how quantitative easing works evidence on the refinancing channel we document the transmission of large scale asset purchases by the federal reserve to the real economy using rich borrower linked mortgage market data and an identification strategy based on mortgage market segmentation we find that central bank qe1 mbs purchases substantially increased refinancing activity reduced interest payments for refinancing households led to a boom in equity extraction and increased aggregate consumption relative to qe ineligible jumbo mortgages qe eligible conforming mortgage interest rates fell by an additional 40 bp and refinancing volumes increased by an additional 56 during qe1 we estimate that households refinancing during qe1 increased their durable consumption by 12 our results highlight that the transmission of unconventional monetary policy to the real economy depends crucially on the composition of assets purchased and the degree of segmentation in the marke

collateral damage refinancing constraints and regional recessions in the current structure of the u s residential mortgage market a decrease in property values may make it very difficult for homeowners to refinance their mortgages to take advantage of declining interest rates in this papr we show that this form of collateral constraint has greatly reduced refinancing in statds with depressed property markets we outline the interaction between regional recessions and refinancing constraints when adverse economic shocks cause property values in a region to decrease the damage to the collateral makes it difficult or impossible for some homeowners to obtain new mortgages in the recent period this has meant that homeowners in economically depressed regions have been unable to refinance their mortgages to take advantage of declining interest rates this inability to refinance has further economic impacts on the region through lowering the wealth and the discretionary income of local homeowners thereby deepening the regional recession while the possible link between regional declines in property values and refinancing activity has been understood for some time for example monsen 1992 the subject has received very little empirical attention we provide the first quantitative assessment of the impact of constraints arising from regional property market dynamics on refinancing activity to accomplish this we use a new data set on more than thirty five thousand individual mortgages the sample consists of all mortgages serviced by chemical bank with originations between june 1989 and may 1992

the after crisis government driven credit expansion in brazil a firm level analysis abstract government driven credit had an important role in countervailing the private credit crunch in brazil during the recent financial crisis however government credit concessions continued to expand after the economy recovered this paper investigates some important features of this expansion using a huge repository of loan contracts between banks and firms composing an unbalanced panel of almost 1 million firms between 2004 and 2012 our results show that larger older and less risky firms have benefited most from the government sponsored credit expansion additionally although a higher access to earmarked credit tends to lead to higher leverage the effect on investment appears to be insignificant for publicly traded firms since interest rates on earmarked loans are lower than market interest rates firms with higher access to this type of loan tend to have lower cost of debt

the demand for residential electricity in south africa abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in south africa as a function of real gross domestic product per capita and the price of electricity during the period 1978 2005 we make use of the bounds testing approach to cointegration within an autoregressive distributed framework suggested by pesaran et al 2001 bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 16 3 289 326 following the literature we use a linear double logarithmic form using income and price as independent variables in the empirical analysis in the long run we find that income is the main determinant of electricity demand while electricity price is insignificant

modeling climate feedbacks to electricity demand the case of china this paper is an empirical investigation of the effects of climate on the use of electricity by consumers and producers in urban and rural areas within china it takes advantage of an unusual combination of temporal and regional data sets in order to estimate temperature as well as price and income elasticities of electricity demand the estimated positive temperature electric power feedback implies a continually increasing use of energy to produce electric power which in china is primarily based on coal in the absence of countervailing measures this will contribute to increased emissions increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and increases in greenhouse warming

do residential customers respond to hourly prices evidence from a dynamic pricing experiment this paper uses the results of a dynamic pricing experiment for households in the district of columbia to determine whether the reduction in demand associated with an hourly price signal is economically different from the demand reduction associated with an equivalent price signal that is four times longer in duration for both regular and all electric customers the percentage demand reduction associated with a given percentage increase in the hourly price is approximately equal to the percentage demand reduction associated with the same percentage price increase of a much longer duration

residential consumption of gas and electricity in the u s the role of prices and income abstract we study the residential demand for electricity and gas working with nationwide household level data that cover recent years namely 1997 2007 our dataset is a mixed panel multi year cross sections of dwellings households in the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the united states as of 2008 we estimate static and dynamic models of electricity and gas demand we find strong household response to energy prices both in the short and long term from the static models we get estimates of the own price elasticity of electricity demand in the 0 860 to 0 667 range while the own price elasticity of gas demand is 0 693 to 0 566 these results are robust to a variety of checks contrary to earlier literature metcalf and hassett 1999 reiss and white 2005 we find no evidence of significantly different elasticities across households with electric and gas heat the price elasticity of electricity demand declines with income but the magnitude of this effect is small these results are in sharp contrast to much of the literature on residential energy consumption in the united states and with the figures used in current government agency practice our results suggest that there might be greater potential for policies which affect energy price than may have been previously appreciated

demand specification for municipal water management evaluation of the stone geary form to specify demand in most water allocation problems researchers face a tradeoff between flexibility and parsimony flexible forms are less constraining on elasticity estimates but require large parameter sets that tend to cause poor out of sample forecasts and computational difficulties using a five year panel of texas municipalities the parsimonious stone geary form yields estimated demand functions that are comparable to flexible form results the stone geary specification also provides an estimate of the portion of water use that may not be responsive to price and is useful in analysing price structures and designing conservation policies

electricity demand for south korean residential sector abstract this study estimates the electricity demand function for the residential sector of south korea with the aim of examining the effects of improved energy efficiency structural factors and household lifestyles on electricity consumption in the study time series data for the period from 1973 to 2007 is used in a structural time series model to estimate the long term price and income elasticities and annual growth of underlying energy demand trend uedt at the end of the estimation period the result shows a long term income elasticity of 1 33 and a long term price elasticity of 0 27 with 0 93 as the percentage growth of uedt at the end of the estimation period this result suggests that in order to encourage energy efficiency in the residential sector the government should complement the market based pricing policies with non market policies such as minimum energy efficiency standards and public enlightenment

rational prepayment and the valuation of mortgage backed securities this article presents a new model of mortgage prepayments based on rational decisions by mortgage holders these mortgage bolders face beterogeneous transaction costs which are explicitly modeled the model is estimated using a version of hansen s 1982 generalized method of moments and is sbown to capture many of the empirical features of mortgage prepayment estimation results indicate that mortgage holders act as tbougb tbey face transaction costs tbat far exceed tbe explicit costs usually incurred on refinancing they also wait an average of more than a year before refinancing even when it is optimal to do so the model fits observed prepayment behavior as well as thee recent empirical model of schwartz and torous 1989 implications for pricing mortgage backed securities are discussed

regional heterogeneity and the refinancing channel of monetary policy we argue that the time varying regional distribution of housing equity influences the aggregate consequences of monetary policy through its effects on mortgage refinancing using detailed loan level data we show that regional differences in housing equity affect refinancing and spending responses to interest rate cuts but these effects vary over time with changes in the regional distribution of house price growth we build a heterogeneous household model of refinancing with mortgage borrowers and lenders and use it to explore the monetary policy implications arising from our regional evidence we find that the 2008 equity distribution made spending in depressed regions less responsive to interest rate cuts thus dampening aggregate stimulus and increasing regional consumption inequality whereas the opposite occurred in some earlier recessions taken together our results strongly suggest that monetary policy makers should track the regional distribution of equity over time

the price elasticity of electricity demand in south australia abstract in this paper the price elasticity of electricity demand representing the sensitivity of customer demand to the price of electricity has been estimated for south australia we first undertake a review of the scholarly literature regarding electricity price elasticity for different regions and systems then we perform an empirical evaluation of the historic south australian price elasticity focussing on the relationship between price and demand quantiles at each half hour of the day this work attempts to determine whether there is any variation in price sensitivity with the time of day or quantile and to estimate the form of any relationships that might exist in south australia

residential implementation of critical peak pricing of electricity this paper investigates how critical peak pricing cpp affects households with different usage and income levels with the goalof informing policy makers who are considering the implementation of cpptariffs in the residential sector using a subset of data from thecalifornia statewide pricing pilot of 2003 2004 average load changeduring summer events annual percent bill change and post experimentsatisfaction ratings are calculated across six customer segments categorized by historical usage and income levels findings show thathigh use customers respond significantly more in kw reduction than dolow use customers while low use customers save significantly more inpercentage reduction of annual electricity bills than do high usecustomers results that challenge the strategy of targeting only high usecustomers for cpp tariffs across income levels average load and billchanges were statistically indistinguishable as were satisfaction ratesresults that are compatible with a strategy of full scale implementationof cpp rates in the residential sector finally the high use customersearning less than 50 000 annually were the most likely of the groups tosee bill increases about 5 percent saw bill increases of 10 percent ormore suggesting that any residential cpp implementation might considertargeting this customer group for increased energy efficiencyefforts

mortgage terminations heterogeneity and the exercise of mortgage options as applied to the behavior of homeowners with mortgages option theoiy predicts that mortgage prepayment or default will be exercised if the call or put option is in the money by some specific amount our analysis tests the extent to which the option approach can explain default and prepayment behavior evaluates the practical importance of modeling both options simultaneouisly and models the unobserved heterogeneity of borrowers in the home mortgage market the paper presents a uinified model of the competing risks of mortgage termination by prepayment and default considering the two hazards as dependent competing risks that are estimated jointly it also accounts for the unobserved heterogeneity among borrowers and estimates the unobserved heterogeneity simultaneously with the parameters and baseline hazards associated with prepayment and default functions our results show that the option model in its most straightfolward version does a good job of explaininig default and prepayment but it is not enouigh by itself the simultaneity of the options is very important empirically in explaining behavior the results also show that there exists significant heterogeneity among mortgage borrowers ignoring this heterogeneity results in serious errors in estimating the prepayment behavior of homeowners

income and price elasticities of electricity demand aggregate and sector wise analyses abstract cointegration and vector error correction modeling approaches are widely used in electricity demand analysis the study rigorously examines the determinants of electricity demand at aggregate and sectoral levels in pakistan in the backdrop of severe electricity shortages our empirical findings give support to the existence of a stable long run relationship among the variables and indicate that electricity demand is elastic in the long run to both income and price at aggregate level at sectoral level long run income and price elasticity estimates follow this pattern except in agricultural sector where electricity demand is found elastic to output but inelastic to electricity price on the contrary the coefficients for income and price are rather small and mostly insignificant in the short run we employed temperature index price of diesel oil and capital stock at aggregate and sectoral levels as exogenous variables these variables account for most of the variations in electricity demand in the short run it shows that mechanization of the economy significantly affect the electricity demand at macro level moreover elastic electricity demand with respect to electricity price in most of the sectors implies that electricity price as a policy tool can be used for efficient use and conservation

a theory of the consumption function with and without liquidity constraints fifteen years ago milton friedman s 1957 treatise a theory of the consumption function seemed badly dated dynamic optimization theory had not been employed much in economics when friedman wrote and utility theory was still comparatively primitive so his statement of the permanent income hypothesis never actually specified a formal mathematical model of behavior derived explicitly from utility maximization instead friedman relied at crucial points on intuition and verbal descriptions of behavior although these descriptions sounded plausible when other economists subsequently found multiperiod maximizing models that could be solved explicitly the implications of those models differed sharply from friedman s intuitive description of his model furthermore empirical tests in the 1970s and 1980s often rejected these rigorous versions of the permanent income hypothesis in favor of an alternative hypothesis that many households simply spent all of their current income today with the benefit of a further round of mathematical and computational advances friedman s 1957 original analysis looks more prescient than primitive it turns out that when there is meaningful uncertainty in future labor income the optimal behavior of moderately impatient consumers is much better described by friedman s original statement of the permanent income hypothesis than by the later explicit maximizing versions furthermore in a remarkable irony much of the empirical evidence that rejected the permanent income hypothesis as specified in tests of the 1970s and 1980s is actually consistent both with friedman s original description of the model and with the new version with serious uncertainty there are four key differences between the explicit maximizing models

electricity consumption growth nexus evidence from panel data for transition countries abstract this paper investigates the long run relationship and causality issues between electricity consumption and economic growth in 15 transition countries albania belarus bulgaria czech republic estonia latvia lithuania macedonia moldova poland romania russian federation serbia slovak republic and ukraine by using the pedroni panel cointegration method for the 1990 2006 period results suggest that the pedroni panel cointegration tests do not confirm a long term equilibrium relationship between electricity consumption per capita and real gdp per capita moreover since no cointegration was found error correction mechanisms plus causality tests cannot be run for further steps in the long term to investigate the causality between electricity consumption and economic growth overall it can be said that the electricity consumption related policies have no effect or relation on the level of real output in the long run for these countries as a conclusion the literature has conflicting results and there is no consensus either on the existence or the direction of causality between electricity consumption and economic growth thus the findings of this study have important policy implications and it shows that this issue still deserves further attention in future research

energy demand with declining rate schedules an econometric model for the u s commercial sector we specify and estimate a model of the demand for electricity and natural gas in commercial buildings using data from the commercial building energy consumption survey although not observed declining rate schedules are approximated by a downward sloping function fitted to billing data for individual survey units marginal prices rates temperature variables and a large number of building characteristics are incorporated into the model as explanatory variables demand and rate schedule equations constitute a simultaneous system with prices and quantities jointly determined the effects on price elasticities of using endogenous marginal rather than exogenous average prices are estimated to be quite large

understanding the evolution of the fiscal situation of the brazilian states 2006 2015 abstract the text analyzes how the brazilian states fiscal position evolved between 2006 and 2015 with the data revealing a clear deterioration in state level public finances during that period the rating methodology developed by the ministry of finance is used to show that when comparing 2006 2008 to 2013 2015 21 of the 26 states and the federal district saw their fiscal position deteriorate the results suggest that after the global financial crisis the states failed to pursue a fiscal rule that would curb the growth of spending in a context of falling revenue and rising debt the study shows that despite shrinking revenue the states maintained the pace of expenditure growth particularly payroll and pension expenses moreover the text shows that following the crisis state level revenue would have declined by even more were it not for a substantial increase in credit inflows while additional borrowing enabled the states to maintain public investment in the short term this policy showed to be unsustainable the paper shows that higher debt and the lack of the adjustment in public spending have a negative impact on state level investment in the long term

fiscal requirements for price stability maintaining price stability requires not only commitment to an appropriate monetary policy rule but an appropriate scal policy rule as well ricardian equivalence does not imply that scal policy is irrelevant except in the case of a certain class of policies ricardian policies the role of scal developments in inflation determination under a non ricardian regime is illustrated through an analysis of the bond price support regime of the 1940s a monetary scal regime with attractive properties would combine a taylor rule for monetary policy with nominal decit targeting as a scal policy commitment

a postponement model for demand management in this paper we analyze demand postponement as a strategy to handle potential demand surges under demand postponement a fraction of the demands from the regular period are postponed and satisfied during a postponement period this permits capacity to be procured to satisfy the postponed demands a reimbursement per unit is paid to customers whose demands are postponed the basic idea is that by preempting stockouts through demand postponement we can reduce overall stockout costs we formulate and solve a two stage capacity planning problem under demand postponement we propose a power range class of distributions to capture the nature of demand surges we establish the scalability and conjugate properties of the power range distributions under demand postponement which leads to a tractable analysis of the problem we analytically solve the problem of determining the optimal regular and postponement period capacities and the demand splitting rule to minimize the supplier s expected cost we show that a the value of postponement may be significant depending on cost and demand parameters b a postponement strategy may lead to reduced investment in initial capacity and c it may be optimal to do no demand postponement over a range of demands even after observing a higher demand signal we then relax several model assumptions and provide results for these extensions we conclude with managerial insights

energy efficiency economics and policy energy efficiency and conservation are major factors in the reduction of the environmental impact of the energy sector particularly with regard to climate change energy efficiency also contributes to reducing external dependence and vulnerabilities in the energy domain in this paper we discuss the factors that influence energy efficiency and conservation decisions and the most appropriate policies for their promotion although not all public policies seem justified we argue that specific policies for promoting energy conservation may be required preferably based on economic instruments or on the provision of information to consumers

real time pricing with ramping costs a new approach to managing a steep change in electricity demand in many countries electricity demand increases very steeply during the morning hours and decreases steeply during the evening hours a steep change in electricity demand incurs considerable costs for ramping up and down electric power equipment and raises the possibility of a large scale blackout this paper gives new insights into classical real time pricing rtp by considering the case in which demand changes very steeply we generalize the concept of the ramping costs and derive an extended form of rtp that achieves the optimal rate of change in quantity demanded by explicitly taking the ramping costs into account under the optimal pricing policy the prices are dramatically reduced during the period corresponding to the lower end of the slope of the load curve in contrast the prices are dramatically raised during the period corresponding to the upper end of the slope of the load curve as a result the steepness of the load curve will be remarkably controlled which will reduce both the ramping costs and the possibility of a large scale blackout

second chances subprime mortgage modification and redefault we examine how the structure of mortgage modification affects the likelihood that the mortgage redefaults over the next year we focus on pre hamp home affordable modification program subprime modifications where the borrower was seriously delinquent and the monthly payment was reduced the average redefault rate over the year following the modification is 56 redefault rates decline with the magnitude of reduction in monthly payments and redefault rates decline more when the payment reduction is achieved through principal forgiveness as compared to lower interest rates

no job no money no refi frictions to refinancing in a recession we study how employment documentation requirements and out of pocket closing costs constrain mortgage refinancing these frictions which bind most severely during recessions may significantly inhibit monetary policy pass through to study their effects on refinancing we exploit a federal housing administration policy change that excluded unemployed borrowers from refinancing and increased others out of pocket costs substantially these changes dramatically reduced refinancing rates particularly among the likely unemployed and those facing new out of pocket costs our results imply that unemployed and liquidity constrained borrowers have a high latent demand for refinancing cyclical variation in these factors may therefore affect both the aggregate and distributional consequences of monetary policy

perception of price when price information is costly evidence from residential electricity demand a bstract residential electricity consumption is an example of a good for which it is costly to determine marginal price since price changes with the quantity purchased according to multistep block rate schedules this paper investigates the effect of the price information problem on consumers price perceptions an alternative hypothesis of average price perception is tested against the marginal price postulate which assumes wellinformed consumers the model which includes a price perception variable allows the estimation of the price to which consumers actually respond the empirical results support the hypothesis that consumers respond to average price perceived from the electricity bill

innocent bystanders monetary policy and inequality abstract we study the effects of monetary policy shocks on and their historical contribution to consumption and income inequality in the united states since 1980 as measured by the consumer expenditure survey contractionary monetary policy systematically increases inequality in labor earnings total income consumption and total expenditures furthermore monetary policy shocks account for a non trivial component of the historical cyclical variation in income and consumption inequality using detailed micro level data on income and consumption we document some of the different channels via which monetary policy shocks affect inequality as well as how these channels depend on the nature of the change in monetary policy

the determinants of default on insured conventional residential mortgage loans this paper presents empirical evidence on the determinants of default for insured residential mortgages a multinomial logit model is specified and estimated for regional aggregates constructed from cross sectional and time series data the results document the independent statistical significance of contemporaneous payment income and loan value ratios and unemployment rates as well as more commonly studied determinants of default such as age and the original loan value ratio

failure to refinance households that fail to refinance their mortgage when interest rates decline can lose out on substantial savings based on a large random sample of outstanding u s mortgages in december of 2010 we estimate that approximately 20 of households for whom refinancing would be optimal and who appeared unconstrained to do so had not taken advantage of the lower rates we estimate the present discounted cost to the median household who fails to refinance to be approximately 11 500

why don t lenders renegotiate more home mortgages redefaults self cures and securitization we document the fact that servicers have been reluctant to renegotiate mortgages since the foreclosure crisis started in 2007 having performed payment reducing modifications on only about 3 percent of seriously delinquent loans we show that this reluctance does not result from securitization servicers renegotiate similarly small fractions of loans that they hold in their portfolios our results are robust to different definitions of renegotiation including the one most likely to be affected by securitization and to different definitions of delinquency our results are strongest in subsamples in which unobserved heterogeneity between portfolio and securitized loans is likely to be small and for subprime loans we use a theoretical model to show that redefault risk the possibility that a borrower will still default despite costly renegotiation and self cure risk the possibility that a seriously delinquent borrower will become current without renegotiation make renegotiation unattractive to investors

industrial electricity demand for turkey a structural time series analysis abstract this research investigates the relationship between turkish industrial electricity consumption industrial value added and electricity prices in order to forecast future turkish industrial electricity demand to achieve this an industrial electricity demand function for turkey is estimated by applying the structural time series technique to annual data over the period 1960 to 2008 in addition to identifying the size and significance of the price and industrial value added output elasticities this technique also uncovers the electricity underlying energy demand trend uedt for the turkish industrial sector and is as far as is known the first attempt to do this the results suggest that output and real electricity prices and a uedt all have an important role to play in driving turkish industrial electricity demand consequently they should all be incorporated when modelling turkish industrial electricity demand and the estimated uedt should arguably be considered in future energy policy decisions concerning the turkish electricity industry the output and price elasticities are estimated to be 0 15 and 0 16 respectively with an increasing but at a decreasing rate uedt and based on the estimated equation and different forecast assumptions it is predicted that turkish industrial electricity demand will be somewhere between 97 and 148 twh by 2020

short and long run time of use price elasticities in swiss residential electricity demand abstract this paper presents an empirical analysis on the residential demand for electricity by time of day this analysis has been performed using aggregate data at the city level for 22 swiss cities for the period 2000 2006 for this purpose we estimated two log log demand equations for peak and off peak electricity consumption using static and dynamic partial adjustment approaches these demand functions were estimated using several econometric approaches for panel data for example lsdv and re for static models and lsdv and corrected lsdv estimators for dynamic models the attempt of this empirical analysis has been to highlight some of the characteristics of the swiss residential electricity demand the estimated short run own price elasticities are lower than 1 whereas in the long run these values are higher than 1 the estimated short run and long run cross price elasticities are positive this result shows that peak and off peak electricity are substitutes in this context time differentiated prices should provide an economic incentive to customers so that they can modify consumption patterns by reducing peak demand and shifting electricity consumption from peak to off peak periods

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

interest rate pass through mortgage rates household consumption and voluntary deleveraging abstract exploiting variation in the timing of resets of adjustable rate mortgages arms we find that a sizable decline in mortgage payments up to 50 percent induces a significant increase in c

mortgage modification and strategic behavior evidence from a legal settlement with countrywide abstract we investigate whether homeowners respond strategically to news of mortgage modification programs we exploit plausibly exogenous variation in modification policy induced by settlement of us state government lawsuits against countrywide financial corporation which agreed to offer modifications to seriously delinquent borrowers using a difference in differences framework we find that countrywide s monthly delinquency rate increased more than 0 54 percentage points a 10 percent relative increase immediately after the settlement s announcement the estimated increase in default rates is largest among borrowers least likely to default otherwise these results suggest that strategic behavior should be an important consideration in designing mortgage modification programs jel d14 g21 k22 r31

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

politicians and banks political influences on government owned banks in emerging markets abstract government ownership of banks is very common in countries other than the united states this paper provides cross country bank level empirical evidence about political influences on these banks it shows that government owned banks increase their lending in election years relative to private banks this effect is robust to controlling for country specific macroeconomic and institutional factors as well as bank specific factors the increase in lending is about 11 of a government owned bank s total loan portfolio or about 0 5 of the median country s gdp per election per government owned bank

access and affordability of electricity in developing countries summary a key objective of developing countries is to provide affordable access to modern energy services in order to support economic and social development the paper presents a number of arguments for why and in which way energy access and affordability can play a key role in national development programs and in achieving the millennium development goals approaches for measuring accessibility and affordability are presented drawing on case studies of bangladesh brazil and south africa countries with different rates of electrification affordability of using electricity is examined in relation to the energy expenditure burden for households and time consumption conclusions focus on lessons learned and recommendations for implementing policies instruments and regulatory measures to tackle the challenge of affordability

electricity demand elasticities and temperature evidence from panel smooth transition regression with instrumental variable approach abstract this study applies a non linear model i e the recently developed panel smooth transition regression pstr model and takes into account the potential endogeneity biases to investigate the demand function of electricity for 24 oecd countries from the period 1978 2004 our empirical results demonstrate that there is a strongly non linear link among electricity consumption real income electricity price and temperature a result that is new to the literature as real income rises electricity consumption rapidly increases first and after the level of real income exceeds approximately us 2500 its increasing rate turns slow down an increase in electricity price has a negative or no influence on electricity consumption evidence of a u shaped relationship between electricity consumption and temperature is supported and the threshold value of temperature is approximately 53 f which is endogenously determined furthermore the estimated elasticities of time dynamic indicate that electricity demand is income inelastic price inelastic and temperature inelastic as time goes on the absolute elasticities of electricity demand gradually decrease with respect to real gdp and electricity price whereas they gradually increase with respect to temperature suggesting that the impact of temperature on electricity demand is becoming more important in recent years

optimal mortgage refinancing a closed form solution we derive the first closed form optimal refinancing rule refinance when the current mortgage interest rate falls below the original rate by at least in this formula w is the principal branch of the lambert w function where is the real discount rate is the expected real rate of exogenous mortgage repayment is the standard deviation of the mortgage rate is the ratio of the tax adjusted refinancing cost and the remaining mortgage value and is the marginal tax rate this expression is derived by solving a tractable class of refinancing problems our quantitative results closely match those reported by researchers using numerical methods

demand customer base line and demand response in the electricity market a survey the increasing use of demand side management as a tool to reliably meet electricity demands at peak time has stimulated interest among researchers consumers and producer organiza tions managers regulators and policymakers this research reviews the growing literature on models which are used to study demand customer base line cbl and demand response in the electricity market after characterizing the general demand models the cbl based on which the demand response models are studied is reviewed given the experience gained from the review and existing conditions the study combines an appropriate model for each case for a possible application to the electricity market moreover it discusses the implications of the results in the literature these aspects are studied independently the main contribution of this survey is attributed to the treatment of the three issues as sequentially interdependent the review is expected to enhance the understanding of the demand cbl and demand response in the electricity market and their relationships the objective is conducted through a combination of demand and supply side managements in order to reduce demand through different demand response programs during peak times this enables electricity suppliers to save costly electricity generation and at the same time reduce energy vulnerability