj the nsf were not excessively optimistic relative to the simple demand equation