influences on energy supply infrastructure a comparison of different theoretical perspectives changes to the energy supply infrastructure are a vital component of climate change mitigation strategies but what exactly underlies changes to energy supply infrastructure this paper through exploration and critical analysis of relevant literature explores the various underpinning influences on energy infrastructure supply using a comparison of different theoretical perspectives these influences were explored with specific emphasis on techno economics social psychology socio technical transitions social practices and institutional dimensions to energy supply the aim was to have a better understanding of the direct and indirect role of politics and the political system in influencing energy supply infrastructure decisions through the various theoretical lenses the study revealed that techno economics uses financial instruments and market information as intervention tools its effectiveness is measured by social welfare and cost effectiveness social psychology uses a combination of information incentives and innovative informative instruments as its intervention tools its effectiveness is measured by behavioural change institutions use regulatory instruments as its intervention tool its effectiveness is measured by regulatory compliance social practices look at change in broader social systems its effectiveness is measured by social change socio technical transitions focus on determining social movements and social innovations its effectiveness is measured by legitimacy and social learning

economics psychology and the history of consumer choice theory this paper examines elements of the complex place role influence of psychology in the history of consumer choice theory the paper reviews and then challenges the standard narrative that psychology was in consumer choice theory early in the neoclassical revolution then strictly out during the ordinal and revealed preference revolutions now possibly back in with recent developments in experimental behavioural and neuroeconomics the paper uses the work of three particular economic theorists to challenge this standard narrative and then provides an alternative interpretation of the history of the relationship between psychology and consumer choice theory copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

money demand in japan and nonlinear cointegration we estimate the long run japanese money demand function in a cointegration framework with two nonlinear functional forms that allow for the liquidity trap and compare the results with the standard log level functional form in addition to the conventional linear cointegration techniques we also use a recently developed procedure for nonlinear cointegration that allows the estimation of alternative functional forms under the same assumption regarding the trend properties of the nominal interest rate the nonlinear functional forms outperform the log level functional form based on out of sample prediction performance

residential peak electricity demand response highlights of some behavioural issues electricity demand response refers to consumer actions that change the utility load profile in a way that reduces costs or improves grid security the focus of demand response has mainly been on the commercial and big industrial sectors because of the large demand reduction that they can offer to the utility grid operators utilities are showing increasing interest in residential demand response rdr rdr can be treated as an energy resource which can be assessed and commercially developed however there are still some issues that remain to be addressed for rdr to be successful these include price unresponsiveness of some residential consumers equity issues and high cost of the metering infrastructure the aim of this paper is to investigate and present some of the challenges in achieving effective voluntary demand reduction based on a review of residential demand response literature as well as the general residential energy use behaviour literature the authors propose the use of a hybrid engineering approach using social psychology and economic behaviour models to overcome these challenges and realize the benefits of supply security and cost management

heating homes understanding the impact of prices abstract studies show that energy prices have an impact on household energy consumption however these studies pay little attention to interpreting the findings and therefore little is known about how and why households respond to energy prices this paper provide an example of an interpretation of the impact of energy prices on consumption from a social practice theoretical perspective this paper investigates the impact of district heating price level on energy used for space heating and hot water by danish households living in single family detached houses the results show a moderately negative effect of the price level on consumption which is stronger in newer presumably more energy efficient houses and for higher income households however the effect varies across years which suggests that the price responsiveness is more a matter of changing everyday practices short term response than being able to afford energy improvements long term response in a practice theoretical perspective the results indicate that price differences have an impact on everyday practices where for example the aspect of energy in everyday practices is perceived as more valuable to practitioners in expensive areas compared to cheaper areas and that the meaning of price in practices is influenced by the social and material contexts

sine praejudicio economics and the 2014 scottish independence referendum the purpose of this paper is to analyse the contribution of expert economic opinion to the 2014 referendum campaigns on scottish independence we argue that the input from economics to both sides of the debate as well as to independent analysis was constrained by a mainstream economics framing the result was a focus on calculable outcomes predicated on unchanging institutions and behaviour and the question of currency arrangements that assumes the status quo is an optimal currency area as the consequences of constitutional change for institutions and behaviour are uncertain an equilibrium framework treats anything beyond calculable prediction as a shock inducing fear of the unknown in contrast a political economy approach is tailored to analysing uncertain developments and encompassing the broader issues relating to values democracy and power and is thus better suited to the analysis of constitutional change

synthesizing the malthusian and senian approaches on scarcity a realist account food entitlement decline fed and food availability decline fad are two approaches to explaining famines that have different policy implications one focuses on the systemic level whereas the other is concerned with the individual level they therefore analyse relatively distinct causal mechanisms thus an important question is whether these approaches can be reconciled another related question is how fad and fed based explanations relate to classical malthusian views about rapid food requirement increase fri this paper analyses these questions and argues that these three approaches can indeed be reconciled within a single framework by outlining the causal sources of fad fed and fri this task requires among other things the separation of ontological categories and empirical measures as a consequence of this argument the paper suggests that there are only seven possible ontological combinations of how a famine situation can arise as a direct cause simultaneously it maintains that there are virtually an infinite number of ways in which these combinations may act as indirect causes rooted in economic political and social conditions the analysis is exemplified by the bengal famine of 1943 because that famine is a well known case the wider research and policy applicability of this general account are discussed but have yet to be tested in relation to other scarcity cases water land fish this synthesis is made possible by the incorporation of critical realist interventions into economic theory

the research assessment exercise the state and the dominance of mainstream economics in british universities in previous research on the impact of the research assessment exercise on heterodox economics and heterodox economists in the uk the author concluded that reliance on diamond list journals to rank departments would drive economic departments to discriminate positively in terms of their hiring promotion and research strategies in favour of mainstream economists and their research in order to maintain or improve their ranking as a consequence the author predicted there would be no or only a token presence of heterodox economists in an increasing number of departments whether the conclusions still hold and the predictions materialise is the subject of the paper copyright 2007 oxford university press

renewable micro generation of heat and electricity review on common and missing socio technical configurations abstract a widespread adoption of distributed generation dg technologies in energy systems can play a key role in creating clean reliable energy and support the targets of emission reduction a transition from current modes of production to a significant deployment of renewable energy technologies can fundamentally affect the structure of the industry and change the way energy is produced transmitted and sold the current paper provides an extended review of the socio technical configurations of micro generation based on journal publications and reports during the 21st century the paper analyses currently existing and missing configurations and discusses technology and policy implications to support proliferation of micro generation technology and local energy production from renewable sources the potential for new configurations can be found particularly in heat producing micro generation with solar heat heat pumps and biomass developing further the operations and maintenance of distributed generation technologies and business models appears an area that calls for further innovation and corresponding innovation policy measures third party service and community driven deployment models can aide the proliferation of distributed generation and further innovation therein justifying the introduction of feed in tariffs to attract such models during their early diffusion

backward looking interest rate rules interest rate smoothing and macroeconomic instability the existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation such rules have been found to give rise to aggregate fluctuations due to self fulfilling expectations in response to this concern a growing literature has focused on the stabilizing properties of interest rate rules whereby the central bank responds to a measure of past inflation the consensus view that has emerged is that backward looking rules contribute to protecting the economy from embarking on expectations driven fluctuations a common characteristic of the existing studies that arrive at this conclusion is their focus on local analysis the contribution of this paper is to conduct a more global analysis we find that backward looking interest rate feedback rules do not guarantee uniqueness of equilibrium we present examples in which for plausible parameterizations attracting equilibrium cycles exist the paper also contributes to the quest for policy rules that guarantee macroeconomic stability globally our analysis indicates that policy rules whereby the interest rate is set as a function of the past interest rate and current inflation are likely to ensure global stability provided that the coecient on lagged interest rates is greater than unity

can neoclassical economics handle complexity the fallacy of the oil spot dynamic abstract this paper is essentially a rebuttal of the view that neoclassical economics can handle complexity i have coined the locution oil spot dynamic to denote the neoclassical ability to subsume each and every new perspective the main part of the paper is devoted to showing why the oil spot dynamic cannot work with the complexity approach which is seen as a coherent stand alone research program that stems from the sfi economics program and manifests itself with different nuances the fallacy of the oil spot dynamic is relevant in this period in which economists are beginning to realize that the neoclassical samuelsonian paradigm no longer represents the common language of their profession the spread of the complexity approach and the dissolving notion of mainstream are here interpreted as indicative of a changing economics a short foray into the features of the process of change completes my arguments by showing that the shift from one paradigm to another has many interrelated dimensions and that there may be rigidities internalizing changes

the nature of economics and the failings of the mainstream lessons from lionel robbins s essay lionel robbins in his famous essay on the nature and significance of economic science correctly showed that the task of economics is to develop step by step a realistic comprehension of the economic system based upon the abstract starting point of a theory of value his mistake was to think that the marginal utility theory of value can be and was actually in the process of being developed in a concrete and realistic direction in fact marginal utility theory has not to this day been developed in a concrete and realistic direction and ironically one can find in robbins s cogent exposition of marginal utility theory the reason why it is impossible to do so this reason is not primarily methodological attachment to equilibrium to formalism or some such philosophical attachment to positivism or ideological pro capitalist bias rather the reason is theoretical specifically marginal utility theory can provide no comprehension of the macroeconomic aggregates that drive the reproduction and development of the economic system the implications for contemporary economics are clear utterly unrealistic toy models will persist in economics until an alternative value theory is adopted that is able to justify macroeconomic aggregation these implications ironically bring into consideration the very labour theory of value that robbins had argued to be usurped by marginal utility theory copyright 2012 oup

another look at long run money demand abstract this paper investigates the long run demand for m1 in the postwar united states previous studies based on data ending in the late 1980s are inconclusive about the parameters of postwar money demand this paper obtains precise estimates of these parameters by extending the data through 1996 the income elasticity of money demand is approximately 0 5 and the interest semi elasticity is approximately 0 05 these parameters are significantly smaller in absolute value than the corresponding parameters for the prewar period a caveat is that the analysis assumes there is no trend in money demand resulting from technological change

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

demand response in china regulations pilot projects and recommendations a review abstract with the acceleration of the process of industrialization and urbanization energy shortage and environmental protection have become the new problems faced by chinese economic development the electric power industry is the pillar industry of chinese economic development while the economic development puts forward higher requirements for electricity companies power enterprises should not only focus on the quantity and quality of the power generation side but also pay more attention to demand side management demand side management dsm receives more and more attention in china in recent years as one of the solutions of dsm demand response plays an important role in ensuring the stable operation of electric network and controlling the rise of electricity tariff at first this article describes the status quo of the demand response implementation related technologies and pilot projects then it analyzes chinese demand response technology frame from the grid side the communication side and the user side it also puts forward suggestions for the implementing progress and specific procedures of orderly electricity consumption at last this paper points out the problems in the technology and policy of electricity demand response implementation in china by the analysis of the demand response status quo and the implementing comparison between china and foreign countries as well as gives recommendations for future development

review of dynamic pricing programs in the u s and europe status quo and policy recommendations with the development of demand response dr technologies and increasing electricity demand dynamic pricing has been a popular topic in many countries this paper evaluates various dynamic pricing programs in the u s and europe and provides insights into various aspects including risks and rewards enabling technologies lower income groups and customer types surrounding programs such as time of use tou critical peak pricing cpp peak time rebates ptr and real time pricing rtp we conclude this paper with three main findings 1 policy coordination in promoting dynamic pricing programs between federal and state regulatory agencies is very critical 2 customer engagement is very important and can be enhanced via more accessible educational programs and policy adjustments and 3 more investment in related r d is required to construct a commonly accepted methodology for measuring the effectiveness of dynamic pricing programs

extreme daily increases in peak electricity demand tail quantile estimation a generalized pareto distribution gpd is used to model extreme daily increases in peak electricity demand the model is fitted to years 2000 2011 recorded data for south africa to make a comparative analysis with the generalized pareto type gp type distribution peak electricity demand is influenced by the tails of probability distributions as well as by means or averages at times there is a need to depart from the average thinking and exploit information provided by the extremes tails empirical results show that both the gp type and the gpd are a good fit to the data one of the main advantages of the gp type is the estimation of only one parameter modelling of extreme daily increases in peak electricity demand helps in quantifying the amount of electricity which can be shifted from the grid to off peak periods one of the policy implications derived from this study is the need for day time use of electricity billing system similar to the one used in the cellular telephone and fixed line billing technology this will result in the shifting of electricity demand on the grid to off peak time slots as users try to avoid high peak hour charges

money financed fiscal stimulus the effects of implementation lag abstract previous studies argue that based on the new keynesian framework a fiscal stimulus financed by money creation has a strong positive effect on output under a reasonable degree of nominal price rigidities this paper investigates the effects of an implementation lag in a money financed fiscal stimulus on output we show that if a money financed government purchase has a time lag between the decision and the implementation 1 it may cause a recession rather than a boom when the economy is in normal times 2 it may deepen a recession when the economy is in a liquidity trap 3 the longer the implementation lag the deeper the recession and 4 the depth of the recession depends on the interest semi elasticity of money demand our results imply that if money demand is unstable the money financed fiscal stimulus with an implementation lag may have unstable effects on output in contrast to the debt financed fiscal stimulus

real time pricing of electricity for residential customers econometric analysis of an experiment under real time pricing a network operator sets the price level for a period according to a predefined scheme which depends on the state of demand and costs and announces this price shortly before the period begins the french state owned electric utility experimented with a six rate real time tariff which divides the year into three types of days and each day into two periods the number of days of each type is known in advance to the consumer but the type of any particular day is announced only at the end of the preceding day in order to evaluate the responsiveness of customers to this pricing option we estimate the frisch demand functions for daily electricity consumption derived from a simple dynamic model based on an additively separable intertemporal utility function as the marginal utility of expenditure which enters the frisch demands follows a known stochastic process the econometric model has a state space representation we can then apply the kalman filter to compute the log likelihood function associated with each consumer s time series of electricity consumption the main result of the analysis is that the real time tariff improves the welfare of a majority of consumers participating in the experiment

long run income and interest elasticities of money demand in the united states econometric techniques designed to accommodate nonstationary data are used to reexamine the stability of interest and income elasticities of money demand in the united states estimates based on postwar monthly data reveal a stable relationship between m1 velocity and various measures of interest rates that proxy the opportunity cost of holding money balances tests for the existence of cointegration and methods used to estimate the income and interest elasticities are based on procedures prescribed by soren johansen 1988 corresponding error correction estimates offer insight as to the dynamics of the process that maintains the equilibrium relation between velocity and interest rates copyright 1991 by mit press

econ 101 in need of a sustainability transition abstract ecological economics was one of the first of a number of scientific communities to develop transdisciplinary understandings of the sustainability challenges faced by society as a field with economics in its name ecological economics differs from the other communities and should face the particular task of contributing to the development of a new economics for economics to promote sustainability transitions it is not enough to call for more pluralism a new basic structure of economic knowledge should be developed in order to provide the foundation for a sustainability transition to econ 101 this paper argues that the performativity of economics needs to change and proposes a way of structuring econ 101

air conditioning and antibiotics demand management insights from problematic health and household cooling practices air conditioners and antibiotics are two technologies that have both been traditionally framed around individual health and comfort needs despite aspects of their use contributing to social health problems the imprudent use of antibiotics is threatening the capacity of the healthcare system internationally similarly in australia the increasing reliance on air conditioning to maintain thermal comfort is contributing to rising peak demand and electricity prices and is placing an inequitable health and financial burden on vulnerable heat stressed households this paper analyses policy responses to these problems through the lens of social practice theory in the health sector campaigns are attempting to emphasise the social health implications of antibiotic use in considering this approach in relation to the problem of air conditioned cooling and how to change the ways in which people keep cool during peak times our analysis draws on interviews with 80 australian households we find that the problem of peak electricity demand may be reduced through attention to the social health implications of air conditioned cooling on very hot days we conclude that social practice theory offers a fruitful analytical route for identifying new avenues for research and informing policy responses to emerging health and environmental problems

structure behavior and market power in an evolutionary labor market with adaptive search abstract this study uses an agent based computational labor market framework to experimentally study the relationship between job capacity job concentration and market power job capacity is measured by the ratio of potential job openings to potential work offers and job concentration is measured by the ratio of work suppliers to employers for each experimental treatment work suppliers and employers repeatedly seek preferred worksite partners based on continually updated expected utility engage in efficiency wage worksite interactions modelled as prisoner s dilemma games and evolve their worksite behaviors over time the main finding is that job capacity consistently trumps job concentration when it comes to predicting the relative ability of work suppliers and employers to exercise market power

peak electricity demand and social practice theories reframing the role of change agents in the energy sector abstract demand managers currently draw on a limited range of psychology and economic theories in order to shift and shed peak electricity demand these theories place individual consumers and their attitudes behaviours and choices at the centre of the problem this paper reframes the issue of peak electricity demand using theories of social practices contending that the problem is one of transforming technologically mediated social practices it reflects on how this body of theory repositions and refocuses the roles and practices of professions charged with the responsibility and agency for affecting and managing energy demand the paper identifies three areas where demand managers could refocus their attention i enabling co management relationships with consumers ii working beyond their siloed roles with a broader range of human and non human actors and iii promoting new practice needs and expectations it concludes by critically reflecting on the limited agency attributed to change agents such as demand managers in dominant understandings of change instead the paper proposes the need to identify and establish a new group of change agents who are actively but often unwittingly involved in reconfiguring the elements of problematic peaky practices

just another niche in the wall how specialization is changing the face of mainstream economics there is considerable discussion on so called mainstream pluralism that is on the co presence of a variety of research programmes in today s mainstream economics that 1 significantly deviate from the neoclassical core 2 are pursued by different often separate communities of researchers and 3 have their origins outside economics the literature tends to regard mainstream pluralism as a transitory state towards a new post neoclassical mainstream this paper advances a new interpretation it suggests that the changing and fragmented state of mainstream economics is likely to persist over time under the impact of specialization as a self reinforcing mechanism and the creation of new specialties and approaches also through collaboration with researchers from other disciplines

explaining shifts in uk electricity demand using time use data from 1974 to 2014 abstract peaks in electricity demand generate significant negative environmental and economic impacts as a result recent policy and research attention has focused on the potential for temporal flexibility of demand especially in the context of intermittent low carbon generation much of this work emphasises the need to understand what makes up the peak and to engineer solutions to meet this normal consumption however today s patterns of temporal consumption may only be a snapshot of continuing change this paper uses uk household time use survey data to analyse change in temporal patterns of activities over the last 40 years to shed light on apparent temporal shifts in overall uk electricity demand the results highlight long term evolution in when and where people work travel eat use media and carry out social activities in particular they suggest that changing patterns of labour market participation may be contributing to shifts in food related personal home care and media activities which correlates with shifts in electricity demand we conclude that both stable and dynamic social structures and forms of organisation have direct implications for policy debates around current and future flexible demand side solutions

evolution and game theory introduced by john von neumann and oskar morgenstern 1944 energized by the addition of john nash s 1950 equilibrium concept and popularized by the strategic revolution of the 1980s noncooperative game theory has become a standard tool in economics in the process attention has increasingly been focused on game theory s conceptual foundations two questions have taken center stage should we expect nash equilibrium play that is should we expect the choice of each player to be a best response to the choices of the other players if so which of the multiple nash equilibria that arise in many games should we expect in the 1980s game theorists addressed these questions with models based on the assumptions that players are perfectly rational and have common knowledge of this rationality in the 1990s however emphasis has shifted away from rationalitybased to evolutionary models one reason for this shift was frustration with the limitations of rationality based models these models readily motivated one of the requirements of nash equilibrium that players choose best responses to their beliefs about others behavior but less readily provided the second requirement that these beliefs be correct simultaneously rationality based criteria for choosing among nash equilibria produced alternative equilibrium refinements strengthenings of the nash equilibrium concept designed to exclude implausible nash equilibria with sufficient abandon as to prompt despair at the thought of ever choosing one as the right concept a second reason for the shift away from rationality based game theory was a change in the underlying view of what games represent it was once typical to interpret a game as a literal description of an idealized interaction in which an assumption of perfect rationality appeared quite

developments in non expected utility theory the hunt for a descriptive theory of choice under risk this article reviews recent developments in the economic theory of individual decision making under risk since the 1950s it has been known that individual choices violate the standard model of expected utility in predictable ways considerable research effort has now been devoted to the project of developing a superior descriptive model following an overview of non expected utility theories which distinguishes between conventional and non conventional approaches the paper seeks to assess these alternative models in terms of empirical success using laboratory and field data and theoretical usefulness the closing sections reflect on some new directions emerging in this literature

leaving the mainstream behind uncovering subjective understandings of economics instructors roles in the wake of the economic crisis a number of student organizations and researchers highlighted the lack of pluralism and heterodox approaches in economics curricula the relevance of pluralism becomes clear once set within the implications of a given scientific discourse on reality e g economics and policy making this study explores the role of instructors in co constructing the pluralism discourse and debates while recognizing the role of institutional obstacles to change within the discipline an empirical field study is conducted with lecturers in introductory economics courses at the wu vienna university of economics and business where they place themselves within the pluralism discourse via a q study a mixed method employed for studying subjectivity in socially contested topics in q a set of statements undergo a sorting procedure on a relative ranking scale followed by factor rendering four voices are identified moderate pluralist mainstreamers responsible pluralists and applied pluralists the implications of their ideas are discussed from the viewpoint of discursive institutionalism stressing the role of ideas and discourse in institutional change although a discursive readiness for changes towards more pluralism is claimed strategies for overcoming the difficulties on the institutional level need to be developed

testing for the stability of money demand in italy has the euro influenced the monetary transmission mechanism stability of money demand is a crucial issue for the efficacy of monetary policy this is particularly true in the presence of significant exogenous shocks to the monetary system by implementing the most recent econometric testing procedures this article intends to investigate the consistency of the stability of money demand in italy one of the larger european monetary union emu countries before and after the emu among others the objective is indeed to ascertain the effect of a change in the currency regime on the monetary aggregates and to provide a valid empirical model which is a viable tool for policy performance

price environment and security exploring multi modal motivation in voluntary residential peak demand response peak demand on electricity grids is a growing problem that increases costs and risks to supply security residential sector loads often contribute significantly to seasonal and daily peak demand demand response projects aim to manage peak demand by applying price signals and automated load shedding technologies this research investigates voluntary load shedding in response to information about the security of supply the emission profile and the cost of meeting critical peak demand in the customers network customer willingness to change behaviour in response to this information was explored through mail back survey the diversified demand modelling method was used along with energy audit data to estimate the potential peak load reduction resulting from the voluntary demand response a case study was conducted in a suburb of christchurch new zealand where electricity is the main source for water and space heating on this network all water heating cylinders have ripple control technology and about 50 of the households subscribe to differential day night pricing plan the survey results show that the sensitivity to supply security is on par with price with the emission sensitivity being slightly weaker the modelling results show potential 10 reduction in critical peak load for aggregate voluntary demand response

rationality in psychology and economics the task i shall undertake here is to compare and contrast the concepts of rationality that are prevalent in psychology and economics respectively economics has almost uniformly treated human behavior as rational psychology on the other hand has always been concerned with both the irrational and the rational aspects of behavior in this paper irrationality will be mentioned only obliquely my concern is with rationality economics sometimes uses the term irrationality rather broadly e g becker 1962 and the term rationality correspondingly narrowly so as to exclude from the domain of the rational many phenomena that psychology would include in it for my purposes of comparison i will have to use the broader conception of psychology one point should be set immediately outside dispute everyone agrees that people have reasons for what they do they have motivations and they use reason well or badly to respond to these motivations and reach their goals even much or most of the behavior that is called abnormal involves the exercise of thought and reason freud was most insistent that there is method in madness that neuroses and psychoses were patients solutions not very satisfactory solutions in the long run for the problems that troubled them the assumption that actors maximize subjective expected utility economic rationality supplies only a small part of the premises in economic reasoning and that often not the essential part the remainder of the premises are auxiliary empirical assumptions about actors utilities beliefs expectations and the like making these assumptions correctly requires an empirically founded theory of choice that specifies what information decision makers use and how they actually process it this behavioral empirical base is largely lacking in contemporary economic analysis and supplying it is essential for enhancing the explanatory and predictive power of economics

the deflation bias and committing to being irresponsible i model deflation at zero nominal interest rate in a microfounded general equilibrium model i show that one can analyze deflation as a credibility problem if three conditions are satisfied first the government s only policy instrument is increasing the money supply by open market operations in short term bonds second the economy is subject to large negative demand shocks third the government cannot commit to future policy i call the credibility problem that arises under these conditions the deflation bias i propose several policies to solve it they all involve printing money or issuing nominal debt in addition they require cutting taxes buying real assets such as stocks or purchasing foreign exchange the government credibly commits to being irresponsible by pursuing these policies it commits to higher money supply in the future so that the private sector expects inflation instead of deflation this is optimal since it curbs deflation and increases output by lowering the real rate of return

structured pluralism in ecological economics a reply to peter soderbaum s commentary abstract peter soderbaum argues in his commentary concerning my article on sustainability economics remig 2015 for more open and radical ecological economics i agree with that statement however i reject soderbaum s interpretation that my arguments foster mainstreamed ecological economics or dictatorship in my critique of sustainability economics i raised several issues that have remained unspecified and that potentially lead to unsustainable development patterns once put into practice soderbaum does not reply to these conceptual challenges of sustainability economics in this commentary i argue that structured pluralism dow 2004 is a constituent element of ecological economics i welcome peter soderbaum s proposal for a discussion about the definition of economics and suggest to rely on ronald coase s proposal to define economics as a science that studies the working of the economic system i conclude that sustainability economics in its current form is closer to neoclassical than ecological economics

money demand function estimation by nonlinear cointegration conventionally the money demand function is estimated using a regression of the logarithm of money demand on either the interest rate or the logarithm of the interest rate this equation is presumed to be a cointegrating regression in this paper we aim to combine the logarithmic specification which models the liquidity trap better than a linear model with the assumption that the interest rate itself is an integrated process the proposed technique is robust to serial correlation in the errors for the usa our new technique results in larger coefficient estimates than previous research suggested and produces superior out of sample prediction copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

social implications of residential demand response in cool temperate climates residential electrical demand response dr offers the prospect of reducing the environmental impact of electricity use and also the supply costs however the relatively small loads and numerous actors imply a large effort response ratio residential dr may be an essential part of future smart grids but how viable is it in the short to medium term this paper reviews some dr concepts then evaluates the propositions that households in cool temperate climates will be in a position to contribute to grid flexibility within the next decade and that that they will allow some automated load control examples of demand response from around the world are discussed in order to assess the main considerations for cool climates different tariff types and forms of control are assessed in terms of what is being asked of electricity users with a focus on real time pricing and direct load control in energy systems with increasingly distributed resources the literature points to the significance of thermal loads supply mix demand side infrastructure market regulation and the framing of risks and opportunities associated with dr in concentrating on social aspects of residential demand response the paper complements the body of work on technical and economic potential

heterodox economics history and prospects frederic s lee s collection of essays makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the history of heterodox economics and to our sense of heterodox economics as a community this paper explores issues arising from the collection in relation to the characterisation of this history the understanding of heterodox economics itself and the nature and role of such a history from a historiographical perspective the paper concludes with a discussion of the future of heterodox economics and an argument for a pluralist strategy for its promotion copyright the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

the nature of heterodox economics heterodoxy serves as an umbrella term to cover the coming together of separate projects or traditions in answering the question what distinguishes heterodoxy from the orthodoxy the author argues that matters of ontology are central in answering the question how are the various traditions that make up the modern heterodoxy to be distinguished from each other the author defends criteria other than varying commitments to specific substantive theories policy measures or techniques or basic units of analysis