electricity demand response to price changes the portuguese case taking into account income differences abstract in this paper we study the behavior of electricity use in portuguese households using microdata from five independent surveys our sample covers the period from 1989 to 2010 which was characterized by major changes in the country we adopt the pseudo panel methodology creating 350 cohorts based on the size of the household the type of location rural or urban the region and the income quintile our results show relatively high medium long run own price elasticities indicating that an increase in the electricity price due to for instance policy intervention would in fact decrease electricity use cross price elasticities indicate that electricity and gas are substitutes additionally the income quintiles analysis shows significant differences in the elasticities depending on the income group hence political interventions in the electricity sector may have important redistributive effects

ethanol demand under the flex fuel technology regime in brazil abstract this paper analyzes the characteristics of ethanol demand in the context of fuel mix diversification in brazil currently ethanol is the most important gasoline additive and alternative fuel consumed in brazil and is responsible there for profound changes in the dynamics of fuel consumption the diffusion of flex fuel vehicles in brazil symbolizes a new stage of ethanol expansion and is a central component of the increasing demand for fuel accordingly we evaluate ethanol demand in brazil following the introduction of flex fuel vehicles using a cointegration approach and autoregressive distributed lag bounds tests over the period 2003 2010 the evidences confirm that during the last decade ethanol has strengthened its position as both an independent fuel and a substitute for gasoline there is also evidence that growth in the brazilian automobile fleet based on flex fuel technology is a major driving factor of long run ethanol demand further the dynamics of gasohol mandatory blend of gasoline and ethanol and ethanol prices operate in a symmetric manner over ethanol demand thereby evidencing the increasing substitutability between these alternative fuels

choose to lose health plan choices from a menu with dominated option we examine the health plan choices that 23 894 employees at a u s firm made from a large menu of options that differed only in financial cost sharing and premium these decisions provide a clear test of the predictions of the standard economic model of insurance choice in the absence of choice frictions because plans were priced so that nearly every plan with a lower deductible was financially dominated by an otherwise identical plan with a high deductible we document that the majority of employees chose dominated plans which resulted in excess spending equivalent to 24 of chosen plan premiums low income employees were significantly more likely to choose dominated plans and most employees did not switch into more financially efficient plans in the subsequent year we show that the choice of dominated plans cannot be rationalized by standard risk preference or any expectations about health risk testing alternative explanations with a series of hypothetical choice experiments we find that the popularity of dominated plans was not primarily driven by the size and complexity of the plan menu nor informed preferences for avoiding high deductibles but by employees lack of understanding of health insurance our findings challenge the standard practice of inferring risk preferences from insurance choices and raise doubts about the welfare benefits of health reforms that expand consumer choice

uniform compliance costs for mineral commodities who gains and who loses changes in energy and nonfuelmineral production consumption and net export revenue that result from environmental protection are estimated by income class and geographic region unlike previous assessments of unilateral adoption of standards i assume that all producers incur equal cleanup costs adjustment is therefore accomplished through changes in prices and quantities rather than altered trade patterns the estimated magnitude of worldwide changes is not large moreover many poor countries are forecast to benefit since their terms of trade improve however the problem of obtaining foreign exchange for investment remains a financing scheme that divorces efficiency from equity is suggested

determinants of import demand for non renewable energy petroleum products empirical evidence from nigeria abstract this study estimated determinants of import demand for refined petroleum products in nigeria for the period 1984 2013 it employed the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds test cointegration method and analysed both long run and short run determinants of import demand for total and specific petroleum products in the long run aggregate and sectoral incomes are significant determinants of import of refined kerosene further real effective exchange rate reer aggregate income gdp manufacturing sector s income domestic energy production dep and population growth rate pgr are drivers of import of refined motor spirit moreover reer dep and manufacturing sector s income are propellers of import of refined distillate fuel also reer and total output of petroleum products are major drivers of total import of refined petroleum products short run results show that previous period gdp pgr and manufacturing and service sectors incomes are determinants of import demand for refined kerosene moreover reer gdp previous pgr and manufacturing sector s income exert significant effects on the import of refined motor spirit further significant effects of reer dep previous pgr domestic output of the product and manufacturing and service sectors incomes on the import demand for distillate fuel were found policy implications of the foregoing are articulated in the paper

an estimation of crude oil import demand in turkey evidence from time varying parameters approach abstract the aim of this study is to model crude oil import demand and estimate the price and income elasticities of imported crude oil in turkey based on a time varying parameters tvp approach with the aim of obtaining accurate and more robust estimates of price and income elasticities this study employs annual time series data of domestic oil consumption real gdp and oil price for the period 1966 2012 the empirical results indicate that both the income and price elasticities are in line with the theoretical expectations however the income elasticity is statistically significant while the price elasticity is statistically insignificant the relatively high value of income elasticity 1 182 from this study suggests that crude oil import in turkey is more responsive to changes in income level this result indicates that imported crude oil is a normal good and rising income levels will foster higher consumption of oil based equipments vehicles and services by economic agents the estimated income elasticity of 1 182 suggests that imported crude oil consumption grows at a higher rate than income this in turn reduces oil intensity over time therefore crude oil import during the estimation period is substantially driven by income

demand for gasoline in kuwait an empirical analysis using cointegration techniques abstract this paper estimates the demand for gasoline in kuwait for the period 1970 1989 using a cointegration and error correction model ecm it is found that gasoline demand is inelastic with respect to price in the short and long run and while it is elastic in the long run gasoline demand is inelastic with respect to income in the short run this suggests that gasoline demand response to income changes is higher in the long run than in the short run furthermore gasoline consumption adjusts towards its long run level with about 52 of the adjustment occurring in the first year

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

economic growth and electricity consumption in cote d ivoire evidence from time series analysis this paper examines the causal relationship between the electric power industry and the economic growth of cote d ivoire using the data from 1971 to 2008 a test was conducted for the cointegration and granger causality within an error correction model results from these tests reveal a bidirectional causality between per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp a unidirectional causality running from electricity consumption to industry value added appears in the short run economic growth is found to have great effects on electricity consumption and a reverse causality from electricity to economic growth may also appear in the long run there is a unidirectional causality between electricity and both gdp and industry value added from these findings we conclude that the country will be energy dependent in the long run and must therefore secure the production network from shortfalls to ensure a sustainable development path accordingly government should adopt policies aimed at increasing the investment in the sector by stepping up electricity production from existing and new energy sources

application of the translog model of energy substitution to developing countries the case of korea abstract while studies exist on the applications of the translog energy model in developed countries little is known about its application in developing countries to this end this paper investigates the long run sensitivities of energy demand to price changes and the degree of interfactor and interfuel substitution in the korean industrial sector we also uniquely disaggregate the industrial sector into nine manufacturing and three non manufacturing subsectors based on time series data obtained from the korea institute of energy and resources an energy demand model has been specified and estimated according to the translog approach the conclusions provide future directions for energy demand management policies in korea

asset pricing and asymmetric reasoning we present a theory and experimental evidence on pricing and portfolio choices under asymmetric reasoning we show that under asymmetric reasoning prices do not reflect all types of reasoning some agents who observe prices that cannot be reconciled with their reasoning switch from perceiving the environment as risky to perceiving it as ambiguous if they are ambiguity averse these agents become price insensitive results from an experiment show that consistent with the theory i without aggregate risk mispricing decreases as the fraction of price sensitive agents increases and ii with aggregate risk price insensitive agents trade to more balanced portfolios

energy consumption and energy r d in oecd perspectives from oil prices and economic growth abstract we estimate the short run and long run elasticities of various types of energy consumption and energy r d to changes in oil prices and income of the 20 oecd countries over the period of 1980 2010 using the nerlove partial adjustment model npam we find negative income elasticity for coal consumption but positive income elasticity for oil and gas consumption suggesting the importance of economic growth in encouraging the usage of cleaner energy from coal to oil and gas by introducing time dummies into the regressions we show that climatic mitigation policies are able to promote the usage of cleaner energies through the dynamic linkages between energy consumption and energy r d we find that fossil fuel consumption promotes fossil fuel r d and fossil fuel r d in turn drives its own consumption renewable energy r d which is more responsive to economic growth reduces fossil fuel consumption and hence fossil fuel r d

personal traits and individual choices taking action in economic and non economic decisions abstract in a large number of decisions the option that does not require a specific action such as filling in a form is chosen frequently it is a stylized fact that opt in or opt out designs for otherwise identical choices lead to vastly different outcomes choice options are chosen more frequently simply because they are the no action alternative or default option however direct empirical evidence on the reasons for the popularity of defaults is scarce we devised a special survey module for the dutch dnb household survey to study potential explanations for default choices we find that the popularity of the default option is related to different personal traits in economic and non economic decisions financially literate individuals are more likely to take action and opt out the default option in economic decision making in non economic decisions procrastination increases the popularity of the default while individuals who care much about the opinion of others are more inclined to deviate from the default

libertarian paternalism information production and financial decision making we develop a theoretical model to analyze the effects of libertarian paternalism on information production and financial decision making individuals in our model appreciate the information content of the recommendations made by a social planner this affects their incentive to gather information and in turn the speed at which information spreads across market participants via social learning or formal advice channels we characterize situations in which libertarian paternalism improves welfare and contrast them with scenarios in which this policy is suboptimal because of its negative impact on the production and propagation of information the author 2013 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

fossil fuel subsidy removal and inadequate public power supply implications for businesses abstract we briefly consider the impact of fossil fuel subsidy removal policies in the context of inadequate power supply with a focus on the implications for businesses in doing so we utilize the case of the early 2012 fuel subsidy removal in nigeria the rationale for such subsidy removal policies is typically informed by analysis showing that they lead to an economically inefficient allocation of resources and market distortions while often failing to meet intended objectives however often the realities of infrastructural and institutional deficiencies are not appropriately factored into the decision making process businesses in many developing countries already impaired by the high cost of power supply deficiencies become even less competitive on an unsubsidized basis we find that justifications for removal often do not adequately reflect the specific environments of developing country economies resulting in poor recommendations or ineffective policy

energy gdp relationship and capital intensity in ldcs abstract this study provides an updated estimate of the gdp elasticity of energy consumption for ldcs it uses a production function approach in determining this elasticity energy consumption is explained in terms of economic activity capital intensity and structure of economy the elasticity is found to be less than unitary this suggests that the earlier estimates for ldcs were biased

nudging the poor and the rich a field study on the distributional effects of green electricity defaults abstract choice defaults are an increasingly popular public policy tool yet there is little knowledge of the distributional consequences of such nudges for different groups in society we report results from an elicitation study in the residential electricity market in switzerland in which we contrast consumers actual contract choices under an existing default regime with the same consumers active choices in a survey presenting the same choice set without any default we find that the default is successful at curbing greenhouse gas emissions but it leads poorer households to pay more for their electricity consumption than they would want to while leaving a significant willingness to pay for green electricity by richer households untapped

energy efficiency and rebound effects an econometric analysis of energy demand in the commercial building sector it is widely recognized that the adoption of energy saving innovations can induce an increase in the usage of the corresponding technologies and thus can possibly increase energy consumption among other concerns is that uncertainties regarding the magnitude of this rebound effect can deter policy makers from promoting energy efficiency this paper analyzes the rebound effects of the adoption of energy efficient technologies in commercial buildings based upon a structural model of technology adoption and subsequent energy demand at the building level the empirical results are that energy efficiency can reduce electricity use by about 35 and natural gas consumption by about 50

modeling and forecasting natural gas demand in bangladesh natural gas is the major indigenous source of energy in bangladesh and accounts for almost one half of all primary energy used in the country per capita and total energy use in bangladesh is still very small and it is important to understand how energy and natural gas demand will evolve in the future we develop a dynamic econometric model to understand the natural gas demand in bangladesh both in the national level and also for a few sub sectors our demand model shows large long run income elasticity around 1 5 for aggregate demand for natural gas forecasts into the future also show a larger demand in the future than predicted by various national and multilateral organizations even then it is possible that our forecasts could still be at the lower end of the future energy demand price response was statistically not different from zero indicating that prices are possibly too low and that there is a large suppressed demand for natural gas in the country

reading the fine print information disclosure in the brazilian credit card market consumer credit regulations usually require that lenders disclose interest rates however in the absence of specific prominence requirements lenders can conceal the interest rate in the fine print while still complying with the law i examine the effect of such a strategy using a field experiment in brazil in which a credit card company offered their clients payment plans to pay off their balances using randomized contract interest rates and the degree of rate disclosure i show that most clients are rate sensitive whether or not rates are prominently disclosed the elasticity of payment plan enrollment with respect to the interest rate ranges from 0 711 to 0 880 high risk clients are an exception these clients are rate sensitive only when disclosure is prominent i also show that clients are influenced by nudges that favor longer term contracts conditional on enrollment the proportion of clients who choose a longer term contract is 40 percentage points higher when a longer term contract is feat

an empirical analysis of energy demand in namibia abstract using a unique database of end user local energy data and the recently developed autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration we estimate the long run elasticities of the namibian energy demand function at both aggregated level and by type of energy electricity petrol and diesel for the period 1980 2002 our main results show that energy consumption responds positively to changes in gdp and negatively to changes in energy price and air temperature the differences in price elasticities across fuels uncovered by this study have significant implications for energy taxation by namibian policy makers we do not find any significant cross price elasticities between different fuel types

self directed pensions gender risk and portfolio choices in this paper i investigate gender differences in financial risk taking from a new perspective and i show that gender plays a different role across the risk distribution to evaluate risk taking i exploit portfolio choices following a reform that entitles almost the entire swedish workforce to choose a risk profile for a part of their public pension contributions the novel finding is that portfolio risk does not differ much between the men and women who choose less risky portfolios while the men who choose risky portfolios take on significantly more risk than do the women who choose risky portfolios the findings are robust to investors choosing the default alternative chasing past returns rebalancing and different measures of risk taking

the demand for road diesel in canada abstract in this paper we estimate the demand for road diesel in canada using aggregate annual data for the period 1986 2008 using a partial adjustment model pam we find short and long run price elasticities of 0 43 and 0 8 respectively however using cointegration techniques we obtain price elasticities that are 30 to 50 lower the short run elasticity with respect to gdp per capita is evaluated at 0 5 with the pam and 1 55 with cointegration in the long run both estimation techniques indicate an income elasticity around 0 9 our results underline the importance of controlling for the expansion of the primary sector which has been characterizing the canadian economy in the 2000s

an analysis of the welfare and distributive implications of factors influencing household electricity consumption abstract the deep economic crisis and the sharp rise in electricity prices have reduced electricity demand by spanish households this paper aims to analyse the responsiveness of household electricity demand and the welfare effects related to both factors in the 2006 2012 period by applying a demand model estimated with the quantile regression method the results show that the electricity consumption of medium high income households is particularly responsive to price increases whereas that of medium low income households is more responsive to changes in income the retail electricity price increases and the economic crisis have led to lower and steeper u shape price elasticities of demand and higher and steeper n shape income elasticities of demand the joint impact of those two factors on the welfare of lower income households is higher in relative terms i e as a share of household income than for other income groups these results suggest that the economic crisis and increases in retail electricity prices have had detrimental welfare effects especially on the lower income segment of the population they should be considered when financing climate and energy policies through the electricity bill and provide a rationale to take such support which pushes the retail electricity price upwards out of the electricity bill

estimating energy and oil demand functions a study of thirteen developing countries abstract in this paper we attempt to identify some of the factors that have determined the level and pattern of energy demand in developing countries during the 1970s and early 1980s aggregate oil and energy demanding functions are constructed for a selection of oil importing countries and oil exporting countries the results show a strong link between income and aggregate energy demand conversely the price elasticity of energy demand is low both in the short run and the long run oil demand behaviour is more complex oil products can be rationed or domestic energy production can affect oil demand nonetheless the income elasticity remains close to one in most countries and is well above one for some

how a symmetric is the response of import demand to changes in its determinants evidence from european energy imports abstract energy imports are crucial for european countries yet little is known about determinants of their import demand we update long outdated estimates of import demand elasticities using recent data for crude and derived energy products and contribute to the debate on the asymmetry of import demand by using recent developments in econometric modelling our results have important implications for the geopolitics of energy markets in europe asymmetric income seems to be the most relevant determinant of import demand economic growth and fossil fuel consumption are correlated even in the context of the european agenda towards renewables our results suggest that european economic recovery may derail the drive for lower fossil consumption and that changes in the natural gas market may further complicate this drive especially regarding russia as the primary supplier to the eurozone

the relation between energy and non energy inputs in india s manufacturing industries the purpose of this paper is to examine the substitution possibilities among energy inputs and other non energy factors of production in response to price changes we relate this study to india s manufacturing industries this is of special interest since in the recent years indian industries have been gradually moving towards a high energy intensive structure of production in 1970 71 the mining and the manufacturing sector accounted for 52 9 per cent of the total commercial energy consumed in india in coal equivalent terms 8 p 1301 in this study we compute cross and own price elasticities of demand for all inputs a knowledge of the substitution possibilities is of paramount importance in economic planning consider for instance three situations first the effect of rising energy prices will tend to raise the demand for capital if capital and energy are substitute inputs second if energy and capital are complements the higher price for energy will tend to reduce the demand for both new capital equipment and energy thus the availability of cheap and ample supply of energy is significant in determining capital intensity and the future rates of capital formation in the literature on economic development this aspect of the choice of techniques has been by and large neglected third if there are limited substitution possibilities between energy and other inputs the adjustment by industry to higher prices of energy may be quite difficult and costs of production may rise precipitously necessitating a drastic change away from energy based production techniques in section ii of this paper we discuss the technique of analysis and describe the sources of data section iii presents the results and section iv is confined to the concluding remarks

demand for gasoline in the gcc an application of pooling and testing procedures the structure of gasoline demand in the gcc countries was analysed the aim was to estimate price and income elasticities both for the short and long run it was found that gasoline demand is inelastic with respect to both price and income for both the short and long run when gcc countries were divided into two groups based on their pricing policies it was found that the group with the free market approach and higher reliance on market forces gave larger price elasticities and smaller income elasticities in both the short run and long run

refraining from imitation professional resistance and limited diffusion in a financial market why do some practices not spread although this is an important question for both diffusion theorists and those interested in institutional change we know surprisingly little about the limitations on diffusion because most diffusion studies sample on successful diffusion i address the question of why some practices fail to spread by introducing the concept of a deviance discount a deviance discount is a systematic downgrading of the observed adoption performance of controversial practices which limits the contagion of such practices i test and find qualitative and quantitative support for my thesis in the product introduction behavior of swedish mutual fund firms my findings hold implications for diffusion theory and theories of endogenous institutional change

household energy demand in kenya an application of the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids abstract this paper estimates price and fuel expenditure elasticities of demand by applying the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids to 3665 households sampled across kenya in 2009 the results indicate that motor spirit premium msp automotive gas oil ago and lubricants are price elastic while fuel wood kerosene charcoal liquefied petroleum gas lpg and electricity are price inelastic kerosene is income elastic while fuel wood charcoal lpg electricity msp and ago are income inelastic the results also reveal fuel stack behaviour that is multiple fuel use among the households main policy implications of the results include increasing the penetration of alternative fuels as well as provision of more fiscal incentives to increase usage of cleaner fuels this not withstanding however the household income should be increased beyond a certain point for the household to completely shift and use a new fuel

consumer behaviour theory and empirical evidence a survey this survey is designed to emphasize the relationship between empirical a nd theoretical considerations in the analysis of consumer behavior a lthough it focuses primarily on analysis at the individual or micro l evel it tries where possible to draw implications for the estimati on of aggregate relationships the importance of micro level analysis stems from the rapid expansion in available panel and survey data se ts this development has generated its own theoretical and empirical issues many of which are raised in this survey copyright 1988 by royal economic society

consumer responses to gasoline price and non price policies abstract gasoline consumption in emerging economies have been rising rapidly due to economic growth and increasing urbanization rate in recent years however the development has brought about new socio economic and environmental challenges leading governments to adopt various policies to control the trend although the impacts of price changes on gasoline consumption are well researched in the literature studies on different policies in a specific country is limited in this paper we investigate the impact of three distinct policies price reform rationing and fuel efficiency on consumer responses in iran we estimate price income and efficiency elasticities across household characteristics income groups and provinces using the aids model and the household expenditures data for the period 2005 2016 the results show that the average price elasticity is 76 however it varies across household characteristics time and space the price responses are greater in provinces neighbouring the countries with high price differentials and welfare losses of price reform are more sever for lower income families the estimated elasticities under different policy regimes show that energy price reform has led to significantly higher elasticities while rationing has led to decreased elasticities the more stringent efficiency regulation and increasing imports of fuel efficient cars have also increased elasticities

nudging a promising tool for sustainable consumption behaviour abstract success of strategies for solving problems of climate change resource efficiency and environmental impacts increasingly depend on whether changes in public behaviour can and will supplement the technical solutions available to date a renewed perspective on existing policy tools and potential strategies for behaviour change are entering public debate that have implications for behaviour of individuals but that also raise critical questions about the role of the government in the society and transition to sustainability the guiding question is whether it is possible to help individuals make better decisions for themselves and society at large by overcoming limitations of human cognitive capacity and behavioural biases in order to answer these questions this article 1 analyses existing academic knowledge on nudging and choice architecture 2 investigates lessons about effectiveness of applied nudging tools and approaches in consumption domains of energy use in the home food and mobility 3 discusses opportunities and limitations for devising more successful nudges in the three consumption domains and 4 outlines critical issues concerning the legitimacy of nudging the article shows that lately applications of behavioural sciences and behavioural economics such as nudge have been helping policy makers in different countries and sectors to more systematically integrate behavioural insights into policy design and implementation however the size of the effects of policy interventions and the actual outcomes of interventions in different contexts are very diverse results from one experiment cannot be indiscriminately generalised to a different context or to a wider population the problem is the complexity of human behaviour and the diversity of factors that influence it despite that nudging is a useful strategy for inducing changes in context specific behaviour nudge tools are seen as a complement to the traditional policy instruments rather than as a substitute for laws and regulations and economic tools the article is based on the project funded by the swedish epa environmental protection agency that resulted in a report nudging advancing swedish policy making with academic insights and practical experiences of changing behaviour mont et al 2014 which served as an input to the swedish epa recommendations to the swedish government on policy measures for sustainable consumption naturvardsverket 2014

retirement savings a tale of decisions and defaults we examine the behavior of members of an industry wide pension fund to assess both the prevalence of defaults and their impact on retirement savings our empirical investigations show that preferences demographic characteristics and labor mobility matter greatly when it comes to the extent of active plan choice or high defaulting and overall level of pension benefits using a structural dynamic life cycle model we then evaluate the ability of these empirically motivated factors to explain retirement savings patterns in our model individuals decide how much to save in a setting that combines irreversible automatic enrolment with an active decision regime after automatic enrolment there is an initial choice between two pension plans defined benefit vs defined contribution and then members decide possibly by default their voluntary contributions and type of investment allocation we estimate the model using the simulated method of moments on administrative data from a large australian pension fund our results show that default settings strongly influence wealth accumulation such settings are also highly persistent both over time and across decisions overall our findings suggest that if defaults particularly the irreversible ones are not carefully designed retirement savings can be severely affected this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

trade and consumption of energy varieties empirical analysis of selected west africa economies abstract this paper examined the relationship between consumption of energy varieties total electricity and road transport and trade export and import in selected west african countries data spanning 1971 to 2010 was used to estimate vector error correction models vecm for 6 countries based on data availability empirical analysis showed that there is insignificant linkage between consumption of energy varieties and export of benin however there is a one way positive linkage running from energy varieties to import of the country for cote d ivoire energy varieties have insignificant relationship with export and import however while inverse relationship runs from export to both electricity and road transport energy consumption positive direct association runs from import to total energy and transport energy consumption with respect to ghana positive causality runs from electricity and road transport energy consumption to export however there is a significant positive feedback effect between import and electricity as well as road transport energy consumption for nigeria there is a significant positive link running from both electricity and road transport energy consumption to export and import senegal s case suggests a bi directional inverse linkage between export and total energy consumption for togo both export and import are insignificantly linked with energy use these mixed findings generate different policy implications across the selected west african countries which are well articulated in the paper

examining the role of energy efficiency and non economic factors in energy demand and co2 emissions in nigeria policy implications abstract this paper examines the role of energy efficiency and non economic factors such as consumers preferences lifestyles and values which have hitherto been ignored in energy demand and co2 emissions modelling for nigeria we use a structural time series model to estimate various energy demand and co2 intensity models that take account of the aforementioned factors we adopt preferred models from these estimates to analyse how energy demand and co2 emissions in nigeria might evolve by generating three different future scenarios to 2025 we find energy efficiency and non economic factors to influence energy demand and co2 emissions the long run income and price elasticities obtained differ significantly from those in existing studies that have ignored these salient factors in a business as usual scenario the results indicate that energy demand will continue to grow consequently present policies do not sufficiently mitigate aggregate co2 emissions in nigeria the lesson for policy makers is that the extant policies introduced to restrain co2 emissions from a production perspective have to be combined with new policies that influence consumers lifestyles and behaviours develop energy efficient technologies and apply low tariffs on imported energy efficient appliances to drive down co2 emissions from a consumption perspective

the energy gdp relationship in developing countries empirical evidence and stability tests abstract the elasticity of energy consumption with respect to gdp is an important element in projecting energy needs in economic development this study uses cross section and pooled cross section time series data to find that the elasticity of energy consumption with respect to gdp in developing countries is in the neighbourhood of 1 35 and significantly above one over the period covered 1970 to 1976 the relationships appear to have remained stable there are significant differences between areas of the world but the differences in the elasticities between different continents are not large

why does the law of one price fail an experiment on index mutual funds we conduct an experiment to evaluate why individuals invest in high fee index funds in our experiments subjects allocate 10 000 across four s p 500 index funds and are rewarded for their portfolio s subsequent return subjects overwhelmingly fail to minimize fees we can reject the hypothesis that subjects buy high fee index funds because of bundled non portfolio services search costs for fees matter but even when we eliminate these costs fees are not minimized instead subjects place high weight on annualized returns since inception fees paid decrease with financial literacy interestingly subjects who choose high fee funds sense they are making a mistake

genetic variation in financial decision making individuals differ in how they construct their investment portfolios yet empirical models of portfolio risk typically account only for a small portion of the cross sectional variance this paper asks whether genetic variation can explain some of these individual differences following a major pension reform swedish adults had to form a portfolio from a large menu of funds we match data on these investment decisions with the swedish twin registry and find that approximately 25 of individual variation in portfolio risk is due to genetic variation we also find that these results extend to several other aspects of financial decision making

simple tests of distributional effects on macroeconomic equations the presence of distributional effects in macroeconomic equations is shown to coincide with nonlinearity in micro behavioral relationships parameters estimated with aggregate data as in representative agent models contain distributional biases that are not measurable using aggregate data alone tests for distributional effects and other measures of the extent of aggregation problems are derived using distributional data observed over time significant distributional effects are noted for a model of annual aggregate u s commodity expenditure data a static model that accommodates individual heterogeneity is found to be statistically equivalent to a simply dynamic model that accommodates first order autocorrelation

evaluation of the effect of the power of one campaign on natural gas consumption abstract in this paper we study an advertising campaign launched by the irish government to induce more energy efficient behaviour and we assess its effect on residential natural gas consumption we first analyse changes in the daily consumption of natural gas and find that advertising leaflets had a significant but short lived effect on natural gas consumption we find no persistent effect of the campaign we then study three surveys administered to 1000 consumers prior to and during the campaign this repeated cross section allows us to determine that the efficiency campaign has increased awareness of behaviours that curb natural gas consumption however we do not find any significant effect of the campaign on self reported natural gas saving behaviour

incidence and impact the regional variation of poverty effects due to fossil fuel subsidy reform since fossil fuel subsidy reforms can induce significant distributional shifts and price shocks effective compensation and social protection programs are crucial based on the statistical simulation model by araar and verme 2012 this study estimates the regional variability of direct welfare effects of removing fuel subsidies in nigeria uncompensated subsidy removal is estimated to increase the national poverty rate by 3 4 on average however uniform cash compensation that appears effective at the national average is found to fail to mitigate price shocks in 16 of 37 states thus putting livelihoods and public support for reforms at risk states that are estimated to incur the largest welfare shocks coincide with hotspots of civil unrest following nigeria s 2012 subsidy reform attempt the study illustrates how regionally disaggregated compensation can be revenue neutral and maintain or reduce pre reform poverty rates in all states overall it highlights the importance of understanding differences in vulnerability and designing tailored social protection schemes which ensure public support for subsidy reforms

health insurance choice and risk preferences under cumulative prospect theory an experiment we investigate how consumers choose insurance contracts when using a measure of decision quality based on individual risk preferences for this we use a laboratory experiment with a sequential design first subjects face insurance choices then we elicit risk preferences allowing for different latent decision making theories i e cumulative prospect theory and expected utility theory we find that the vast majority are cumulative prospect theory types analyzing whether subjects choose contracts consistent with their risk preferences we find that about 14 of all participants show inconsistent behavior and low decision quality yet the majority shows consistent behavior and good decision quality our results suggest that one explanation for inconsistent choices is the application of heuristics

review of key international demand elasticities for major industrializing economies abstract this paper conducts a selective review of various estimates for energy demand responses focused specially upon lower income industrializing economies rather than richer mature nations it emphasizes recent trends from empirical studies that have been published after 2000 emphasis is placed on the five major emerging or transitional economies in brazil china india mexico and russia although other important nations like chile and south korea are also discussed when studies are available the review focuses attention on the long run responses to changes in prices and income after capital stock turnover has been completed the terminology often refers to elasticities or the percentage change in energy use divided by the percentage change in price or income holding constant all other factors that could influence energy use decisions estimates cover petroleum products natural gas and electricity although the available studies often ignore coal they also include the economy wide impacts real gdp to price changes most studies have focused upon household and transportation use of liquid fuels many fewer studies have investigated fuels used by industry or commerce or for electric generation based upon the available estimates price and income elasticities for liquid fuels are generally less than one unity for many countries and sectors except for the long run income effect for transportation purposes which can range widely by country between 0 24 and 1 75 while averaging 0 94 for all countries

estimates of energy and non energy elasticities in selected asian manufacturing sectors policy implications abstract this paper presents the results of a study of the demand elasticities for energy and non energy inputs in the food processing and textile industries in bangladesh the philippines and thailand estimates of substitution elasticities in production were derived by fitting data to a translog cost function for the period 1970 1980 for bangladesh 1970 1978 for the philippines and 1974 1977 for thailand the results varied according to the industries studied and across countries they were compared with those of several developing and industrialized countries and substitutability among inputs was found to be greater in the manufacturing sector of the developing countries studies than in those of industrialized countries the generally high elasticities between labour and energy have implications for relative input pricing and use in developing countries

underlying energy demand trends in south korean and indonesian aggregate whole economy and residential sectors abstract this paper used annual time series data over the period 1973 2008 to estimate energy demand functions for south korea and indonesian aggregated whole economy and residential sectors furthermore the underlying energy demand trend uedt which may be non linear and reflects not only technical progress which usually produces greater energy efficiency but also other factors such as changes in consumer tastes and the economic structure that may be working in the opposite direction is also examined in the paper in estimating the price and income elasticities the study applies harvey s structural time series approach where a stochastic trend is used as a proxy for uedt empirical evidence from this study reveals that the estimated long run income and price elasticities range from 0 58 to 1 15 and from 0 09 to 066 respectively furthermore the stochastic form for the uedt is preferred for both countries and sectors suggesting a wide variation in the exogenous effects of energy saving technical progress in addition to other pertinent exogenous factors such as economic structure consumer preferences and socio economic influences

the system of administrative and political corruption canal irrigation in south india the paper describes how some irrigation engineers raise vast amounts of illicit revenue from the distribution of water and contracts and redistribute part to superior officers and politicians it argues that the corruption system which is centred on control of personnel transfers is an important supply side reason for poor performance of canal irrigated agriculture insofar as the same system operates in other government departments it may be more important for understanding indian politics and the political influences on economic development than has previously been realised

risk return preferences in the pension domain are people able to choose this paper presents new evidence for the netherlands on pension preferences and investor autonomy in the pension domain using a representative survey of about 1000 dutch citizens our main conclusions are the following risk aversion is domain dependent and highest in the pension domain the vast majority of respondents favours the currently dominant defined benefit pension system if offered a combined defined benefit defined contribution system the majority would like to have a guaranteed pension income of at least 70 of their net labour income self assessed risk tolerance and financial expertise are important individual explanatory variables of pension attitudes the average respondent considers himself financially unsophisticated and is reluctant to take control of retirement savings investment even when offered the possibility to increase expertise respondents who have chosen a relatively safe portfolio tend to switch to the riskier median portfolio when they are shown future income streams this again suggests that many respondents currently lack the skills to have investor autonomy over investment for retirement

on the asset allocation of a default pension fund we characterize the optimal default fund in a dened contribution dc pension plan using detailed data on individuals and their holdings inside and outside the pension system we nd substantial heterogeneity among default investors in terms of labor income nancial wealth and stock market participation we build a life cycle consumption savings model incorporating a dc pension account and realistic investor heterogeneity we examine the optimal asset allocation for dierent realized equity returns and investors and compare it with age based investing the optimal asset allocation leads to less inequality in pensions while it moderates the risks through active rebalancing

demand for space heating in apartment blocks measuring effects of policy measures aiming at reducing energy consumption abstract panel data covering the period 1984 1995 on energy consumption and technical characteristics of apartment blocks from denmark are analysed in order to measure effects of policy measures aimed at reducing the consumption of energy for space heating results indicate that building regulations have been important in reducing energy consumption in new buildings furthermore conditional price responses are estimated to be relatively small or non existent indicating small short run effects of fuel taxes on energy consumption in apartment blocks finally a consultancy scheme implemented with the purpose of improving knowledge about the potential for energy savings is found to have had moderate effects

revealed and stated preferences for co2 emissions reduction the missing link abstract in this paper we combine data collected from two strands of literature dealing with revealed preferences expressed by conventional vehicle drivers for fuel price variation and stated preferences expressed by consumers for alternative fuel vehicles we employ a meta analysis approach drawing data on 30 primary studies reflecting two important policy interventions which are fuel price taxation and subsidies for alternative fuel vehicles this is a new contribution in environmental and energy economics in that we rescale all primary information into a unique index which captures consumers economic attitude towards carbon dioxide co2 emission reduction in monetary terms focusing on the transport sector we compute the implicit price for the avoidance of a kilogram of co2 emissions named pco2 explaining the existing heterogeneity from several points of view the results of the meta analysis show that contextual and individual characteristics influence the implicit price for co2 emissions avoidance this implicit price is on average positive in the case of revealed preferences studies whereas it is negative in the stated preferences studies although there are some important geographical differences our results show that fuel taxes could be an important additional instrument for environmental policy

does uncertainty cause inertia in decision making an experimental study of the role of regret aversion and indecisiveness previous research has shown that individual decision making is often characterized by inertia that is a tendency for decision makers to choose options that maintain the status quo in this study i conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate two potential determinants of inertia in uncertain environments i regret aversion and ii ambiguity driven indecisiveness i use a between subjects design with varying conditions to identify the effects of these two mechanisms on choice behavior in each condition participants choose between two simple real gambles one of which is the status quo option the findings indicate that regret aversion and ambiguity driven indecisiveness are equally important determinants of inertia which in turn plays a major role in individual decision making

nature or nurture what determines investor behavior abstract using data on identical and fraternal twins complete financial portfolios we decompose the cross sectional variation in investor behavior we find that a genetic factor explains about one third of the variance in stock market participation and asset allocation family environment has an effect on the behavior of young individuals but this effect is not long lasting and disappears as an individual gains experience frequent contact among twins results in similar investment behavior beyond a genetic factor twins who grew up in different environments still display similar investment behavior our interpretation of a genetic component of the decision to invest in the stock market is that there are innate differences in factors affecting effective stock market participation costs we attribute the genetic component of asset allocation the relative amount invested in equities and the portfolio volatility to genetic variation in risk preferences

contextual inference in markets on the informational content of product lines context can influence decisions this malleability of choice is usually invoked as evidence that people do not maximize stable preference orderings in a market equilibrium however context conveys payoff relevant information to consumers consequently these consumers rationally violate naive formulations of standard choice theoretic principles i identify informational asymmetries under which apparently anomalous behaviors namely the compromise effect and choice overload arise as market equilibria firms respond to consumers contextual inference in case of the compromise effect a firm may introduce premium loss leaders expensive goods of overly high quality that increase the demand for other goods

designed to fail effects of the default option and information complexity on student loan repayment abstract within five years of leaving school 25 of student loan borrowers default on required minimum payments these defaults are costly they add to interest and penalties on loans and lower credit scores which limits access to future credit and can adversely affect job prospects we ask why so few student loan borrowers enroll in income driven repayment idr plans which insure against default caused by low earnings to do so we run an incentivized laboratory experiment using a facsimile of the government s student loan exit counseling website we test the roles information complexity uncertainty about earnings and the default option play we find that switching the default option from the standard plan with fixed minimum payments to an idr with income contingent minimum payments and providing good information about earnings can dramatically decrease choice of the risky standard plan

how do individual accounts work in the swedish pension system in 1998 sweden introduced a second tier of mandatory individual accounts in the public pension system this paper examines investment choice in the swedish individual account scheme focusing on two aspects of the investment decision do workers with high risk in their human capital diversify their overall portfolio by investing their pension funds in low risk funds and to what extent do participants exhibit home bias and invest in swedish assets two pieces of evidence support rational investment decisions first we establish a positive relationship between income and the level of risk second married participants appear to pool their risks on the other hand the results show that participants at the bottom of the income distribution take on as much risk as those at the top indicating that they are not diversifying their overall portfolio finally participants employed in sectors that are affected by foreign competition are less likely to diversify their portfolios and invest in foreign assets compared to the public sector instead these workers exhibit home bias in their investments jel g11 h55

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

the determinants of residential gas demand in ireland abstract this paper examines the determinants of residential gas demand in ireland using a micro econometric analysis of the daily gas consumption panel data from ireland s smart metering gas consumer behavioural trial it also investigates the effectiveness of the demand side management stimuli that were tested during the smart metering trial the analysis is based on a sample of 1181 households over 539 days in the period from 1st december 2009 to 30th may 2011 the results provide evidence that weather together with the structural characteristics of the dwellings and the socio economic characteristics of the households are significant factors in explaining residential gas demand more specifically weather is found to be the most influential factor on household s daily gas consumption finally the demand side management stimuli employed in the smart metering trial were found to reduce daily household gas use on average

presidential address does finance benefit society academics view of the benefits of finance vastly exceeds societal perception this dissonance is at least partly explained by an underappreciation by academia of how without proper rules finance can easily degenerate into a rent seeking activity i outline what finance academics can do from a research point of view and from an educational point of view to promote good finance and minimize the bad

the microeconometric approach to modelling energy demand some results for uk households the paper is concerned with the empirical modeling of domestic demand for energy at the level of the individual household a model of household energy expenditures and energy using durable ownership is described estimation takes place using a pooled sample of households drawn from the repeated cross sections of the annual family expenditure survey fes price and income elasticities are found to be highly dependent on individual household characteristics type of house tenure energy using durable ownership and outside temperature finally the results are placed in a policy relevant context copyright 1991 by oxford university press

metaanalisis de las elasticidades ingreso y precio de la demanda de energia algunas implicaciones de politica publica para america latina the aim of this paper is to analyze the variation in empirical estimates of the income and price elasticities of energy demand the evidence presented through a meta analysis allows identification of the weighted average of the income and price elasticities shows that the estimates are very heterogeneous that there is publication bias and that factors such as region energy sector among others affect its volatility the evidence also indicates that income elasticity in latin america is greater than in the oecd countries and that the price elasticity of energy demand is lower in latin america than in the oecd countries therefore continued economic growth in latin america will be accompanied by a growth in energy demand moreover the establishment of a tax in latin america under the current elasticities is less effective and will be insufficient to control the increase in energy consumption

estimates of the demand for energy using cross country consumption data using cross country consumption data we estimate a system of demand equations in a piecewise manner to investigate whether price and expenditure elasticities for energy differ between broad groups of countries the empirical results reject the assumption of constant parameters across regimes of poor and rich countries the derived elasticities suggest that the own price elasticity for energy is higher in poor than in rich countries we find no evidence for the commonly held view that expenditure elasticities for energy decline with income

design choices in privatized social security systems learning from the swedish experience in the 2000 u s presidential campaign george w bush advocated a partial privatization of the social security system according to his plan a portion of the payroll tax would be designated for individual savings accounts at the same time as this issue was being debated in the united states sweden was in the process of launching a system that is very similar to president bush s proposal although bush s plan did not get much attention in the early years of his administration the proposal may resurface either in the united states or in other countries if so important lessons can be learned from the swedish experience in particular the swedish plan adopted an interesting mix of design choices that can now be evaluated based on three years of post implementation experience although there is a large literature in economics on the design of social security systems most of that literature is concerned with macroeconomic considerations such as funding in contrast there has been much less attention devoted to the details of how plans might be designed in part because these details do not seem important from a standard economic perspective in this paper we reverse this usual pattern and focus our attention on the design aspects of the swedish plan we find that although most of the design choices are those that might be approved by most economists in some cases these choices produced undesirable consequences

the economic impact of subsidy phase out in oil exporting developing countries a case study of algeria iran and nigeria abstract one of the crucial issues of energy markets in oil exporting developing countries is the high level of subsidies on petroleum products and the low efficiency in energy use the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of a subsidy phase out policy on the energy sector and oil revenues in three countries algeria iran and nigeria by using a standard econometric approach we find that the effects of different deregulation policies are substantial we also analyse the impact of a policy based on autonomous energy efficiency improvement finally a combination of both policies is elaborated and quantified our results show that a policy geared at more rational use of energy would permit these countries to save enough oil to meet future increases in demand while maintaining stable production capacity furthermore such an energy policy could result in additional oil revenues which would enhance their economic development

estimating petroleum products demand elasticities in nigeria a multivariate cointegration approach this paper formulates and estimates petroleum products demand functions in nigeria at both aggregative and product level for the period 1977 to 2006 using multivariate cointegration approach the estimated short and long run price and income elasticities confirm conventional wisdom that energy consumption responds positively to changes in gdp and negatively to changes in energy price however the price and income elasticities of demand varied according to product type kerosene and gasoline have relatively high short run income and price elasticities compared to diesel overall the results show petroleum products to be price and income inelastic

how are preferences revealed revealed preferences are tastes that rationalize an economic agent s observed actions normative preferences represent the agent s actual interests it sometimes makes sense to assume that revealed preferences are identical to normative preferences but there are many cases where this assumption is violated we identify five factors that increase the likelihood of a disparity between revealed preferences and normative preferences passive choice complexity limited personal experience third party marketing and intertemporal choice we then discuss six approaches that jointly contribute to the identification of normative preferences structural estimation active decisions asymptotic choice aggregated revealed preferences reported preferences and informed preferences each of these approaches uses consumer behavior to infer some property of normative preferences without equating revealed and normative preferences we illustrate these issues with evidence from savings and investment outcomes

what do we learn about consumer demand patterns from micro data the aim of this paper is to assess the importance of using micro level data in the econometric analysis of consumer demand to do this we utilize a time series of repeated cross sections covering some 4 000 households in each of 15 years employing a number of different aggregation procedures we conclude that aggregate data alone are unlikely to produce reliable estimates of structural price and income coefficients however once certain aggregation factors as well as trend and seasonal components are included an aggregate model is not necessarily outperformed across all demand equations in terms of forecasting ability jel d12 c52 c31 the purpose of this paper is to develop a complete consumer demand system based on a time series of individual household data and to use it to measure the biases introduced into the study of consumer de mand behavior when aggregate data are used in place of the appropriate microeco nomic data we assess the suitability of ag gregate data through the impact on income and price elasticities and by evaluating the ability of both micro and aggregate based models to forecast aggregate consumer de mand the biases introduced by the use of aggregate data depend upon the way that household characteristics interact with in come and price effects and on departures of demand systems from linearity we explore the structure of microeconomic demand sys tems and the role of household characteris tics in the behavior of consumer demand both for the light this may shed on the pattern of future demands and for the im plications this behavior has for issues of aggregation consumer demand patterns typically found in micro data sets vary considerably across households with different household characteristics and with different levels of income we model this variability by making intercept and slope parameters in the budget share equations of our demand sys tem depend on household characteristics and by allowing for nonlinear total log expenditure terms in fact in theory consistent demand systems it is total ex penditure rather than disposable income that is allocated across goods we find that this general framework leads to a well specified data coherent demand system which is a quadratic extension of the popu lar almost ideal model of angus s deaton and john muellbauer 1980 the micro level estimates are shown to be sensitive to the treatment of endogeneity of total expen diture and to the specification of interaction terms with household characteristics in ad dition this specification is also shown to possess many attractive features for the evaluation of aggregate models

does household finance matter small financial errors with large social costs households with familiarity bias tilt their portfolios towards a few risky assets consequently household portfolios are underdiversied and excessively volatile to understand the implications of underdiversicati on for social welfare we solve in closed form a model of a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium economy with a large number of heterogeneous rms and households who bias their investments toward a few familiar assets we nd that the direct mean variance loss from holding an underdiversied portfolio that is excessively risky is a modest 1 66 per annum consistent with the estimates in calvet campbell and sodini 2007 however we show that in a more general model with intertemporal consumption underdiversied portfolios increase consumption growth volatility amplifying the mean variance losses by a factor of four moreover in general equilibrium where growth is endogenous underdiversied portfolios distort also aggregate investment and growth so that the overall eect on social welfare is about six times as large as the direct mean variance loss we demonstrate that even when forcing the familiarity biases in portfolios to cancel out across households their implications for consumption and investment choices do not cancel individual household biases can have signicant aggregate eects our results illustrate that nancial markets are not a mere sideshow to the real economy and that nancial literacy regulation and innovation that improve the nancial decisions of households can have a signicant positive impact on social welfare

optimal defaults and active decisions defaults often have a large influence on consumer decisions we identify an overlooked but practical alternative to defaults requiring individuals to make an explicit choice for themselves we study such active decisions in the context of 401 k saving we find that compelling new hires to make active decisions about 401 k enrollment raises the initial fraction that enroll by 28 percentage points relative to a standard opt in enrollment procedure producing a savings distribution three months after hire that would take 30 months to achieve under standard enrollment we also present a model of 401 k enrollment and derive conditions under which the optimal enrollment regime is automatic enrollment i e default enrollment standard enrollment i e default non enrollment or active decisions i e no default and compulsory choice active decisions are optimal when consumers have a strong propensity to procrastinate and savings preferences are highly heterogeneous financial illiteracy however favors default enrollment over active decision enrollment

development studies findings frontiers and fights abstract very low incomes and relatively low mobility in ldcs limit the scope for lessons for dcs three areas remain however analogues interactions and above all conceptual transfers development studies have moved away from adding up individual responses to change towards examining interactions that produce systemic outcomes examples are analyzed from the evolving debates about a peasant response as related to tenure and risk b farm systems vs village systems analysis c impact of the green revolution on the poor d unemployment development studies show analysts of developed countries especially in case d above that adding up approaches ignoring interactions and total systems produce very misleading results