who governs energy the challenges facing global energy governance this article conceptualizes the energy problems facing society from a global governance perspective it argues that a notion of global energy governance taken to mean international collective action efforts undertaken to manage and distribute energy resources and provide energy services offers a meaningful and useful framework for assessing energy related challenges the article begins by exploring the concepts of governance global governance and global energy governance it then examines some of the existing institutions in place to establish and carry out rules and norms governing global energy problems and describes the range of institutional design options available to policymakers it briefly traces the role of a selection of these institutions from inter governmental organizations to summit processes to multilateral development banks to global action networks in responding to energy issues and points out their strengths and weaknesses the article concludes by analyzing how the various approaches to global governance differ in their applicability to addressing the conundrums of global energy problems

cointegration tests of the fisher hypothesis with variable trends in the world real interest rate after seventy years the fisher hypothesis has proven to be one of the most durable and influential theories in economics yet after years of debate and testing the empirical accuracy of the proposition remains in question the fisher hypothesis simply states that a one point increase in inflation leads to a one point increase in the nominal interest rate leaving real interest rates unchanged this relationship does not rule out the possibility of other variables influencing the real interest rate or variable trends in the real interest rate arising from sources other than inflation this paper merges the literature on real interest rate parity with tests of the fisher hypothesis to control for variable trends in the real interest rate

a note on interest parity and the supply of arbitrage funds the divergence of the actual forward premium on foreign exchange from that dictated by the principle of interest rate parity can arise from two separately identifiable causes 1 an equilibrium position as indicated by the interest parity principle has not been reached or 2 that the principle itself is not a correctly specified equilibrium condition it is the purpose of this note to offer a revised specification of the interest parity condition and to determine whether this version approximates more closely the actual premium as determined in the market it should be made clear however that this is a partial analysis and does not deal with the impact of other forces for example speculation on the forward premium as a result a complete model of the spot and forward markets for foreign exchange such as stein s 1965 is not attempted here in general the principle of interest parity maintains that in equilibrium

testing the efficiency of the canadian u s exchange market under the assumption of no risk premium the efficiency of the canadian u s exchange market for the current float is examined more extensively than previously semi strong form tests which admit the lagged spot rate as a predictor are considered in addition to the standard weak form test these stronger tests reject the joint null hypothesis of an efficient exchange market and no risk premium for the period ending in october 1976 although not for the entire period for almost every year the current spot rate provided a better forecast of the future spot rate than did the current forward rate there is now an extensive empirical literature on testing the efficiency of various foreign exchange markets see 16 for a survey yet almost all of these tests are weak form tests or tests of the bias of the forward exchange rate as a predictor of the future spot rate such tests in the canadian u s exchange market can be found in the work of porter 20 eastman 5 kaserman 10 kohihagen 11 cornell 3 and levich 14 for the canadian float of the 1950s porter 20 and kaserman 10 found that one could not reject the unbiasedness of the forward rate eastman 5 and kohlhagen 11 rejected the unbiasedness of the forward rate for the floating period although not for the subsequent fixed period but their use of overlapping contracts means that their standard errors are biased cornell 3 and levich 14 found that in terms of the root meansquared error criterion the lagged spot rate and the lagged forward rate predicted the current spot rate equally well for more recent periods this paper examines the efficiency of the canadian u s exchange market for the current float july 1970 to december 1978 in a more extensive way than it has been previously examined from the weak form test the paper proceeds to two semi strong form tests which admit the lagged spot rate as a possible predictor throughout the paper various subperiods are considered in addition to the period as a whole

targeting energy justice exploring spatial racial ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in urban residential heating energy efficiency abstract fuel poverty the inability of households to afford adequate energy services such as heating is a major energy justice concern increasing residential energy efficiency is a strategic fuel poverty intervention however the absence of easily accessible household energy data impedes effective targeting of energy efficiency programs this paper uses publicly available data bottom up modeling and small area estimation techniques to predict the mean census block group residential heating energy use intensity eui an energy efficiency proxy in kansas city missouri results mapped using geographic information systems gis and statistical analysis show disparities in the relationship between heating eui and spatial racial ethnic and socioeconomic block group characteristics block groups with lower median incomes a greater percentage of households below poverty a greater percentage of racial ethnic minority headed households and a larger percentage of adults with less than a high school education were on average less energy efficient higher euis results also imply that racial segregation which continues to influence urban housing choices exposes black and hispanic households to increased fuel poverty vulnerability lastly the spatial concentration and demographics of vulnerable block groups suggest proactive area and community based targeting of energy efficiency assistance programs may be more effective than existing self referral approaches

the speculative efficiency hypothesis the hypothesis that forward prices are the best unbiased forecast of future spot prices is often presented in the economic and financial analysis of futures markets this paper considers the hypothesis independently of its implications for rational expectations or market efficiency and in order to stress this fact the term speculative efficiency is used to characterize the state envisaged under the hypothesis if a market is subject to efficient speculation the supply of speculative funds is infinitely elastic at the forward price that is equal to the expected future spot price the expected future spot price is a market price determined as the solution to the underlying rational expectations macroeconomic model although the paper is primarily concerned with testing this hypothesis in the foreign exchange market the methodology introduced in the paper is of general application to all futures markets this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the collapse of purchasing power parities during the 1970 s one of the striking facts concerning the relationship beiveen prices and exchange rates during the 1970 s has been the dismal performance of the predictions of the simple versions of the purchasing power parity doctrine ppp that doctrine in its absolute version states that the equilibrium exchange rate between domestic and foreign currencies equals the ratio of domestic to foreign price levels the relative version of the doctrine relates equilibrium changes in exchange rates to changes in the ratio of domestic to foreign prices during the 1970 s short run changes in exchange rates bore little relationship to short run differentials in national inflation rates and frequently divergences from purchasing power parities have been cumulative this paper reviews and analyzes the empirical record of exchange rates and prices during the 1970 s and the analysis is based on the experience of the dollar pound the dollar frecch franc and the dollar dm exchange rates section 2 presents the evidence on ppp during the 1970 s and contrasts it with the evidence from the 1920 s a period during which the doctrine held up reasonably well this analysis is relevant for assessing whether the flexible exchange rate system was successful in providing national economies with an added degree of insulation from foreign shocks and whether it provided policymakers with an added instrument for the conduct of macroeconomic policy the evidence regarding devia tions from purchasing power parities is also relevant for determining whether there is a case for managed float section 3 attempts to explain what went wrong with

a note on exchange rate expectations and nominal interest differentials a test of the fisher hypothesis this note tests the hypothesis that nominal interest differentials between similar assets denominated in different currencies can be explained entirely by the expected change in the exchange rate over the holding period this proposition often called the fisher open hypothesis or the hypothesis of perfect asset substitutability has been a major component of recent theories of exchange rate determination and has important implications for monetary policy 1 the fisher hypothesis differs from the covered interest parity theorem enunciated by keynes 11 while covered interest parity equates the nominal interest differential between financial centers to a known premium or discount on forward foreign exchange and is thus in principle riskless fisher parity involves risk in an essential way the two conditions are equivalent only when forward exchange rates equal expected future spot rates recent theoretical work for example that of grauer litzenberger and stehle 8 kouri 12 and frankel 6 shows that this need not be the case when market participants are risk averse thus while covered interest parity must always hold exactly in an informationally efficient asset market with no transactions costs fisher parity need not nominal interest differentials may reflect risk premia in addition to expected exchange rate movements 2 it should be emphasized at the outset that the tests conducted in this paper are really joint tests of the fisher hypothesis and a weak form of foreign exchange market informational efficiency levich 14 has argued that tests of market efficiency are always joint tests involving some hypothesized structure of normal equilibrium returns below we assume informational efficiency and instead test fisher s hypothesized arbitrage condition that nominal interest differentials equal expected percentage changes in exchange rates

money bonds and foreign exchange in the theory of finance capital markets provide securities which allow the ownership of productive assets to be allocated among investors according to their willingness to bear risk in exchange for return and independently of their tastes for the productive services provided by the assets this paper uses the theory of finance to study the role of money as a productive asset and the transformation of money into a portfolio asset true to its purpose the capital market provides securities nominal bonds that allow an allocation of the current services of the money supply according to its current productivity and without regard for its future purchasing power risk and an allocation of the future purchasing power risk of the money supply according to the willingness of investors to bear this risk in exchange for return and without regard for investor needs for the future transactions services of money in open

direct price controls as a source of instability in the interest rate inflation rate relationship abstract we hypothesize that an efficient capital market is more concerned with effective inflation rates which investors experience than official ones which econometricians observe and that direct consumer goods price controls are likely to result in disparity between the two consequently direct price controls are also likely to affect the interest measured inflation rate relationship we ropose a dummy variable approach which enables us to explore empirically the effects of such controls on the interest inflation rate relationship in the context of dwyer s 1981 model using euro rates and inflation rates of the respective countries we explore the impact of the control programmes imposed in the 1970 s by governments of the united states canada and france france

china s nuclear export drive trojan horse or marshall plan abstract china s civil nuclear industry expanded strongly from 2008 onwards and nearly half of reactor construction starts worldwide since then are accounted for by the chinese home market increasingly china is turning its attention to the export market using its own designs which it claims emulate the safety standards of the latest designs of the established nuclear reactor vendors its export efforts would be greatly strengthened if it were to win an order from an established user of nuclear power and its best opportunity appears to be the uk where it is at the early stages of negotiating the construction of nuclear reactors the financial collapse of the french nuclear company areva gives it the opportunity to take a stake in the rescued companies giving it access to important fuel cycle technologies and perhaps the large french reactor service market its other export prospects in europe are in romania and turkey there are a number of issues european governments need to examine before committing to allow in chinese nuclear companies these include national security concerns about dependence on china for key infrastructure issues of quality control and regulatory competence and the lack of construction experience with china s modern reactor designs

political vs currency premia in international real interest differentials a study of forward rates for 24 countries abstract different approaches to quantifying the degree of capital mobility for a cross section of currencies particularly saving investment correlations and tests of real interest parity have appeared to show a surprisingly low degree of financial integration we use a new data set forward rate data for 24 countries including many small industrialized countries and seven ldcs to decompose the real interest differential into two parts the covered interest differential or political premium and the real forward discount or currency premium the latter in turn can be decomposed into the exchange risk premium and expected real depreciation we find a high degree of capital mobility across political boundaries for most of the g 11 countries plus hong kong and singapore for our sample period of 1982 to 1987 even for most of the other ldcs and smaller industrialized countries for which covered interest parity clearly fails the political premium is not as big a component of the real interest differential as the currency premium france would appear to have higher capital mobility than most by the criterion of real interest differentials but is seen in fact to have low capital mobility by the criterion of covered interest differentials a clear example of the superiority of the latter criterion

chinese investments in europe s energy sector risks and opportunities abstract this paper analyses recent trends in chinese investment in the european energy sector these investments have increased in size targeted a wider number of countries and entered multiple energy sectors in particular fossil renewable energies and energy infrastructure we highlight the significant opportunities for as well as the political and economic risks of chinese investments in the european energy sector on the one hand the benefits can be substantial as china s new role as a global investor offers substantial economic benefits and political partnership further benefits might potentially emerge from backward linkages of chinese investments to improve access to china s restricted markets yet our findings also point to growing concerns among policymakers and business managers in europe ranging from worries about unfair competition and economic risks to concerns about national security we conclude with policy recommendations for the european union and its member states

subnational climate justice adaptation finance distribution and climate vulnerability summary this article investigates subnational adaptation finance distribution within malawi malawi is highly climate vulnerable and a significant per capita recipient of adaptation finance this empirical study models distribution dynamics through need climate vulnerability and government interest patronage results indicate those areas most in need receive relatively little finance rather donor utility and the ability to absorb capital offer the most persuasive explanations for distribution across the state these findings suggest that the distribution of adaptation funds do not support the larger goal of climate justice

the hinkley point decision an analysis of the policy process in 2006 the british government launched a policy to build nuclear power reactors based on a claim that the power produced would be competitive with fossil fuel and would require no public subsidy a decade later it is not clear how many if any orders will be placed and the claims on costs and subsidies have proved false despite this failure to deliver the policy is still being pursued with undiminished determination the finance model that is now proposed is seen as a model other european countries can follow so the success or otherwise of the british nuclear programme will have implications outside the uk this paper contends that the checks and balances that should weed out misguided policies have failed it argues that the most serious failure is with the civil service and its inability to provide politicians with high quality advice truth to power it concludes that the failure is likely to be due to the unwillingness of politicians to listen to opinions that conflict with their beliefs other weaknesses include the lack of energy expertise in the media the unwillingness of the public to engage in the policy process and the impotence of parliamentary committees

on some international parity conditions an empirical investigation abstract this paper investigates weak semi strong and strong forms of the following international parity conditions a uncovered interest parity b the hypothesis of equal ex ante real interest rates and c ex ante purchasing power parity the main results are as follows using data which roughly cover the 1975 1984 decade we find little evidence in favor of the strong form of the parity conditions under consideration however most test results are consistent with the weak forms finally regarding the semi strong forms the results are mixed

are real interest rates equal across countries an empirical investigation of international parity conditions this paper conducts empirical tests of the equality of real interest rates across countries the empirical evidence strongly rejects the hypothesis of real rate equality and the joint hypotheses of uncovered interest parity and ex ante relative ppp or the unbiasedness of forward rate forecasts and ex ante relative ppp the evidence suggests that it is worth studying open economy macroeconomic models which allow 1 domestic real rates to differ from world rates 2 time varying risk premiums in the forward market or 3 deviations from ex ante relative ppp the relationship of real interest rates across countries is of central importance to our understanding of open economy macroeconomics in some models where there is costless international arbitrage in goods and financial assets real interest rates for comparable securities should be equal across countries this has been a feature of much of the early research in the monetary approach to exchange rates e g frenkel 11 and bilson 2 on the other hand finance theory indicates that risk premia may well differ for comparable securities denominated in different currencies solnick 27 roll and solnick 26 stulz 28 fama and farber 7 hansen and hodrick 17 and dornbusch 6 and more recent theoretical models in the exchange rate literature such as dornbusch 5 frankel 10 and mussa 24 depend on real rates differing between countries in the short run the proposition that real rates are equal across countries is worth studying

attributing responsibility for energy justice a case study of the hinkley point nuclear complex since 2006 as part of the transition to low carbon technologies uk energy policy has moved towards incentivising new nuclear power production as a result the uk has developed a now delayed strategy to deliver around 16gw of new nuclear power by 2030 this policy context provides an opportunity to reflect not only on the material infrastructure needed to meet transition targets but also on who is responsible for the energy justice implications of these decisions using data collected from 26 semi structured interviews with ngo and policy representatives this paper presents a case study of energy justice concerns surrounding the hinkley point nuclear complex in somerset focusing particularly on the highly controversial hinkley point c developments the results emphasise the importance of considering not only instances of energy justice or injustice but of attributing responsibility for them a concept that has been largely overlooked in the energy justice literature ngos government and business allocate responsibility differently in nuclear energy decision making we find that perceptions of responsibility are highly dependent upon the level of transparency in decision making this article is part of a virtual special issue entitled exploring the energy justice nexus

fuel poverty excess winter deaths and energy costs in vermont burdensome for whom energy whether from electricity natural gas heating oil propane kerosene or wood is essential for the well being of many americans yet those who spend more than 10 percent of their income of energy services can be considered fuel poor this study assesses the extent and severity of fuel poverty in vermont it analyzes energy burdens in vermont by household income deciles using data from the census bureau s american community survey approximately 71 000 people suffered from fuel poverty in vermont in 2000 and in 2012 the number rose to 125 000 or one in five vermonters startlingly fuel poverty grew 76 percent during this period excess winter deaths caused potentially by fuel poverty kill more vermonters each year than car crashes the article then provides 12 policy recommendations based on a small sample of elite semi structured research interviews these include suggestions that the vermont legislature better fund investments in weatherization among low income households that community groups and social service agencies scale up the training of energy efficiency coaches that state agencies endorse improvements in housing efficiency and appropriate fuel switching and that utilities and fuel providers offer extra assistance for disconnected households and allow for on bill financing of efficiency improvements

exchange rate dynamics an empirical investigation this paper estimates a reduced form exchange rate equation whose estimates are used to address questions on exchange rate overshooting intermediate run exchange rate dynamics and long run proportionality relationships between relative money supplies and exchange rates based on swiss u s data from the period 1973 79 the major findings are that following a monetary shock there is short run exchange rate overshooting by a factor of about two and that subsequent exchange rate adjustments to a new long run equilibrium take longer than 2 years and exhibit nonmonotonic patterns

international asset pricing with time varying risk premia abstract recent empirical evidence that forward exchange rates are biased predictors of future spot rates can also be interpreted as evidence against the hypothesis of a constant risk premium consequently reconciliation of this evidence with efficient international capital markets requires the existence of time varying risk premia this paper modifies kouri s 1977 asset pricing model to allow time varying exected returns on assets eliminates the assumption of a risk free real asset and derives the characteristics of the risk premia in the forward market as well as the equilibrium yield relationships among the equities and riskless nominal bonds of all countries

do asset demand functions optimize over the mean and variance of real returns a six currency test abstract international asset demands are functions of expected returns optimal portfolio theory tells us that the coefficients in this relationship depend on the variance covariance matrix of real returns but previous estimates of the optimal portfolio 1 assume expected returns constant and 2 are not set up to test the hypothesis of mean variance optimization we use maximum likelihood estimation to impose a constraint between the coefficients and the error variance covariance matrix for a portfolio of six currencies we are able statistically to reject the constraint evidently investors are either not sophisticated enough to maximize a function of the mean and variance of end of period wealth or else are too sophisticated to do so

domestic saving and international capital movements in the long run and the short run the evidence and analysis in this paper support the earlier findings of feldstein and horioka 1980 that sustained increases in domestic savings rates induce approximately equal increases in domestic rates of investment new estimates for the post opec period 1974 79 imply that each extra dollar of domestic saving increases domestic investment by approximately 85 cents in a sample of 17 oecd countries an explicit analysis of the problems of identification and simultaneous equations bias suggests that the regression estimates are more relevant as a guide to the long run response of international capital flows than to their short run behavior coefficient estimates based on annual variations in savings and investment are subject to potentially severe simultaneous equations bias that is not present when annual observations are averaged over a decade or more and the regression is estimated with a cross country sample of these averages a portfolio model of international capital allocation that is presented in the paper indicates that the short run change in the rate of net foreign investment in response to a sustained increase in domestic saving is likely to be substantially greater than the ultimate steady state response this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

equilibrium in sealed high bid auctions there is a voluminous theoretical literature on sealed high bid auctions auctions in which bids are sealed and the high bidder pays his bid see for example vickrey 1961 myerson 1981 riley and samuelson 1981 milgrom and weber 1982 matthews 1983 maskin and riley 1984 holt 1980 cox smith and walker 1988 a critical property on which this literature relies is the existence of equilibrium in which buyers bidding strategies are monotonic in their types this enables the analyst to perform comparative statics as the distribution of types changes and to compare the welfare properties of the high bid auction with those of other auction institutions one case in which the existence of monotonic equilibrium is readily established is that in which buyers types are distributed smoothly independently and symmetrically in this case there exists a symmetric equilibrium one in which all bidders share the same bidding behaviour as a function of their valuations and this bid function is the solution to a first order differential equation

tests of rational expectations and no risk premium in forward exchange markets abstract this paper tests the simple efficiency hypothesis i e that traders have rational expectations and charge no risk premium in the forward exchange market it uses a statistical procedure which is consistent under a large class of heteroscedasticity and a set of data which takes into account the institutional features of the forward exchange market the results show that this procedure leads to stronger rejections of the simple efficiency hypothesis than do procedures using the standard assumption of homoscedasticity

estimation of portfolio balance functions that are mean variance optimizing the mark and the dollar abstract this paper offers a way of efficiently estimating the parameters in demand functions for mark and dollar assets the technique imposes the constraint that the parameters rather than being determined arbitrarily are based on investors optimizing behavior regarding expected returns and variances it dominates some previous empirical applications of finance theory in the respect that the expected returns are allowed to vary from period to period which is a necessary feature of any macro model the constraint that the parameters are based on mean variance optimization is also tested and not rejected

flexible exchange rates prices and the role of news lessons from the 1970s recent experience with flexible exchange rate systems has led to renewed interest in the operation of foreign exchange markets as reflected in many recent studies of the principal determinants of exchange rates the 1970s witnessed the dramatic alteration of the international monetary system from a regime of pegged exchange rates which prevailed for about a quarter of a century since the bretton woods conference into a regime of flexible though managed rates as a consequence of the emergence of the new legal and economic system traders national governments and international organisations were confronted with new economic problems choices and instruments during the 1970s ex change rates fluctuated widely and inflation rates accelerated the international monetary system had to accommodate extraordinarily large oil related shocks which affected trade flows in goods and assets huge oil payments had to be recycled uncertainties concerning future developments in international politics reached new heights and the prospects for the world economy got gloomier these developments placed unprecedented pressures on the markets for foreign exchange as well as on other asset markets they were associated with a large slide in the value of the us dollar and resulted in speeding up the creation of new institutions like the european monetary system which provided the formal framework for the management of exchange rates among members

dynamics of real interest differentials an empirical investigation abstract linear dynamic stochastic processes are derived for the ex ente real interest differentials from those followed by the ex post processes under the assumption of rational expectations the technique is used to test the equality of ex ante real rates between u s and a number of oecd countries the evidence against the short run equality of ex ante real rates is overwhelming in the long run the rates are co integrated but not always equal it takes approximately six months for the differentials to converge to their long run values

the term structure of the forward premium abstract most studies of the efficiency of the foreign exchange market focus on a single maturity usually a one month forward exchange rate however one observes that forward contracts of many maturities are simultaneously traded in the foreign exchange market the hypothesis that the foreign exchange market uses all available information has implications for the joint behavior of forward exchange rates of various maturities this paper proposes an equilibrium theory of the term structure of the forward premium the model is tested using data on the german and canadian exchange rates the results indicate that the data are consistent with the theory for germany and inconsistent with the theory for canada

resolving society s energy trilemma through the energy justice metric carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase to the detriment of society in many forms one of the difficulties faced is the imbalance between the competing aims of economics politics and the environment which form the trilemma of energy policy this article advances that this energy trilemma can be resolved through energy justice energy justice develops the debate on energy policy to one that highlights cosmopolitanism progresses thinking beyond economics and incorporates a new futuristic perspective to capture these dynamics of energy justice this research developed an energy justice metric ejm that involves the calculation of several metrics 1 a country national ejm 2 an ejm for different energy infrastructure and 3 an ejm which is incorporated into economic models that derive costs for energy infrastructure projects an ejm is modeled for china the european union and the united states and for different energy infrastructure in the united kingdom the ejm is plotted on a ternary phase diagram which is used in the sciences for analyzing the relationship trilemma of three forms of matter the development of an ejm can provide a tool for decision making on energy policy and one that solves the energy trilemma with a just and equitable approach

purchasing power parity as a theory of international arbitrage in manufactured goods an empirical view of uk us prices in the 1970s this study treats purchasing power parity as a theory of arbitrage and seeks to test for its applicability at a disaggregated level evidence is found to suggest that arbitrage in individual markets cannot be easily aggregated due to different a adjustment periods across industries even at a disaggregated level the evidence does not suggest a long run arbitrage process of the type implied by relative purchasing power parity moreover the length of time which industries take to adjust to changes in foreign prices and the exchange rate is found to be related both to the domestic competitive environment and the extent to which the particular good is traded

the forward exchange rate and macroeconomics abstract this paper discusses the conditions under which a risk premium is incorporated in the forward exchange rate a new condition for the existence of a risk premium is proposed we show that earlier models of the risk premium which emphasize either the role of net foreign investment or of the relative supplies of outside assets are not suited for assessing the effects of changes in macroeconomic policy

exchange rate volatility international trade and the value of exporting firms abstract increased exchange rate volatility positively affects the value of exporting firms via the price and volume impacts of exchange rates and also makes an exporting strategy more attractive relative to the direct investment investment in export production capacity could therefore be a positive function of exchange rate volatility firms would also be more willing to sustain losses i e to engage in dumping before they abandon their export markets the effect on the volume and value of trade is ambiguous

the application of contrast explanation to energy policy research uk nuclear energy policy 2002 2012 abstract this paper advances the application of the methodology contrast explanation to energy policy research research in energy policy is complex and often involves inter disciplinary work which traditional economic methodologies fail to capture consequently the more encompassing methodology of contrast explanation is assessed and its use in other social science disciplines explored in brief it is then applied to an energy policy research topic in this case nuclear energy policy research in the uk contrast explanation facilitates research into policy and decision making processes in energy studies and offers an alternative to the traditional economic methods used in energy research further contrast explanation is extended by the addition of contested and uncontested hypotheses analyses this research focuses on the methods employed to deliver the new nuclear programme of the uk government in order to achieve a sustainable nuclear energy policy three issues are of major importance 1 law policy and development 2 public administration and 3 project management further the research identifies that policy in the area remains to be resolved in particular at an institutional and legal level however contrary to the literature in some areas the research identifies a change of course as the uk concentrates on delivering a long term policy for the nuclear energy sector and the overall energy sector

behavioral perfect equilibrium in bayesian games abstract we develop the notion of perfect bayesian nash equilibrium perfect bne in general bayesian games we test perfect bne against the criteria laid out by kohlberg and mertens 1986 we show that for a focal class of bayesian games perfect bne exists moreover when payoffs are continuous perfect bne is limit undominated for almost every type we illustrate the use of perfect bne in the context of a second price auction with interdependent values perfect bne selects the unique pure strategy equilibrium in continuous strategies that separates types moreover when valuations become independent the equilibrium converges to the classical truthful dominant strategy equilibrium we also show that less intuitive equilibria in which types are pooled are ruled out by our selection criterion we further argue that standard selection criteria for second price auctions have no bite here bidders have no dominant strategies and the separating equilibrium is not sincere

econometric methods and purchasing power parity short and long run ppp this paper defines the different versions of the purchasing power parity and establishes the existing relationships between them in the light of econometric techniques monthly and annual data for real exchange rates are studied through a variance ratio test unlike other authors it is found that there is not explosive behaviour in the real exchange rate when monthly data are used besides stationarity is easily accepted using annual data these results allow to reconcile the two main versions of the purchasing power parity and also explain why trade imbalances are persistent but not permanent

pure strategy equilibria of single and double auctions with interdependent values we prove the existence of monotonic pure strategy equilibrium for many kinds of asymmetric auctions with n bidders and unitary demands interdependent values and independent types the assumptions require monotonicity only in the own bidder s type the payments can be a function of all bids thus we provide a new equilibrium existence result for asymmetrical double auctions and a small number of bidders the generality of our setting requires the use of special tie breaking rules we present an example of a double auction with interdependent values where all equilibria are trivial that is they have zero probability of trade this is related to akerlof s market for lemmons example and to the winner s curse establishing a connection between them however we are able to provide sufficient conditions for non trivial equilibrium existence

a model of exchange rate dynamics this model treats the exchange rate as an asset price that depends on expectations concerning exogenous real and monetary factors that will affect relative prices and absolute price levels in future periods changes in exchange rates reflect both expected changes in these exogenous factors and changes in expectations occasioned by new information the model explains the random component in exchange rate behavior the source of divergences from purchasing power parity the anticipatory response of exchange rates to future expected disturbances and the causes of exchange rate overshooting

fuel poverty as injustice integrating distribution recognition and procedure in the struggle for affordable warmth bringing attention to fuel poverty as a distinct manifestation of social inequality has asserted the place of affordable warmth in the profile of contemporary rights and entitlements as such fuel poverty can be understood as an expression of injustice involving the compromised ability to access energy services and thereby to secure a healthful living environment in this paper we consider how fuel poverty may be aligned to various alternative concepts of social and environmental justice whilst recognising that fuel poverty is fundamentally a complex problem of distributive injustice we argue that other understandings of injustice are also implicated and play important roles in producing and sustaining inequalities in access to affordable warmth addressing fuel poverty has to involve seeking justice in terms of the cultural and political recognition of vulnerable and marginalised social groups and pursuing procedural justice through opening up involvement and influence in decision making processes we make this argument both in theoretical terms and through considering the experience of fuel poverty advocacy and policy development in the uk opportunities for future action may be illuminated through such interconnected justice framings as wider awareness of energy climate and poverty issues emerge

covered interest parity uncovered interest parity and exchange rate dynamics a number of macroeconomic models of open economies under flexible exchange rate assume a strong version of perfect capital mobility which implies that currency speculation commands no risk premium if this assumption is dropped a number of important results no longer obtain first the exchange rate and interest rate cannot be in steady state unless both the government deficit and current account equal zero not simply their sum as would otherwise be the case second even in steady state the domestic interest rate can deviate from the foreign interest rate by an amount which de ends upon relative domestic asset supplies finally introducing risk aversion on the part of speculators can reduce the response on impact of the exchange rate to changes in domestic asset supplies in this sense rational speculators if they are less risk averse than other agents can destabilize exchange markets this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

notes and comments the amsterdam auction the amsterdam auction has been used to sell real estate in the dutch capital for centuries by awarding a premium to the highest losing bidder the amsterdam auction favors weak bidders without having the implementation difficulties of myerson s 1981 optimal auction in a series of experiments we compare the standard first price and english auctions the optimal auction and two variants of the amsterdam auction with strongly asymmetric bidders the second price amsterdam auction raises substantially more revenues than standard formats and only slightly less than the optimal auction