an analysis of feed in tariff remuneration models implications for renewable energy investment recent experience from around the world suggests that feed in tariffs fits are the most effective policy to encourage the rapid and sustained deployment of renewable energy there are several different ways to structure a fit policy each with its own strengths and weaknesses this paper presents an overview of seven different ways to structure the remuneration of a fit policy divided into two broad categories those in which remuneration is dependent on the electricity price and those that remain independent from it this paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of these different fit models and concludes with an analysis of these design options with a focus on their implications both for investors and for society

how traders influence their neighbours modelling social evolutionary processes and peer effects in agricultural trade networks abstract marketing channel choices in agricultural trade networks affect the networks overall performance and influence rural livelihoods this study identifies key determinants of these choices among natural rubber traders in indonesia to evaluate four policy scenarios and their potential effects on rural incomes since traders marketing decisions are based on past interactions resulting trade networks are formed in recursive processes and can be understood as complex adaptive systems due to inherent endogeneity in these systems process based approaches such as agent based modelling abm can be effective in understanding them using a self gathered primary dataset from jambi province indonesia we implement and parameterise an abm to simulate the formation of the rubber trading network and analyse the effects on rural livelihoods of four hypothetical policy scenarios improved micro credit availability increased access to education better infrastructure and transportation capacity and market information availability the model is calibrated through a genetic algorithm which maximises the similarity between the simulated network and the actual network observed in the data results indicate that sellers decisions on a buyer are primarily determined by debt obligations and past peer interactions the most influential sellers have a similar level of formal education as their peers and live in close physical proximity results of the policy scenario analysis suggests that policies aimed at reducing sellers dependence on credit from buyers and increasing education are the most effective policies for improving value chains and reducing poverty in the region under consideration

the demand for assets through a low interest rate environment asset demand is important in many areas of economics to investigate this we estimate a globally flexible dynamic fourier asset demand specification and calculate morishima elasticities of substit

european union commitment towards res market penetration from the first legislative acts to the publication of the recent guidelines on state aid 2014 2020 during the last three decades the european union eu commitment towards the renewable energy sources res market penetration has been very complex involving several aspects pertaining to the economic and political action of member states this paper seeks to overview the historical development of the legislative eu framework including a description of the main financial programmes established and managed by the eu directorates general moreover the work will proceed with the picture of some investment funds ad hoc created for res undertakings and managed by the european investment bank eib in collaboration with the eu or other foreign bank institutes the delicate matter of state aid is discussed paying particular attention to the transition from 1999 to the recent eu guidelines 2014 2020 as these wider scopes could lead to an effective and well functioning european energy single market focusing the attention on three case studies we have produced final remarks on the correct functioning of the eu political framework giving attention to important improvements needed at infrastructural level the eu awareness of the power grid limits that are currently recorded in europe has lead to further reforms of the legislation as shown by the new eu guidelines that will probably support member states in dealing with the infrastructure challenge

land degradation drought and food security in a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands a bio economic model with market imperfections abstract this paper presents a bio economic model of andit tid a severely degraded crop livestock farming system with high population density and good market access in the highlands of ethiopia land degradation population growth stagnant technology and drought threaten food security in the area drought or weather risk appears to have increased in recent years the bio economic model is used to analyse the combined effects of land degradation population growth market imperfections and increased risk of drought on household production welfare and food security we find that the indirect effects of drought on household welfare through the impact on crop and livestock prices are larger than the direct production effects of drought provision and adoption of credit for fertiliser although risky in itself may lead to increased grain production and improved household welfare and food security provision of credit may have a negative effect on conservation incentives but this effect may be mitigated by linking a conservation requirement to the provision of credit for fertiliser

supplementing an emissions tax by a feed in tariff for renewable electricity to address learning spillovers abstract in the presence of learning spillovers related to renewable energy technologies an optimal strategy to mitigate climate change should complement an emissions tax by a subsidy for renewables this article addresses the question how such subsidy should be designed it is shown that the widely used approach of a revenue neutral fixed feed in tariff can yield an optimal outcome under restrictive conditions only it has to be adapted continuously as the electricity price changes moreover funding the tariff by a surcharge on the electricity price has important implications for the design of the emission tax the optimal tax rate has to be below the pigovian level differentiated across fossil fuels and adapted over time as the patterns of technological development change these requirements may pose a formidable challenge for practical decision making however it is important to point out that the eventual choices made with respect to the design and funding of a feed in tariff have to be based on a careful and more comprehensive policy assessment including inter alia economic effects beyond the electricity sector and existing institutional constraints

physical market determinants of the price of crude oil and the market premium abstract we analyze the determinants of the real price of crude oil by means of an equilibrium correction model over the last two decades where we focus on the aspects of the physical market that impact on the clearing price we find that two cointegrating relations affect the changes in prices one refers to opec s behavior attempting to control prices using its market power and quotas the other to the coverage rate of oecd expected future demand using inventory behaviors we derive a forecasting equation for the change in oil prices which we use to assess the speculative elements of the price increases of the period 2000 05 we show that worries alien to the physical markets were the causes of the increase in oil prices and we quantify their overall impact

renewables portfolio standard a means for trade with electricity from renewable energy sources abstract this paper discusses the main support mechanisms for enhancing the deployment of renewable energies re implemented in different industrialised countries the focus is on the electricity sector where deregulation and liberalisation has led to market opening and introduction of competition in the formerly strongly regulated power market under open market conditions price regulation mechanisms in favour of renewable energies which were used by many governments to support renewables tend to be considered as being inappropriate because they lead to distortions in competition and are difficult to abolish once market participants got used to them therefore the idea of creating a demand for re instead of supporting supply is gradually spreading this paper concentrates on the renewables portfolio standard rps which is a considerably new instrument that is aimed on the demand side and has only recently entered discussion it is based on legislatively mandating a percentage share of electricity generated from renewables and proved with certificates before this new means is discussed in more detail a short overview of the existing supply side mechanism is given to point out the different approach in addition examples of some countries already having some experience with the rps are given to show the present status of implementation derived from these theoretical considerations and practical experiences the paper discusses possible impacts on market participants they depend strongly on the outline of the rps and the organisation of the electricity sector adopted as a conclusion the introduction of an rps cannot alone solve the problem of enhancing the use of re however the advantages are a higher degree of competition among generators or developers of re technology more freedom of choice concerning the options for meeting the requirement and perhaps less government expenditures also experiences with national certificate trading within the rps system could ease the way for international or at least european trading systems like the emissions trading as proposed in the kyoto protocol

carbon tax simulations using a household demand model abstract the main objective of this paper is to analyse consumer response and welfare effects due to changes in energy or environmental policy to achieve this objective we formulate and estimate an econometric model for non durable consumer demand in sweden that utilises micro and macro data in the simulations we consider two revenue neutral scenarios that both imply a doubling of the co2 tax one that returns the revenues in the form of a lower vat and one that subsidise public transport one conclusion from the simulations is that the co2 tax has regional distribution effects in the sense that household living in sparsely populated areas carry a larger share of the tax burden

retail sweep programs and monetary asset substitution abstract this paper examines how retail sweep programs affect monetary asset substitution estimates from the fourier flexible form reveal that sweeping generates systematic and sometimes large distortions in estimated bank depositor substitution elasticities

the production tax credit for wind turbine powerplants is an ineffective incentive abstract the us energy policy act epact of 1992 created a production tax credit of 1 5 kwh available for 10 years to promote certain renewable energy technologies including wind turbines this paper argues that the impact of the wind turbine production tax credit will be minimal the argument depends entirely on the nature of the project finance structure used by the private power industry for wind turbine development we show that tax credits can only be absorbed by equity investors if there is a large fraction of equity in the project capital structure this raises the financing cost of wind turbine projects compared to conventional power technology which relies on a large fraction of low cost debt if the tax credit were paid as a cash subsidy the capital structure could be shifted to low cost debt and financing costs could be significantly reduced

when will fossil fuel reserves be diminished crude oil coal and gas are the main resources for world energy supply the size of fossil fuel reserves and the dilemma that when non renewable energy will be diminished is a fundamental and doubtful question that needs to be answered this paper presents a new formula for calculating when fossil fuel reserves are likely to be depleted and develops an econometrics model to demonstrate the relationship between fossil fuel reserves and some main variables the new formula is modified from the klass model and thus assumes a continuous compound rate and computes fossil fuel reserve depletion times for oil coal and gas of approximately 35 107 and 37 years respectively this means that coal reserves are available up to 2112 and will be the only fossil fuel remaining after 2042 in the econometrics model the main exogenous variables affecting oil coal and gas reserve trends are their consumption and respective prices between 1980 and 2006 the models for oil and gas reserves unexpectedly show a positive and significant relationship with consumption while presenting a negative and significant relationship with price the econometrics model for coal reserves however expectedly illustrates a negative and significant relationship with consumption and a positive and significant relationship with price consequently huge reserves of coal and low level coal prices in comparison to oil and gas make coal one of the main energy substitutions for oil and gas in the future under the assumption of coal as a clean energy source

energy tax credits and housing improvement this paper investigates whether federal and state tax credits allowed to households who make energy saving improvements to their residence lead to an increase in improvement activity a two period utility maximization model of household behaviour is used to determine the theoretical influence of tax credits energy prices and other factors on the optimal magnitude of conservation capital improvement regressions using various qualitative measures of conservation improvement as the dependent variable are estimated using household level energy consumption and improvement data consistent with evidence from earlier surveys the empirical results do not support the hypothesis that energy tax credits lead to more widespread or more extensive energy conservation improvement activity

who s afraid of atmospheric stabilisation making the link between energy resources and climate change abstract the distribution of fossil fuel reserves and resources between different regions and deposits has strong implications for climate change economics and policy the task of stabilising the atmosphere is intimately linked to the question of long term energy supplies as conventional petroleum reserves deplete notwithstanding debates about the scope for reserve extension through continued exploration and development it suggests a supply side component to complement the consumption orientation of existing climate policies the task is to ensure that investment and innovation moves towards the low carbon frontier instead of the high carbon frontier this also implies that the opec countries have little to fear about the long run impact of climate change policy the priority is to deter development of more carbon intensive unconventional petroleum deposits and technologies and to ensure that the existing trends to diversify power generation sources continue and extend more widely over time supply side constraints will not solve the climate problem in themselves but they make the task a lot easier if the opportunities are taken

dealing with uncertainty in agent based simulation farm level modeling of adaptation to climate change in southwest germany climate change will most likely confront agricultural producers with natural economic and political conditions that have not previously been observed and are largely uncertain as a consequence extrapolation from past data reaches its limits and a process based analysis of farmer adaptation is required simulation of changes in crop yields using crop growth models is a first step in that direction however changes in crop yields are only one pathway through which climate change affects agricultural production a meaningful process based analysis of farmer adaptation requires a whole farm analysis at the farm level we use a highly disaggregated mathematical programming model to analyze farm level climate change adaptation for a mountainous area in southwest germany regional level results are obtained by simulating each full time farm holding in the study area we address parameter uncertainty and model underdetermination using a cautious calibration approach and a comprehensive uncertainty analysis we deal with the resulting computational burden using efficient experimental designs and high performance computing we show that in our study area shifted crop management time slots can have potentially significant effects on agricultural supply incomes and various policy objectives promoted under german and european environmental policy schemes the simulated effects are robust against model uncertainty and underline the importance of a comprehensive assessment of climate change impacts beyond merely looking at crop yield changes our simulations demonstrate how farm level models can contribute to a process based analysis of climate change adaptation if they are embedded into a systematic framework for treating inherent model uncertainty

an overview of afghanistan s trends toward renewable and sustainable energies relentless environmental concerns steep hike in fossil fuel price and increasing demand of non renewable fossil fuels consumption have dramatically increased global search for alternative energies the world requests ever growing energy supplies to sustain economic development and improvement renewable and sustainable energy ever more becoming accepted and established a decisive place in energy system of the word due to ecologicallyresponsiveinsight and a decrease in equipment expenses consistent with its endowment of energy resources each country tried to figure out its own energy portfolio and employing technologies which are economically viable and socially equitable and have minimal adverse impacts this article attempts to review all possible renewable energy sources as a substitute of the current energy profile coal natural gas and petroleum in afghanistan the study found afghanistan power sector as one of the least development sector which its inadequate status is preventing the development of the country as well eventhough the energy is not the only panacea but cost effective energies in abundant quantity and quality on sustainable foundation will help to reach to demand socio economic development the results indicate that afghanistan due to its natural and geographical situations enjoys important prospective for renewable energy bases such as solar wind geothermal and micro hydro power renewable energies could offer the ultimate solution for afghanistan in general and rural areas in actual but switch to altered forms of energy is grounded in multifaceted interations the study indicates number of issues such as great upfront charges absence of providers insufficient funding appliances and feebleindorsed and methodologicalcapability overwhelm and affected the use of renewable energies and technologies in afghanistan however with sufficient investment and practical stages by government andnongovernment agencies and the public encourage these unbound sources could play a vital role not only in afghanistan s energy supply but also in poverty reduction social and political stability and improving living standard

a semi nonparametric approach to the demand for uk monetary assets we estimate an asymptotically ideal model of the demand for uk personal sector monetary assets we use data that are consistent with utility maximizing behaviour and find that uk monetary assets are generally substitutes in use the estimated elasticities of substitution during the 1980s and the early 1990s indicate that a relatively broad monetary aggregate should be used in economic studies the results also suggest that any policy based on interest or user cost elasticities of substitution between financial assets should be based on the morishima elasticities as the allen uzawa calculation can give misleading results

sweep programs and optimal monetary aggregation abstract this paper examines the admissibility of monetary aggregate groupings for the us over 1993 2001 based upon weak separability we investigate the impact of retail and commercial demand deposit sweep programs on the separability of monetary asset groupings weak separability is tested using the swofford whitney and fleissig whitney tests we use varian s measurement error adjustment procedure to eliminate violations of the generalized axiom of revealed preference garp when funds from both retail and commercial demand deposit sweep programs are placed within checkable deposits all groupings narrow and broad pass garp and weak separability for groupings based on conventional money measures tests tend to favor broad aggregates

monetary aggregation and the neutrality of money zisimos koustas this article tests the long run neutrality of money proposition using quarterly u s data over the period from 1960 1 to 1996 2 and the methodology suggested by king and watson 1997 paying particular attention to the integration and cointegration properties of the variables comparisons are made among simple sum divisia and currency equivalent ce monetary aggregates using the anderson et al 1997a 1997b series of divisia and ce monetary aggregates jel e40 e50 c32 i introduction the aim of this article is to investigate a long run question about the role of money in monetary policy whether changes in the conduct of monetary policy influence the growth rate of output as lucas 1996 p 661 puts it so much thought has been devoted to this question and so much evidence is available that one might reasonably assume that it had been solved long ago but this is not the case in fact recently fisher and seater 1993 and king and watson 1997 contribute to the literature on testing quantity theoretic propositions by developing tests using recent advances in the theory of nonstationary regressors and show that meaningful long run neutrality and superneutrality tests can only be constructed if both nominal and real variables satisfy certain nonstationarity conditions and that much of the older literature violates these requirements in this paper in the spirit of serletis and koustas 1998 and koustas and serletis 1999 we test the long run neutrality and superneutrality of money using the king and watson 1997 methodology paying particular attention to the gains that can be achieved by rigorous use of microeconomic and aggregation theoretic foundations in the construction of money measures this is accomplished by making comparisons among simple sum divisia and currency equivalent ce monetary aggregates using the anderson et al 1997a 1997b data see anderson et al 1997a 1997b for more details we also pay attention to the integration and cointegration properties of the variables because meaningful neutrality and superneutrality tests critically depend on such properties the organization of the article is as follows the next section briefly discusses the problem of the definition aggregation of money in section iii we investigate the univariate time series properties of the variables as these properties are relevant for some problems of potential importance in the practical conduct of monetary policy as well as for estimation and hypothesis testing in section iv we test the long run neutrality and superneutrality of money propositions using the king and watson 1997 structural bivariate autoregressive methodology paying particular attention to the integration and cointegration properties of the data the final section concludes ii the many kinds of money the monetary aggregates currently in use by the federal reserve are simple sum indices in which all monetary components are assigned a constant and equal unitary weight this index is m in 1 m sigma sup n sub i 1 x sub i where x sub i is one of the n monetary components of the monetary aggregate m this summation index implies that all monetary components contribute equally to the money total and it views all components as dollar for dollar perfect substitutes there is no question that such an index represents an index of the stock of nominal monetary wealth but cannot in general represent a valid structural economic variable for the services of the quantity of money over the years there has been a steady stream of attempts at properly weighting monetary components within a simple sum aggregate with no theory however any weighting scheme is questionable barnett 1980 derived the theoretical linkage between monetary theory and aggregation and index number theory he applied economic aggregation and index number theory and constructed monetary aggregates based on diewert s 1976 class of superlative quantity index numbers

solar pv where the sun doesn t shine estimating the economic impacts of support schemes for residential pv with detailed net demand profiling abstract countries with low irradiation and solar pv adoption rates are increasingly considering policy support for solar pv although consumer electricity demand and solar generation profiles are often mismatched this paper presents a methodology for policymakers in such conditions to examine more precisely the financial performance of residential solar pv from the consumer perspective as part of an ex ante policy assessment we model a range of prospective policy scenarios and compare policy mechanisms that compensate homeowners for generation those that reduce their upfront costs and those that assist with financing using ireland as a case study the results confirm the intuitive notion that more generous financial remuneration schemes provide quicker payback however we observe that in low irradiance regions there is little difference between upfront grants and feed in tariffs to accelerate payback timeframes we also show the importance of retail tariff structure in consumer payback for solar pv systems with one part tariffs generating shorter paybacks than two part tariff structures although the latter is more likely to secure revenue for electricity infrastructure investment drawing from this analysis the paper proposes some options for the design of policy supports and tariff structures to deliver a sustainable residential renewable electricity system in low irradiance regions

impacts of an ec carbon energy tax and deregulating thermal power supply on co2 so2 and nox emissions emission of co2 so2 and nox are all closely linked to the burning of fossil fuels here we report on simulations done by linking a sectoral european energy model seem covering energy demand in nine western european countries with the emission transport deposition model rains developed by iiasa the study analyses emissions of co2 so2 and nox deposition of sulphur and nitrogen and the extent of areas where the critical load for sulphur is exceeded in year 2000 under four different energy scenarios two different sets of future behavioural patterns for the thermal electric power production sector are considered in one regime called the plan efficient regime the sector is assumed to follow official plans with regard to investment in new capacity in the other regime called the cost efficient regime the thermal power sector is assumed to behave in a cost minimizing manner the effects of the proposed ec carbon energy tax are studied under both regimes giving rise to altogether four scenarios

fertilizer market development a comparative analysis of ethiopia kenya and zambia abstract this article synthesizes case studies from kenya zambia and ethiopia to assess how differences in the implementation of fertilizer marketing policies have affected the costs and risks borne by marketing actors the investment response by private traders and fertilizer consumption financial cost accounting techniques indicate that domestic marketing costs account for 50 or more of farm gate prices the sum of importer wholesaler and retailer profit margins generally account for less than 10 there are opportunities to reduce domestic marketing costs through the following reducing port fees coordinating the timing of fertilizer clearance from the port with up country transport reducing transport costs through port rail and road improvements reducing high fuel taxes and reducing the uncertainty associated with government input distribution programs that impose additional marketing costs on traders estimated reductions in the farm gate price of fertilizer from implementing the full range of options identified in each country range from 11 to 18 price reductions of this magnitude if passed along to farmers would increase farmers effective demand for fertilizer investments in selected publically provided goods often considered outside the scope of fertilizer marketing policy per se strongly affect the costs of fertilizer farmers willingness to pay for it and hence the performance of markets

impact of tax reform on renewable energy and cogeneration projects abstract this study examines the sensitivity of renewable energy and cogeneration project returns to proposed changes in the federal tax code specifically to reforms proposed in 1985 by president reagan we examine six different technologies by defining typical configurations project cash flows are projected over a twelve year horizon and the investor s internal rate of return irr is calculated we calculate changes in irr as various proposed tax changes are assumed to take effect we find that capital intensive projects such as geothermal and small hydro suffer most from proposed tax code changes conversely the least capital intensive projects cogeneration fare best

what will happen to the producer prices for fossil fuels if kyoto is implemented implementation of the kyoto commitments will result in lesser global fossil fuel consumption in 2010 than would occur in the absence of climate policy the paper explores how the consumption change resulting from climate policy implementation could affect the producer prices of fossil fuels the conclusion is that the price impact will be insignificant if the climate policy goals are established credibly and in the near future for that will give rationally behaving fossil fuel producers ample time to adjust production capacity to the changed outlook for future demand it is argued that as long as capacity develops in line with demand prices should remain the same irrespective of the speed and direction of demand change

analysis of renewable energies in european union abstract the paper s main research objective is to analyse the renewable energy sector in the european union member states the first step of the research was to generate clusters of countries based on the share of renewables in total energy produced and the countries energy dependence in order to generate the clusters we applied the k means clustering method based on the data obtained from eurostat by using the statistical package for the social sciences three clusters of countries have been generated in the next step the eu states were ranked based on the following criteria share of renewable energy sources share of renewable electricity share of renewable heating and cooling and share of renewable energy in transport then the main characteristics of the renewable energy policy in each member state have been highlighted

quantitative study on long term global solar photovoltaic market abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between the declines in solar photovoltaic pv module costs and cumulative production silicon prices supply demand imbalance and the presence of lower cost chinese products in global pv market using learning curve model state of market development and its connection with learning is also examined results indicate that learning effect is best measured when supplementing output with silicon prices in the analysis learning rate lr diminishes over the time periods examined thereby suggesting the declining of progress as market reaches maturity the outcomes from the learning curve analysis are subsequently applied to project future uptake of pv worldwide module and electricity costs till 2035 demand for pv is anticipated to remain robust with cumulative installed capacity worldwide projected to reach 659 gw by 2035 at the same time module cost is estimated to decline from 3 8 w in 2006 to 1 78 w in 2035 a reduction of over 50 relative to 2006 level unit cost of electricity from pv is predicted to be in the range of 0 13 kwh to 0 17 kwh by 2035 for the three scenarios analyzed

smart policies to reduce pesticide use and avoid income trade offs an agent based model applied to thai agriculture abstract policy makers in developing countries need better evidence of how changes in pesticide regulation would affect pesticide reduction and farm incomes but there are very few modeling tools that can provide such information the present study develops a new model based on mathematical programming based multi agent system mpmas a simulation software that allows assessing ex ante the impact of alternative pesticide use reduction strategies including combinations of pesticide taxes the introduction of integrated pest management a price premium for safe agricultural produce and subsidies for biopesticides the model is parameterized with farm and plot level data from northern of thailand where the adoption of high value cash crops has been accompanied by a rapid increase in synthetic pesticide use simulation results suggest that a pesticide tax alone has little effect on synthetic pesticide use a smart policy package combining integrated pest management a progressive pesticide tax based on toxicity and subsidies lowering the price of biopesticides can reduce average use of hazardous pesticides by 34 over current levels without adverse effects on the average farm income

views on peak oil and its relation to climate change policy abstract definitions of fossil fuel reserves and resources and assessed stock data are reviewed and clarified semantics explain a large stake of conflict between advocate and critical voices on peak oil from a holistic sources sinks perspective limited carrying capacity of atmospheric sinks not absolute scarcity in oil resources will impose tight constraints on oil use eventually observed peaks in oil production in nearby years will result from politically imposed limits on carbon emissions and not be caused by physical lack of oil resources peak oil belief induces passive climate policy attitudes when suggesting carbon dioxide emissions will peak naturally linked to dwindling oil supplies active policies for reducing emissions and use of fossil fuels will also encompass higher energy end use prices revenues obtained from higher levies on oil use can support financing energy efficiency and renewable energy options but when oil producers charge the higher prices they can pump new oil for many decades postponing peak oil to occur while extending carbon lock in

the renewable portfolio standard design considerations and an implementation survey renewables have social and environmental bene ts compared to conventional electricity sources but are rarely competitive on a strict nancial cost basis this is because conventional sources are sometimes subsidized their full pollution costs are ignored and renewables involve newer higher cost technologies whose relative costs will fall with commercialization governments use several mechanisms to support renewables including direct nancial support grants loans indirect support r d demonstrations reform of nancial costs of conventional sources subsidy removal pollution taxes and the renewable portfolio standard rps the rps requires a minimum share of electricity from renewable energy sources its use is spreading because it maintains an incentive for renewable producers to reduce costs links the regulated market outcome to an environmental target and reduces government involvement although it is too early to evaluate fully its e ectiveness the survey for this study explored implementation issues in three european countries nine us states and australia and found the following the rps target is usually set to have environmental bene ts without causing signi cant price increases cost caps are sometimes used most jurisdictions limit eligibility to gridconnected domestic renewables the rps is usually applied to producers rather than consumers and to energy output not capacity flexibility mechanisms are desired but a challenge to implement administration in the us and australia is by government with delegation to independent utility regulators while in europe it is more the responsibility of government everywhere the rps is applied alongside other mechanisms of renewables support 2001 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

are consumption and government expenditures substitutes or complements morishima elasticity estimates from the fourier flexible form 1 introduction macroeconomists paid relatively little attention to the economic effects of government expenditures and to alternative methods of financing those expenditures until barro 1974 1979 1981 challenged conventional views on the economic impact of government activity much of the literature stimulated by these studies addressed the effects of alternative financing methods for a given path of government expenditures but barro 1981 also stressed the fact that government expenditures can provide direct welfare to economic agents and that variations in the level of government expenditures may have an impact on the consumption decisions of households as a result many studies estimate the extent to which economic agents treat government expenditures as substitutes to or complements with private consumption expenditures e g kormendi 1983 aschauer 1985 graham and himarios 1991 ni 1995 the degree of substitution or complementarity between private consumption and government expenditures is of crucial importance in assessing the impact of fiscal policies on economic welfare thus it is important to establish the extent to which federal expenditures and private consumption are substitutes or complements as a guide to the design of fiscal policies there is much disagreement about the extent to which consumption and government expenditures are substitutes or complements in use for economic agents 1 studies differ in their details so it is difficult to know what might account for such diverse results but it seems fair to say that the relationship between government expenditures and consumption is largely an open question the diversity of the results however may be a consequence of a number of restrictive assumptions that have been used in various studies many of these assumptions appear hard to justify a priori studies typically estimate the parameters of an equation containing private consumption and government expenditures often assuming that the relevant choice variable for the representative household is an aggregate consumption measure given by the sum of nondurables and services consumption e g aschauer 1985 reid 1985 bean 1986 campbell and mankiw 1990 or the sum of nondurables services and the service flow from durable goods e g kormendi 1983 graham and himarios 1991 this implies that each component of private consumption expenditures is a perfect substitute for the household an assumption for which there is no compelling theoretical basis similarly government expenditures defense nondefense and state and local are typically aggregated e g feldstein 1982 aschauer 1985 reid 1985 graham 1993 with various studies excluding either federal or state and local expenditures just as for private consumption expenditures these aggregation assumptions should be tested rather t han simply imposed in applied work in addition although substitution elasticities are generally not constant in an optimizing framework they are often assumed to be constant in applications by using a single aggregate of consumption or a utility function that imposes a constant elasticity of substitution e g aschauer 1985 and ni 1995 finally none of the above mentioned studies computes elasticities of substitution in a manner consistent with microeconomic utility maximization principles 2 in this article we provide estimates of elasticities of substitution between consumption and government expenditures based on the demand systems approach that has been widely used in testing the neoclassical theory of household behavior see eg deaton and muellbauer 1980 and the survey of barnett et al 1992 this approach has a number of attractive features making it a substantial improvement over the applied studies available in the macroeconomics literature the estimates in this article are based on an optimizing framework where both government and consumption expenditures are treated as choice variables by the representative household

forecasting production of fossil fuel sources in turkey using a comparative regression and arima model this study aims at forecasting the most possible curve for domestic fossil fuel production of turkey to help policy makers to develop policy implications for rapidly growing dependency problem on imported fossil fuels the fossil fuel dependency problem is international in scope and context and turkey is a typical example for emerging energy markets of the developing world we developed a decision support system for forecasting fossil fuel production by applying a regression arima and sarima method to the historical data from 1950 to 2003 in a comparative manner the method integrates each model by using some decision parameters related to goodness of fit and confidence interval behavior of the curve and reserves different forecasting models are proposed for different fossil fuel types the best result is obtained for oil since the reserve classifications used it is much better defined them for the others our findings show that the fossil fuel production peak has already been reached indicating the total fossil fuel production of the country will diminish and theoretically will end in 2038 however production is expected to end in 2019 for hard coal in 2024 for natural gas in 2029 for oil and 2031 for asphaltite the gap between the fossil fuel consumption and production is growing enormously and it reaches in 2030 to approximately twice of what it is in 2000

design of an economically efficient feed in tariff structure for renewable energy development abstract evidence suggests albeit tentatively that feed in tariffs fits are more effective than alternative support schemes in promoting renewable energy technologies rets fits provide long term financial stability for investors in rets which at the prevailing market price of electricity are not currently cost efficient enough to compete with traditional fossil fuel technologies on the other hand if not properly designed fits can be economically inefficient as is widely regarded to have been the case under the public utility regulatory policies act of 1978 purpa under purpa too high a guaranteed price led to the creation of so called purpa machines poorly performing generating units that could survive financially only because of heavy subsidies that came at the expense of retail customers similarly because of their adverse impacts on retail electricity rates german fits have been subject to increasing political pressure from utilities and customers in this paper we propose an innovative two part fit consisting of both a capacity payment and a market based energy payment which can be used to meet the renewables policy goals of regulators our two part tariff design draws on the strengths of traditional fits relies on market mechanisms is easy to implement and avoids the problems caused by distorting wholesale energy markets through above market energy payments the approach is modeled on forward capacity market designs that have been recently implemented by several regional transmission organizations in the usa to address needs for new generating capacity to ensure system reliability

the future of the feed in tariff fit scheme in europe the case of photovoltaics abstract the key objective of this study is the examination of the regulatory and policy framework of the feed in tariff fit scheme specifically its effect on both the electricity pricing as well as the local and european renewable energy sources res market and accordingly the definition of its feasibility as a scheme for the further development and promotion of renewable energy technologies rets this work discusses the fit scheme implementation for photovoltaics pvs in four case study countries denmark germany cyprus and spain a model describing the conditions under which a fit scheme is led to collapse is also introduced and a parametric analysis towards revealing the sensitivity of the different parameters affecting it is delivered the study concludes with significant policy implications that should be considered for future implementation of the scheme for the prevention of the collapse of the scheme the tariff s value ought to be determined by each country s government based on a set of influencing factors including the operational capital and investment costs of each ret the standard cost of renewable energy re generation and the avoidance cost which would be regularly reviewed depending on the excess of the annual capacity

admissible monetary aggregates for the euro area we use the fleissig and whitney fleissig a r whitney g a 2003 a new pc based test for varian s weak separability conditions journal of business and economics statistics 21 1 133 144 weak separability test to determine admissible levels of monetary aggregation for the euro area we find that the euro area monetary assets in m2 and m3 are weakly separable and construct admissible divisia monetary aggregates for these assets we show that real growth of the admissible divisia aggregates enters the euro area is curve positively and significantly for the period from 1980 to 2005 out of sample we show that divisia m2 and m3 appear to contain useful information for forecasting euro area inflation

technical coefficients for bio economic farm household models a meta modelling approach with applications for southern mali abstract in recent years different types of bio economic models have been developed to support the analysis of the potential impact of agrarian policies on changes in land use sustainable resource management and farmers welfare most bio economic models rely on series of discrete input output coefficients for current and improved cropping and livestock activities whereas mathematical programming procedures are usually applied to analyse optimum allocative choice adequate procedures for the smooth integration of biophysical information into economic decision models are however not readily available this article provides a new and comprehensive framework for the incorporation of technical input output coefficients derived from agroecological simulation approaches into bio economic farm household models therefore continuous production functions are estimated for the production side of the farm household model making use of meta modelling principles it is shown that meta modelling offers considerable scope for improving the specification and behaviour of bio economic farm household models this procedure is applied in a farm household model developed for the analysis of farmers response to agrarian policies in southern mali results are presented for the behaviour of a typical household focusing attention on the trade offs between farm income and soil nutrient balances under free market conditions and with constraints on labour capital and animal traction markets the stability and robustness of the model is analysed through a simulation of the impact of higher input costs for land use and fertiliser applications

solar energy markets economics and policies abstract solar energy has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years due to both technological improvements resulting in cost reductions and government policies supportive of renewable energy development and utilization this study analyzes the technical economic and policy aspects of solar energy development and deployment while the cost of solar energy has declined rapidly in the recent past it still remains much higher than the cost of conventional energy technologies like other renewable energy technologies solar energy benefits from fiscal and regulatory incentives including tax credits and exemptions feed in tariff preferential interest rates renewable portfolio standards and voluntary green power programs in many countries the emerging carbon credit markets are expected to provide additional incentives to solar energy deployment however the scale of incentives provided by the existing carbon market instruments such as the clean development mechanism of the kyoto protocol is limited despite the huge technical potential the development and large scale deployment of solar energy technologies world wide still has to overcome a number of technical financial regulatory and institutional barriers the continuation of policy supports might be necessary for several decades to maintain and enhance the growth of solar energy in both developed and developing countries

an econometrics view of worldwide fossil fuel consumption and the role of us crude oil coal and gas known as fossil fuels play a crucial role in the global economy this paper proposes new econometrics modelling to demonstrate the trend of fossil fuels consumption the main variables affecting consumption trends are world reserves the price of fossil fuels us production and us net imports all variables have been analysed individually for more than half a century the research found that while the consumption of fossil fuels worldwide has increased trends in the us production and net imports have been dependent on the type of fossil fuels most of the us coal and gas production has been for domestic use which is why it does not have a strong influence on worldwide fossil fuel prices moreover the reserves of fossil fuels have not shown any diminution during the last couple of decades and predictions that they were about to run out are not substantiated the nominal and real price of fossil fuels was found to change depending on the type finally estimates of three econometric models for the consumption of fossil fuels from 1949 to 2006 are presented which identify the effects of significant variables

soil erosion and smallholders conservation decisions in the highlands of ethiopia abstract soil erosion is one of the most serious environmental problems in ethiopia coupled with growing populations falling per capita food production and worsening poverty loss of productive land due to land degradation undermines rural livelihoods and national food security despite their awareness of the erosion problem peasants investments in land have been limited we use an applied nonseparable model to simulate conservation decisions pervasive market imperfections poverty and high rates of time preference seem to undermine erosion control investments lack of technologies which provide quick returns to subsistence constrained peasants also seem to deter such investments lower private incentives to internalize the intertemporal land degradation externality may require public intervention

affordability of electric vehicles for a sustainable transport system an economic and environmental analysis abstract this paper compares the economic and environmental benefits of electric and hybrid electric vehicles with that of conventional vehicles without tax credits only the hybrids without plug in incur lifetime total costs equivalent to a conventional vehicle whereas the consumer affordability for all other vehicles is less encouraging and depends on changes in gasoline prices with the provision of federal tax incentives the lifetime total cost for all electric vehicle types that are driven for 120 000 miles over 12 years was found to be generally affordable with no more than 5 higher in lifetime total cost than a conventional vehicle except the hybrid electric plug in equipped with a 35 mile electric driving range results of sensitivity analysis reveal that a greater lifetime driven mileage would promote further overall cost savings even at a greenhouse gas abatement cost as low as 42 per ton our study has demonstrated the importance of an energy policy that includes tax credits to address the inadequacy of cost differentials and consumer affordability the environmental benefits provided by the electric and hybrid electric vehicles should satisfy consumers interest in protecting the environment reducing the dependence on imported fossil fuels and switching from traditional to alternative fuel vehicles

incentives to promote solar thermal energy in spain abstract the growth in the use of renewable energies in spain has been remarkable among these energies is solar thermal energy however there are barriers which impede citizens from deciding to install the technologies that use this type of energy in their homes over recent years various measures have been adopted to enhance and promote the use of solar thermal energy these measures have been developed at all administrative levels central regional and local one of the most used measures has been the adoption of legislative regulations that force the use of this type of energy in construction another alternative route is promotion by means of incentives in three aspects tax incentives non refundable grants and favourable lines of finance however the measures applied have been found to be insufficient and alternative stimuli are needed

simulating the diffusion of organic farming practices in two new eu member states abstract agriculture continues to be a major contributor to water pollution climate change and loss of biodiversity although policies to encourage farmers to work to higher sustainability standards in food and energy crop production have increased throughout the european union in new member states accession to the european union mostly brought a substantially increased public support to foster the diffusion of certified organic farming however the take up of organic farming is varied for reasons that are not yet well understood in this paper we analyse the diffusion of organic farming through farm populations this involves an understanding of farmer behaviour and how it can change over time we present a generic agent based model that builds on the theory of planned behaviour as framework for understanding and modelling farmers decision making processes the model is applied to high diffusion regions in two new eu member states latvia and estonia the values for the model s parameters are informed by survey data the model reproduces the interdependence of social influence and economic factors social influence alone is shown to make little difference to the model dynamics organic farmers remain organic and conventional farmers remain conventional introducing a change to the environment e g a subsidy results in an increase in the proportion of adopters thus economic factors appear to be more influential than social factors however only when allowing for both the subsidy and social influence do we reveal the whole picture and the combined adoption rate is higher than the sum of the proportion of adopters resulting from just social influence without a subsidy and from just a subsidy without social influence we also compare the effect of the subsidy with the effect of influence from organic farm advisors to develop policy recommendations

energy tax credits and residential conservation investment evidence from panel data using panel data on individual tax returns and variation in state tax policy we measure the impact of government tax policies to encourage residential conservation investment on the probability of making these investments unlike previous work we account for unobserved heterogeneity in tastes for energy saving activities and its possible correlation with tax policy at the state level we find that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is very important based on our preferred point estimate of the tax price coefficient a 10 percentage point change in the tax price for energy investment would lead to a 24 percent increase in the probability of making an investment

agent based modeling for ex ante assessment of tree crop innovations litchis in northern thailand this study uses an agent based model for ex ante assessment of agricultural innovations the model builds on whole farm mathematical programming mp and extends the methodology with a spatial representation of the system the heterogeneity of farm households and landscapes and the interaction between farm households we apply the model in a northern thai watershed to study the potential of four innovations to increase the profitability of litchi orchards cost benefit analysis shows that each innovation would increase the profitability of litchi growing however the results of the agent based model show that at current price levels these innovations alone would not be enough to stem the decline in the area under litchis the model was validated and the sensitivity of the results tested for variations in the irrigated water supply and liquidity we report on how farmers responded to these results and discuss the implications for other areas in northern thailand

the demand for assets and optimal monetary aggregation this paper uses a highly disaggregated demand system to estimate the degree of substitutability among monetary assets and to address the issue of optimal monetary aggregation in the united states we address the problems of dimensionality and nonlinearity estimating a very detailed monetary asset demand system encompassing the full range of assets based on the locally flexible normalized quadratic expenditure function we treat the concavity property as a maintained hypothesis and provide evidence consistent with neoclassical microeconomic theory statistical tests reject the appropriateness of the aggregation assumptions for all the money measures published by the federal reserve as well as for a large number of groupings suggested by earlier studies this supports and reinforces barnett s 2016 assertion that we should employ the broadest m4 monetary aggregate published by the center for financial stability

feed in tariff vs renewable portfolio standard an empirical test of their relative effectiveness in promoting wind capacity development abstract this paper examines the relative effectiveness of feed in tariff fit and renewable portfolio standard rps in promoting wind capacity development using panel data conservative estimates suggest that on average across countries fit increases total wind capacity more than rps by a magnitude of about 1800 mw when using time variant policy indicators the difference between the two policies increases to nearly 2000 mw roughly 8 of 2009 cumulative capacity in germany as for annual wind capacity since 2005 this paper has found no significant difference between fit and rps it is also found that wind energy development responds to high electricity demand and high oil dependence

state renewable energy electricity policies an empirical evaluation of effectiveness over the past decade state governments have emerged as us energy policy leaders across the country states are adopting policy instruments aimed at carbon mitigation and renewable energy deployment one of the most prevalent and innovative policy instruments is a renewable portfolio standard rps which seeks to increase the share of renewable energy electrification in the electricity market this analysis evaluates the effectiveness of state energy programs with an empirical investigation of the linkage between state rps policy implementation and the percentage of renewable energy electricity generation across states we use a variant of a standard fixed effects model referred to as a fixed effects vector decomposition with state level data from 1998 to 2006 results indicate that rps implementation is not a significant predictor of the percentage of renewable energy generation out of the total generation mix yet for each additional year that a state has an rps policy they are found to increase the total amount of renewable energy generation these findings reveal a potentially significant shortcoming of rps policies political institutions natural resource endowments deregulation gross state product per capita electricity use per person electricity price and the presence of regional rps policies are also found to be significantly related to renewable energy deployment

pv sector in the european union countries clusters and efficiency abstract european union eu due to several challenges that exist nowadays has changed its energy policy in order to fulfill international commitments concerning greenhouse gas emission and to assure safety in supply and stable prices eu has been a leader in renewable energy in many eu countries solar energy is a possible and very viable option together with wind energy photovoltaic energy is the new support core of a low carbon eu economy in what concerns electricity production in this work clusters of countries were generated based on the energy produced by pv systems and the share of energy from pv systems in the total electricity produced by renewable sources this work also analyzed the production of energy from the photovoltaic sector in eu and compared it with the existing potential for this type of energy roughly half of the eu countries are producing energy within the limits of what is expected considering the irradiation on optimally inclined plane however some of them could improve the ratio between energy production and installed power considering the leader countries in energy production from photovoltaic czech republic and spain are the countries that exceed what it is expected

learning by doing and the costs of a backstop for energy transition and sustainability we assess the impact of being able to substitute an unlimited but costly energy substitute like wind solar for a non renewable resource like oil coal in a model of sustainable growth the prospects for sustainability on the optimal path depend crucially on the costs of this substitute furthermore the poorer a country measured in terms of capital stock at a given point in time the later it should switch to the renewable substitute and the more likely it will be unsustainable taking learning by doing in account we find that this leads to an earlier switching time but does not guarantee sustainability

input use and market development in sub saharan africa an overview abstract this paper sets forth the background and objectives of this special issue trends in input use since 1980 are reviewed and a conceptual framework is presented for analyzing problems of input use and formulating strategies for resolving them reasons for low levels of fertilizer use by smallholder farmers are summarized briefly the essential points of the papers in the special issue and their implications for further expansion of input use in sub saharan africa are then outlined

supply amount and marginal price of renewable electricity under the renewables portfolio standard in japan abstract the renewables portfolio standard rps in japan requires that approximately 1 35 of each retail supplier s electricity sales in fy2010 come from renewable energy sources res for example photovoltaics wind biomass geothermal and small hydropower to help retail suppliers and renewable generators develop effective strategies this study provides a quantitative analysis of the impact of this measure we assume the supply conditions for electricity generation from renewable energy sources res e based on regional resource endowments and we derive the cost effective compositions of renewable portfolios res e certificate prices and additional costs to retail suppliers the future prospects of res e are assessed based on technology region and year up to fy2010 the analysis reveals that wind power and biomass power generated from municipal waste will provide the majority of the total supply of res e under the rps it also indicates that the marginal price of res e certificates will be approximately 5 8 jpy kwh 5 2 usc kwh in fy2010 in the case wherein the marginal price of electricity is assumed to be 4 jpy kwh 3 6 usc kwh in order to elaborate on this further sensitivity analyses for some parameters of res and the price of electricity are provided the dynamic supply curves of res e certificates are also indicated

carbon abatement potential of solar home systems in india and their cost reduction due to carbon finance about 78 million rural households in india reportedly lack access to grid electricity about 67 million of them use kerosene for lighting government of india is promoting the use of solar home systems shs as one of the options for meeting lighting requirements in households in remote and less inhabited villages about 363 399 shs were reportedly disseminated across the country by december 2007 apart from meeting the basic lighting need of the households shs also help in abating the emissions of green house gases ghgs by directly displacing the use of kerosene in households that currently use it for lighting this study has attempted at estimating the co2 mitigation potential of shs in india by studying the potential for their diffusion and the appropriate baseline subsequently the scope for cost reduction to the user due to carbon finance if received is also studied it is found that carbon finance could reduce the effective burden of shs to the user by 19 if carbon prices were 10 tco22 and no transaction costs were involved in getting the carbon revenues these benefits are also estimated for scenarios where transaction costs are incurred by the project proponent in getting the carbon benefits

technological and policy options for sustainable agricultural intensification in eastern uganda this article presents a bio economic household model which has been developed to assess the potential impacts of agricultural intensification efforts on economic and ecological indicators in eastern uganda a study region in the lake victoria crescent was selected with comparative advantages for intensive agricultural production high agricultural potential high market access and high population density however current production is characterized by low input output systems revealing a discrepancy between development opportunities and actual development outcomes based on a farmer participatory research approach production methods were introduced in the study region aimed at fostering sustainable agricultural development data from two community surveys two comprehensive household and plot level surveys and farm trial data were used to develop and calibrate bio economic models for four representative household types model scenarios reveal that farm households in eastern uganda would not pursue sustainable intensification under current socio economic conditions the market environment has to be improved substantially i e transaction and transportation costs have to be reduced innovative credit schemes for smallholders have to be introduced and alternative forms of labor acquisition have to be promoted to provide sufficient economic incentives for the adoption of environmentally sound production methods in addition agricultural service provision needs to be reformed and more agricultural research is needed for new and better targeted technologies

how should central banks determine and control their bank note inventory abstract this paper looks at a relatively unresearched but important area in money and banking namely the provision of currency by the central bank one of the most important functions of central banking is the provision of liquidity to the economy however in fulfilling this function central banks have to be prepared for unexpected money demand shocks as well as production transportation and cost of capital constraints the paper develops a dynamic cost minimizing note inventory model that solves for the central bank s optimal note order size and frequency as part of the modeling exercise a value at risk model is used to solve for an inventory cushion

monetary aggregation and the demand for assets in this paper we consider and illustrate a solution to the inter related problems of monetary aggregation and estimation of money demand the problem with the definition of money is that the relative prices of the monetary components fluctuate over time rendering simple sum aggregates inefficient the authors apply revealed preference tests to the u s monthly data to determine admissible and separable components these components are then aggregated using the divisia technique to deal with the problem of money demand the dynamic fourier expenditure system is used to provide estimates of the elasticities of substitution these while showing general substitution among the liquid assets studied are quite variable over time this finding underscores the inefficiency of both simple sum aggregation and single equation log linear money demand estimation copyright 1997 by ohio state university press

assessing the eco efficiency of u s manufacturing industries with a focus on renewable vs non renewable energy use an integrated time series mrio and dea approach abstract this study investigated the global supply chain linked renewable and nonrenewable energy use impacts and economic output of u s manufacturing industries over a twenty year period considering energy use impacts and economic outputs together within the scope of a global trade linked cradle to gate life cycle provides a comprehensive understanding of the environmental and economic impacts of industrial activities in the first phase of the methodology twenty multi region input output models were built to assess the energy and economic output nexus using a time series approach sixteen energy carriers were considered and aggregated in terms of renewable and nonrenewable energy use impacts the second phase of the methodology focused on benchmarking u s manufacturing industries eco efficiency considering renewable to nonrenewable energy use and economic output to accomplish this data envelopment analysis dea models were developed and two benchmarking eco efficiency measures were proposed namely renewability ratio rr and economic output induced renewability ratio e rr the results indicated that the economic output of the manufacturing industries exhibited a steady sustainable growth similar growth was observed in nonrenewable energy use in contrast the trend in renewable energy use was seen to be stagnant no statistically significant improvement was observed in either the rr or e rr measures which were found to parallel the multi region input output analysis mrio results although an increase in both the mean rr 0 3 0 4 and the mean e rr 0 38 0 52 scores was recorded from 1995 to 2014 this was concluded to be unsatisfactory since the majority of the industries eco efficiency results were still below 0 5 such an unsatisfactory result could be attributed to an imbalanced growth in nonrenewable energy use and economic output relative to renewable energy use the findings of this study suggest that substantial policy changes are required immediately to shift the negative trend in renewable energy use to comply with un sustainability development goals 7 and 13

low carbon transition in a distributed energy system regulated by localized energy markets abstract low carbon transition becomes an urgent need of modern societies for energy conservation and environmental protection the purpose of this work is to evaluate the roles of market regulation energy consumption and energy capacity in low carbon transition for distributed energy systems through an agent based simulation a set of agent behavioral rules for the competition of high carbon and low carbon energies mimics the local dynamics of the energy production of distributed energy systems and the energy consumption of industrial firms under the impact of energy market fluctuation simulation results show that under the condition of increased energy capacities with a positive feedback between supply and demand low carbon transition can be facilitated by the combination of market adjustment favoring low carbon energies and the policy adjustment for low energy consumptions by contrast with low energy capacities and high energy consumptions transitions from high carbon economy to low carbon economy inevitably render a catastrophic economic depression policy implications for different situations of countries are drawn regarding the regulation of localized energy markets for restricting the supply of high carbon energy while cultivating the demand for low carbon energy and the improvement on energy saving energy production efficiency and storage capacity

arima forecasting of primary energy demand by fuel in turkey abstract forecasting of energy demand in emerging markets is one of the most important policy tools used by the decision makers all over the world in turkey most of the early studies used include various forms of econometric modeling however since the estimated economic and demographic parameters usually deviate from the realizations time series forecasting appears to give better results in this study we used the autoregressive integrated moving average arima and seasonal arima sarima methods to estimate the future primary energy demand of turkey from 2005 to 2020 the arima forecasting of the total primary energy demand appears to be more reliable than the summation of the individual forecasts the results have shown that the average annual growth rates of individual energy sources and total primary energy will decrease in all cases except wood and animal plant remains which will have negative growth rates the decrease in the rate of energy demand may be interpreted that the energy intensity peak will be achieved in the coming decades another interpretation is that any decrease in energy demand will slow down the economic growth during the forecasted period rates of changes and reserves in the fossil fuels indicate that inter fuel substitution should be made leading to a best mix of the country s energy system based on our findings we proposed some policy recommendations

agent based spatial models applied to agriculture a simulation tool for technology diffusion resource use changes and policy analysis abstract this paper presents a spatial multi agent programming model which has been developed for assessing policy options in the diffusion of innovations and resource use changes unlike conventional simulation tools used in agricultural economics the model class described here applies a multi agent cellular automata ca approach by using heterogeneous farm household models and capturing their social and spatial interactions explicitly the individual choice of the farm household among available production consumption investment and marketing alternatives is represented in recursive linear programming models adoption constraints are introduced in form of network threshold values that reflect the cumulative effects of experience and observation of peers experiences the model s economic and hydrologic components are tightly connected into a spatial framework the integration of economic and hydrologic processes facilitates the consideration of feedback effects in the use of water for irrigation the simulation runs of the model are carried out with an empirical data set which has been derived from various data sources on an agricultural region in chile simulation results show that agent based spatial modelling constitutes a powerful approach to better understanding processes of innovation and resource use change

the main support mechanisms to finance renewable energy development considering that the major part of greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide there is a global concern aimed at reducing carbon emissions additionally major consumer countries are looking for alternati

economic analysis of the contribution of photovoltaics to the decarbonization of the power sector abstract an analytical method has been developed for the calculation of the future 2013 2050 reduction of co2 emissions by the deployment of photovoltaic pv systems according to three scenarios from the international energy agency 2ds roadmap and new policies next we have also evaluated the financial extra costs incurred in the implementation of the pv systems which would replace the current traditional power generation systems taking as reference four geographical areas european union united states china and the world s average the established method also allows the comparison of the influence on the extra costs of the actual electricity mix as well as the current electricity prices corresponding to the above regional areas in these calculations we have taken into account several frequently ignored factors like solar cell degradation emissions attributed to the pv systems life cycle and the repowering due to the substitution of the systems after their life time is reached finally the results of this work can be of interest in energy planning policies related to the contribution of pv technologies for the decarbonization of the power generation system

advanced solar r d combining economic analysis with expert elicitations to inform climate policy the relationship between r d investments and technical change is inherently uncertain in this paper we combine economics and decision analysis to incorporate the uncertainty of technical change into climate change policy analysis we present the results of an expert elicitation on the prospects for technical change in advanced solar photovoltaics we then use the results of the expert elicitations as inputs to the minicam integrated assessment model to derive probabilistic information about the impacts of r d investments on the costs of emissions abatement

assessment of european union transition scenarios with a special focus on the issue of carbon leakage this paper uses the model gemini e3 to simulate and assess the transition scenario to 2020 framed by the european union in its energy climate directive and it raises several issues in this connection after a brief description of the model the paper presents the results of the scenarios mainly the values of the major indicators of carbon price both in the ets and in non ets sectors and the welfare cost of the eu policy under the various configurations considered while it is independent of the scenario in the ets sector in the non ets sector the value of carbon is very sensitive to the provisions of the directive and in particular the option of resorting to the flexibility mechanisms the welfare cost also varies significantly according to scenarios and its value for the entire eu is more than double in the scenario closest to the directive as compared to the least cost one the paper also addresses the very sensitive issue of carbon leakage and argues in favor of a new concept of net leakage the analysis shows that while carbon leakage may affect some specific sectors at the aggregate level it does not represent a real concern with a magnitude of at most a few percent of ghg abatement by annex b countries

reducing dependence on chemical fertilizers and its financial implications for farmers in india the fertilizer intensive technology so long promoted in agriculture produced a green revolution but has brought long term damages to soil quality the technology now appears unsustainable for future agricultural development in india both on account of its ecological implications and the burden on the budget there is now a need to revisit the traditional methods once used in agriculture and to look for a judicious blend of chemical fertilizer based technology with organic manure since manures are relatively less productive in the short run there is an alarm that a shift in technology away from the chemical fertilizer towards organic manure may mean a compromise in production or may hurt the incomes of farmers this paper emphasizes the environmental benefits of a possible shift in agricultural technology while keeping in view the importance of sustaining crop yield levels and protecting farmers incomes considering two major crops in india in specific states the paper finds that over time while fertilizer use intensified several times over the use of manure in agriculture either stagnated or declined the manure market remained localized limited and unorganized and its price was significantly higher than fertilizer in terms of nutrients in contrast to the organized and state supported fertilizer market the paper estimates quadratic yield functions based on cross section household level data and using the prices faced by farmers as reported by official survey finds that in majority of the cases there will not be any financial loss resulting from a small shift in technology towards organic manure such a shift can however be considered feasible if the losing households are compensated and if manure price is kept in control by promoting a more dynamic manure market d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

simulating soil fertility and poverty dynamics in uganda a bio economic multi agent systems approach declining soil fertility and increasing rural poverty are major problems facing sub saharan agriculture bio economic modeling has been used to analyze the complex interaction between ecological sustainability and rural poverty as well as to explore policy options promoting sustainable development this paper shows that these models can be further advanced by adopting an agent based modeling approach this gives a more realistic representation of diversity in socioeconomic and biophysical terms allows local interaction between households and can yield an ex ante assessment of the distributional consequences of policy intervention this paper describes the modeling approach and illustrates it with an empirical application to two village communities in the lake victoria crescent of uganda it is shown how the model system can be calibrated with and validated against empirical data the model is used to analyze the potential effect of short term credit mineral fertilizer and improved maize seed on poverty and sustainability simulation results suggest substantial reductions in poverty although the incidence of poverty would remain high and these innovations alone would have little effect on the long term ecological sustainability of the system

a supply model for crude oil and natural gas in the middle east abstract crude oil co and natural gas ng play an important role in the world economy the arab countries acs share 64 of the total oil reserves and 40 of the ng reserves opec 2003 the annual statistical bulletin on the production side acs contribute to 30 and 9 of the world production of co and ng respectively accurate forecast models are needed to do better planning and create less risky business environment in this paper an econometric model is built to capture the behavior of co and ng production in the escwa 1 countries the model is used to forecast future production trends of co and ng and thus provide a powerful tool for researchers planners and investors working in the energy field

impact of public policy uncertainty on renewable energy investment wind power and the production tax credit abstract it is generally understood that the pattern of repeated expiration and short term renewal of the federal production tax credit ptc causes a boom bust cycle in wind power plant investment in the us this on off pattern is detrimental to the wind industry since ramp up and ramp down costs are high and players are deterred from making long term investments it is often assumed that the severe downturn in investment during off years implies that wind power is unviable without the ptc this assumption turns out to be unsubstantiated this paper demonstrates that it is not the absence of the ptc that causes the investment downturn during off years but rather the uncertainty over its return specifically it is the dynamic of power purchase agreement ppa negotiations in the face of ptc renewal uncertainty that drives investment volatility with contract negotiations prevalent in the renewable energy industry this finding suggests that reducing uncertainty is a crucial component of effective renewable energy policy the ptc as currently structured is not the only means existing or potential for encouraging wind power investment using data from a survey of energy professionals various policy instruments are compared in terms of their perceived stability for supporting long term investment

risk based assessment of the cost efficiency and the effectivity of renewable energy support schemes certificate markets versus feed in tariffs the introduction of renewable energy sources in the electricity generation mix has the potential to reduce power sector s emissions and countries dependence on imported oil climate change concerns and highly volatile oil prices have attracted governments interest and support to sustain investments in renewable energy capacity and different support policies have been implemented in many countries around the world this paper analyzes the effects of investors risk aversion on the performance of support schemes the analysis compares two policy options a feed in tariff mechanism with a certificate market system results show that while a tariff mechanism could obtain better results than a certificate market its performance is strictly dependent on regulator choices a certificate market instead permits to obtain the desired level of renewable energy market share with good cost efficiency as long as investors risk aversion is moderate moreover discounting future cash flows with higher social discount rates further benefits a certificate system making it preferable to feed in tariffs

are risky assets substitutes for monetary assets i introduction financial innovation over the past couple of decades has enhanced the liquidity of many financial assets particularly noncapital certain risky assets further financial assets previously not regarded as monetary assets such as mutual funds and particularly money market mutual funds now provide monetary services such as liquidity and transactions services l given the increased liquidity of such funds the question arises as to whether risky assets are substitutes for capital certain monetary assets if noncapital certain assets are indeed substitutes for capital certain assets and are also being used for transactions purposes then agents may be treating risky assets as money although this issue has been addressed in the united states in the context of the addition of bond funds to m2 by for example duca 1995 no such research has yet been conducted in the united kingdom including risky assets in the analysis contradicts the work of ando and shell 1975 spencer 1986 appendix i pp 184 93 and spencer 1994 broadly they argue that since some nonrisky assets provide monetary services and probability also liquidity individuals would not hold risky assets for these purposes 2 in contrast hicks 1935 states that falling transaction costs and rising wealth encourages individuals to increase the proportion of risky assets in portfolio holdings most studies generally assume that risky assets fail to provide significant monetary services and for example have been excluded from the asset demand analysis of barr and cuthbertson 1991a drake fleissig and swofford 1997 and money demand studies such as taylor 1987 belongia and chrystal 1991 drake and chrystal 1994 and drake 1996 alternatively barr and cuthbertson 1991b use only risky assets in their asset demand system analysis the degree of substitution between risky assets and capital certain assets is an empirical issue while noncapital certain risky assets mutual funds and other financial assets may well be becoming closer substitutes for what people are using as money they are in no way perfect substitutes for the highly liquid cash assets to evaluate the role of noncapital certain assets we construct a noncapital certain risky divisia aggregate consisting of equities government bonds and unit trusts the divisia index allows for less than perfect substitution between assets and weights component assets according to their differing degrees of moneyness which may vary over time due to many factors for example financial innovation see barnett 1980 this methodology has been widely applied to monetary aggregation and money demand studies in a number of countries as in belongia 1996 drake 1996 drake and chrystal 1997 and anderson jones and nesmith 1997 to determine whether risky assets are substitutes for capital certain assets we use two other divisia aggregates constructed from traditional measures of money the first of these is an aggregate of highly liquid zero yield cash assets given that the component assets all have zero own rates of return however divisia aggregation is equivalent in this case to simple summation the second aggregate is a divisia aggregate of interest bearing capital certain assets including risky assets complicates the analysis because the degree of risk aversion will affect the estimates of substitution between capital certain and noncapital certain assets thus we also analyze how different degrees of risk aversion affect the results the substitution relationship between assets is estimated from an asymptotically ideal model aim the choice of an aim is in line with the recommendation of barnett fisher and serletis 1992 that flexible systems of demand equations should be used that allow for nonlinear optimizing behavior by economic agents furthermore this paper can be seen as an extension of the recent application of this model to u

unraveling the photovoltaic technology learning curve by incorporation of input price changes and scale effects in a large number of energy models the use of learning curves for estimating technological improvements has become popular this is based on the assumption that technological development can be monitored by following cost development as a function of market size however recent data show that in some stages of photovoltaic technology pv production the market price of pv modules stabilizes even though the cumulative capacity increases this implies that no technological improvement takes place in these periods the cost predicted by the learning curve in the pv study is lower than the market one we propose that this bias results from ignoring the effects of input prices and scale effects and that incorporating the input prices and scale effects into the learning curve theory is an important issue in making cost predictions more reliable in this paper a methodology is described to incorporate the scale and input prices effect as the additional variables into the one factor learning curve which leads to the definition of the multi factor learning curve this multi factor learning curve is not only derived from economic theories but also supported by an empirical study the results clearly show that input prices and scale effects are to be included and that although market prices are stabilizing learning is still taking place

clean energy policies and green jobs an evaluation of green jobs in u s metropolitan areas state and local governments in the u s are actively promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency to seek economic development opportunities and create green jobs this study evaluates the employment effects of state and local clean energy and climate policies in u s metropolitan areas msas in 2006 the regression analysis shows that both state and local clean energy policies have positive and statistically significant impacts on green jobs at the metropolitan level the results from two stage probit least squares 2spls indicate that every additional state clean energy policy tool adopted is associated with 1 more green jobs in the msa on average msas with iclei membership maintain 9 3 more green jobs than msas without iclei membership ceteris paribus

monetary policy and monetary asset substitution abstract this paper shows that changing the target federal funds rate induces changes in relative user costs of monetary assets estimated morishima elasticities of substitution from the fourier flexible form reveal greater substitution from transactions assets and savings deposits into small time deposits than into retail money market mutual funds