do greens drive hummers or hybrids environmental ideology as a determinant of consumer choice this paper uses several california data sets to test for differences in consumption patterns between greens and browns a person s environmentalism is rarely observed in consumer data sets in california a community s share of green party registered voters is a viable proxy for community environmentalism environmentalists are more likely to commute by public transit purchase hybrid vehicles and consume less gasoline than non environmentalists

output dynamics in real business cycles models the time series literature reports two stylized facts about output dynamics in the united states gnp growth is positively autocorrelated and gnp appears to have an important trend reverting component this paper investigates whether current real business cycle rbc models are consistent with these stylized facts many rbc models have weak internal propagation mechanisms and must rely on external sources of dynamics to replicate both facts models that incorporate labor adjustment costs are partially successful they endogenously generate positive autocorrelation in output growth but they need implausibly large transitory shocks to match the trend reverting component in output

responsible property investing in canada factoring both environmental and social impacts in the canadian real estate market institutional investors and corporations increasingly recognize that extra financial determinants of business performance can both create value and uncover significant risks within a business or investment portfolio for companies that invest in develop own or operate commercial real estate assets this awareness of extra financial impacts has led to a significant interest in what has been called responsible property investment rpi within the field of rpi green real estate real estate investment and management that seeks to reduce the environmental impacts of building construction and operations has begun to receive attention this attention has been extended over the past decade to community property development projects where both social and environmental considerations related not only to the building but also the project site and surrounding community are integrated into management and investment decisions some examples of these projects include affordable and workforce housing urban revitalization and brownfield redevelopment more social focussed issues such as labour and workplace considerations are also key components of responsible property investing yet to date labour issues have received little attention in the rpi literature and workplace considerations are reflected indirectly through environmental considerations in the green building literature this paper explores responsible real estate investment in canada by taking an integrated approach in examining both environmental and social factors and their potential impact on such investments a series of semi structured interviews are conducted with key stakeholders in canada to gain insight into how using environmental and social factors may influence long term risk and financial returns in real estate investment in canada with particular emphasis on institutional investors engaged in these practices data is used to analyse the impact that esg considerations have on financial performance of these assets jantzi sustainalytics esg ratings are used along with the stock price changes of fourteen real estate companies and reits to interrogate this question

soak up the sun impact of solar energy systems on residential home values in arizona abstract recent increase of installations of solar energy systems on residential properties begs the question of whether such investments are being recognized by the market studies that estimate the impact of solar technologies on home values have been scarce using transaction and valuation data for a sample of residential properties in arizona and matching methodology results show that solar photovoltaics installation indeed has positive impacts on both house value and transaction prices this is the first empirical study conducted in arizona a state of crucial importance for solar energy development with its abundant solar resources in particular properties with electricity generating solar panels enjoy an average premium of approximately 45 000 15 of medium home value and transaction price premium of 28 000 17 of medium home sales price we do not find a statistically significant premium on homes with solar water heaters alone

how non traded goods may generate quasi quadratic costs for capital adjustment abstract this paper shows that a two tiered production structure with both traded and non traded intermediate goods and non traded final goods can generate a cost of capital adjustment that is very similar to the quadratic adjustment cost often assumed in single good macroeconomic models this implies that while a quadratic loss function may seem like an ad hoc adjustment it can be rationalized by sound theory from a more detailed model

parametric efficiency tests economies of scale and input demand in u s electric power generation duality theory has been applied increasingly in recent years to study the structure of production a major advantage of using duality theory is that systems of input demand equations can be derived by simple differentiation facilitating the use of flexible functional forms also use of duality theory makes it possible to choose a representation of the technology which has desirable properties for estimation such as exogeneity of the regressors however the use of a dual representation of production structure is appropriate only if the corresponding maintained hypothesis concerning economic behavior e g cost minimization or profit maximization is valid the perceived advantages of the dual approach to studying production structure have led to some applications in which the maintained hypothesis concerning economic behavior is unlikely to be appropriate for example neoclassical cost functions have been used to study the characteristics of production in regulated industries despite an extensive theoretical literature indicating that a profit maximizing regulated firm would not minimize costs subject to market prices 2 in this paper we propose a generalized cost function that retains the principal advantages of the neoclassical cost function but does not require that cost minimization subject to market prices be imposed as a maintained hypothesis in our model firms are assumed to base their production decisions on unobservable shadow prices which reflect the effects of regulation on the effective prices of inputs parametric tests for cost minimization are obtained by expressing shadow prices as functions of market prices the generalized cost function is estimated with data for regulated electric utilities the parametric restrictions corresponding to cost minimizing behavior subject to market prices are rejected implying that the use of a neoclassical cost function is not appropriate in this application 3

international risk cycles abstract recent work in international finance suggests that exchange rate puzzles can be accounted for if 1 aggregate uncertainty is time varying and 2 countries have heterogeneous exposures to a world aggregate shock we embed these features in a standard two country real business cycle framework and calibrate the model to equity risk premia in low and high interest rates countries unlike traditional real business cycle models our model generates volatile exchange rates a large currency forward premium excess comovement of asset prices relative to quantities and an imperfect correlation between relative consumption growth and exchange rates our model implies however that high interest rate countries have smoother quantities equity returns and interest rates than low interest rate countries contrary to the data

the diffusion of energy efficiency in building awareness of global warming and the extent of greenhouse gas emissions has focused more attention upon energy efficiency in building moreover the inventory of green office space in the u s has increased dramatically since the introduction of rating schemes that attest to the energy efficiency or sustainability of commercial buildings in some metropolitan areas the supply of certified office buildings has more than doubled in the last decade and there are a few metropolitan areas where green office space now accounts for more than a quarter of the total office stock in this paper we analyze the diffusion of buildings certified for energy efficiency across us property markets using a panel of 48 metropolitan areas msas observed over the last 15 years we trace the diffusion of green building practices across the country we then model the geographic patterns and dynamics of building certification relating industry composition changes in economic conditions characteristics of the local commercial property market and the presence of human capital to the crosssectional variation in energy efficient building technologies and the diffusion of those technologies over time understanding the determinants and the rate at which energyefficient building practices diffuse over space and time is important for designing policies to affect resource consumption in the built environment

residential energy use and conservation economics and demographics energy consumption in the residential sector offers an important opportunity for conserving resources however much of the current debate regarding energy efficiency in the housing market focuses on the physical and technical determinants of energy consumption neglecting the role of the economic behavior of resident households in this paper we analyze the extent to which the use of gas and electricity is determined by the technical specifications of the dwelling as compared to the demographic characteristics of the residents our analysis is based on a sample of more than 300 000 dutch homes and their occupants the results indicate that residential gas consumption is determined principally by structural dwelling characteristics such as the vintage building type and characteristics of the dwelling while electricity consumption varies more directly with household composition in particular income and family composition combining these results with projections on future economic and demographic trends we find that even absent price increases for residential energy the aging of the population and their increasing wealth will roughly offset improvements in the energy efficiency of the building stock resulting from policy interventions and natural revitalization

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

current real business cycle theories and aggregate labor market fluctuations hours worked and the return to working are weakly correlated traditionally the ability to account for this fact has been a litmus test for macroeconomic models existing real business cycle models fail this test dramatically we modify prototypical real business cycle models by allowing government consumption shocks to influence labor market dynamics this modification can in principle bring the models into closer conformity with the data our empirical results indicate that it does

is energy efficiency capitalized into home prices evidence from three u s cities abstract we test for evidence that energy efficiency features are capitalized into home prices in three u s metropolitan areas using hedonic regressions and multiple matching procedures we find that energy star certification is associated with higher sales prices in two of the markets the research triangle region of north carolina and portland oregon we find that local green certifications in portland and in austin texas are also associated with higher prices and that the estimated price impacts are larger than those from energy star matching on observables proves to be important in some cases reducing the estimated impacts compared with models without matching we calculate the implied energy savings from the estimated premiums and find that in the research triangle market the energy star premiums approximately equal the savings that program is designed to achieve but in portland the premiums are slightly greater than the program s savings due to low energy costs in the region

neoclassical modeling of nonneutral technological change an experimental appraisal the results of an experimental evaluation of the performance of neoclassical models using alternative indexes of the pace of introduction of innovations to measure the effects of technical change on the patterns of factor input usage are reported the analysis maintains that production processes should be viewed as engineering activities so that neoclassical characterizations of them and of any innovations to them are best treated as approximations two large scale process analysis models provide the description of the true production technology with and without access to six specific process innovations the analysis considered both input aggregation and the index of the extent of technical innovation the results suggest that indexes which are explicitly tied to the technical features of the innovations involved perform better in isolating the direction of the input effects associated with each innovation moreover this conclusion was found to hold with differing levels of input aggregation

the value of domestic building energy efficiency evidence from ireland abstract following the transposition of the eu energy performance of buildings directive into irish law all properties offered for sale or to let in ireland are obliged to have an energy efficiency rating this paper analyses the effect of energy efficiency ratings on the sale and rental prices of properties in the republic of ireland using the heckman selection technique we model the decision to advertise the energy efficiency rating of a property and the effect of energy efficiency ratings on property values our results show that energy efficiency has a positive effect on both the sales and rental prices of properties and that the effect is significantly stronger in the sales segment of the property market we also analyse the effect of energy efficiency across different market conditions and we find that the effect of the energy rating is generally stronger where market conditions are worse

explaining saving investment correlations national saving and investment rates are highly positively correlated in virtually all countries this is puzzling as it apparently implies a low degree of international capital mobility this paper shows that the observed positive correlation between national saving and investment rates arises naturally within a quantitatively restricted equilibrium model with perfect mobility of financial and physical capital the model is consistent with the fact that saving investment correlations are larger for larger countries but are still substantial for small countries further the model is consistent with the finding that current account deficits tend to be associated with investment booms copyright 1993 by american economic association

adjustment costs and international trade dynamics abstract this paper develops a model of trader behavior that is characterized by quadratic adjustment costs imperfect competition and rational expectations the model is fitted to data on aggregate trade flows between the united states and three of its largest trading partners tests against alternative specifications confirm the importance of imperfect competition and adjustment costs the hypothesis of rational expectations cannot be rejected the estimated price elasticities of trade flows are generally in the range reported by previous researchers but the activity elasticities are significantly higher

doing well by doing good green office buildings this paper provides the first credible evidence on the economic value of the certification of green buildings in the commercial sector value derived from impersonal market transactions rather than engineering estimates we match publicly available information on the addresses of energy star and leed rated office buildings to a commercial data source detailing the characteristics of u s office buildings and their rental rates we analyze the micro data on 694 certified green buildings and on 7489 other office buildings located within a quarter mile of the certified buildings we find systematic evidence that rents for green offices are about two percent higher than rents for comparable buildings located nearby effective rents i e rents adjusted for the occupancy levels in office buildings are about six percent higher in green buildings than in comparable office buildings nearby at prevailing capitalization rates conversion of the average non green building to an equivalent green building would add more than 5 million in market value these results are robust to the statistical models employed

the price of energy efficiency in the spanish housing market the housing sector is a substantial consumer of energy and therefore a focus for energy savings efforts the energy performance certificate epc is the main eu policy to improve the energy performance of buildings following the implementation of the epc directive into spanish law from june 2013 all properties offered for sale or rented out in spain are required to have an epc given that this is a recently introduced regulation unlike other european housing markets the spanish one lacks market data on energy efficiency ee labels and their impact on housing price in order to overcome this gap we determine the ee ratings of a sample of 1 507 homes across spain on the basis of information collected previously through household surveys this information allowed us to answer the question of whether or not and to what extent spanish housing markets capitalise the value of ee we apply the hedonic price technique and observe that more energy efficient dwellings meaning higher ee rating have a price premium between 5 4 and 9 8 compared to those with the same characteristics but lower ee level

evaluating environmental investments a real options approach the paper presents a model that determines when at which output price level it is optimum for a firm to invest in environmental technologies and which are the main parameters that affect this decision our analysis shows that firms require high output price levels to be induced to invest in environmental technologies because they optimally would not want to commit to a heavy irreversible investment that could turn out to be unprofitable in the event of a price fall a comparative static analysis predicts that firms in industries with high output price volatility would be more reluctant to invest in environmental protection technologies and would be more willing to operate at low output levels thus attaining low emission levels increases in the interest rate would also reduce optimal environmental investment levels

building energy efficiency a research branch made of paradoxes abstract the literature dealing with building energy efficiency has long since debated about the possible occurrence of the so called jevons paradox in a nutshell benefiting from energy savings due to transition to high performance buildings may the same savings cause a kind of rebound effect by acting as an incentive to increase consumptions on closer inspection this is not the only paradox affecting the research branch that focuses on the energy used by the buildings and the building industry a second paradox is that investments in energy efficient solutions may contribute to energy price control which in turn lends itself to make the same investments not profitable a third paradox lies in the need to adopt energy intensive materials in order to achieve substantial energy savings in operation hence sometimes we just substitute a certain amount of operating energy with a more or less commensurate amount of embodied energy here we argue that the joint consideration of the paradoxes mentioned above should not be neglected since it brings with itself several implications needing to be disentangled whether we aim to get further enhancements in this disciplinary field

the liberalization of retail services in india summary despite the recent controversy about opening up the distribution sector to foreign retailers there is political will that remains in favor of pushing through reforms in india in this paper we quantify the economic impact of the removal of barriers to foreign investment in multi brand retailing on different stakeholders using a newly developed general equilibrium model the model accounts explicitly for both foreign direct investment and the activities of foreign affiliates using heterogeneous production technologies we find that the unilateral reduction of barriers to fdi in distribution services in india benefits the economy as a whole consumers and foreign producers but hurts domestic distributors nevertheless when we consider the associated productivity improvements documented in the literature to downstream and upstream industries we find that domestic producers are expected to benefit from the liberalization of the distribution sector as well

the price of innovation an analysis of the marginal cost of green buildings abstract energy efficiency plays an important role in reducing the carbon externality from buildings but economic analyses of more efficient green building have thus far ignored input costs this paper finds that the average marginal cost of green labeled construction projects is smaller than the value premiums documented in the literature however design fees representing just a fraction of development costs but paid largely up front are significantly higher for green construction projects these projects also take longer to complete the results provide some insight into the market barriers and market failures that may explain the relatively slow adoption of otherwise economically rational green construction practices

job creation or destruction labor market effects of wal mart expansion this paper estimates the effect of wal mart expansion on retail employment at the county level using an instrumental variables approach to correct for both measurement error in entry dates and endogeneity of the timing of entry i find that wal mart entry increases retail employment by 100 jobs in the year of entry half of this gain disappears over the next five years as other retail establishments exit and contract leaving a long run statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs wholesale employment declines by approximately 20 jobs due to wal mart s vertical integration no spillover effect is detected in retail sectors in which wal mart does not compete directly suggesting wal mart does not create agglomeration economies in retail trade at the county level

foreign direct investment in india s retail bazaar opportunities and challenges despite encouraging signs india s retail market remains largely off limits to large international retailers like wal mart and carrefour opposition to liberalising foreign direct investment in this sector raises concerns about employment losses unfair competition resulting in large scale exit of incumbent domestic retailers and infant industry arguments to protect the organised domestic retail sector that is at a nascent stage based on international evidence we suggest that allowing entry by large international retailers into the indian market may help tackle inflation especially in food prices moreover technical know how from foreign firms such as warehousing technologies and distribution systems can improve supply chain efficiency in india in particular for agricultural produce better linkages between demand and supply have the potential to improve the price signals that farmers receive and also serve to enhance agricultural and other exports

understanding the solar home price premium electricity generation and green social status this study uses a large sample of homes in the san diego area and sacramento california area to provide some of the first capitalization estimates of the sales value of homes with solar panels relative to comparable homes without solar panels although the residential solar home market continues to grow there is little direct evidence on the market capitalization effect using both hedonics and a repeat sales index approach we find that solar panels are capitalized at roughly a 3 5 premium this premium is larger in communities with a greater share of college graduates and of registered prius hybrid vehicles

social problems of green buildings from the humanistic needs to social acceptance abstract in the past few decades scholars have conducted research and held discussions on green building to highlight their vital significance in addressing environmental economic and social challenges it is recognized that public attitudes and views towards green building may affect its application in daily lives although studies on consumers cognition are rarely carried out the social problems related to green building such as consumers basic understanding purchase intention social and humanistic needs public attitudes and behaviors rebound effects and furthermore social acceptance are therefore studied based on three research methods including literature review questionnaire and inductive analysis through the analysis following results can be obtained i green building s sustainable design has quite important influence over consumers decision making process the general public maintains a high regard for the advantages of green building where better ventilation and lighting is a major benefit saving energy and water are the second rated and then land and construction material saving ii although the general public is not being familiar with the concept of green building the majority of participants would pay more for green buildings over the standard building when they know the environmental impacts of them iii green building should not only be limited to energy performance oriented but also be user oriented the social and humanistic needs model is thus well established based on maslow s hierarchy of needs in the life cycle of green building social and humanistic needs show a trend of dynamics which means social processes with consumer engagement and participation needs to be considered in aspects of conceptual design planning and design operation and maintenance to improve users happiness and productivity iv current user oriented solutions to green building are always based on a hypothesis that consumers are readily motivated or prefer expensive goods for reducing energy use to really reflect preference and influenced actions social acceptance should be analyzed to fully gauge interest and perspective of the people v rebound effects of post occupant building performance including energy performance human comfort indoor environmental quality greenhouse gas emission and workplace productivity can be divided into two stages at present it is necessary to establish appropriate samples methods and parameters for an unbiased and valid post occupant evaluation system in addition the social acceptance of green building framework is established based on wustenhagen et al triangular model for renewable energy innovation all the explorations to social problems of green building in this article are expected to provide a healthy social basis for the development of this green strategy

the economics of green building we analyze the economics of green building finding that recent increases in the supply of green buildings and the volatility in prop erty markets have not affected the returns to green buildings we then analyze a large cross section of office buildings demonstrating that eco nomic returns to energy efficient buildings are substantial finally we relate the economic premiums for green buildings to their relative effi ciency in energy use the attributes rated for thermal efficiency as well as sustainability contribute to premiums in rents and asset values among green buildings increased energy efficiency is fully capitalized into rents and asset values

supply demand and the value of green buildings attention to sustainability and energy efficiency rating schemes in the commercial property sector has increased rapidly during the past decade in the uk commercial properties have been certified under the breeam rating scheme since 1999 offering fertile ground to investigate the economic dynamics of green certification in the commercial property market this paper documents that over the 2000 09 period the expanding supply of green buildings within a given london neighbourhood had a positive impact on average rents and prices but reduced rents and prices for environmentally certified real estate the results suggest that there is a gentrification effect from green buildings however each additional green building decreases the marginal effect of certification in the rental and transaction markets by 2 per cent and 5 per cent respectively in addition controlling for lease contract features like contract length and the rent free period modifies the impact of environmental certification on

the value of energy efficiency and the role of expected heating costs the german energy performance of buildings directive requires sellers on the housing market to provide detailed information on expected yearly energy consumption per square meter energy performance eps this paper uses variation in local fuel prices and climate fuel types and building ages to analyse the relationship between expected energy cost savings from energy efficient building structure and house prices in a data set of listing prices from all regions of germany results suggest that heating cost considerations are less relevant than previously thought

the impact of energy labels and accessibility on office rents abstract energy consumption in the commercial property sector offers an important opportunity for conserving resources in this study we evaluate the financial implications of two elements of sustainability energy efficiency and accessibility in the market for commercial real estate an empirical analysis of some 1100 leasing transactions in the netherlands over the 2005 2010 period shows that buildings designated as inefficient with an eu energy performance certificate d or worse command rental levels that are some 6 5 percent lower as compared to energy efficient but otherwise similar buildings labeled a b or c furthermore this study shows that office buildings in multi functional areas with access to public transport and facilities achieve rental premiums over mono functional office districts for policymakers the results documented in this paper provide an indication on the effectiveness of the eu energy performance certificate as a market signal in the commercial property sector the findings documented here are also relevant for investors in european office markets as the importance of energy efficiency and locational diversification is bound to increase following stricter environmental regulation and changing tenant preferences

a general index of technical change this paper outlines a procedure for estimating a general index of technical change within the context of a quite general production technology specifically when panel data are available for firms in an industry time specific dummies can be combined in a nonlinear estimation procedure to yield a general index of technical change that may be both nonneutral and scale augmenting this approach offers numerous advantages over the traditional time trend representation of technical change for example the general index can serve as the basis for analysis of the determinants of technical change results for a sample of 30 electric utilities over the period 1951 78 show that the productivity decline of the 1970s can be attributed primarily to sulphur oxide restrictions and secularly declining capacity utilization due to rapidly increasing peak load demands

the causes and consequences of wal mart s growth wal mart is the largest company in the world yet little is known about its economic impact this essay discusses what is known about wal mart s competitive advantage and its economic impact on local communities as well as the national and global economy and highlights the open questions to be addressed by future research

carbon emissions from the commercial building sector the role of climate quality and incentives commercial buildings play a major role in determining u s greenhouse gas emissions yet surprisingly little is known about the environmental performance of different buildings at a point in time or how the same buildings perform over time by exploiting a unique panel of commercial buildings from a major electric utility we study the association between a building s electricity consumption and the physical attributes of buildings lease incentive terms indicators of human capital and climatic conditions we find that buildings that are newer and of higher quality consume more electricity contrasting evidence for the residential sector however using our panel data set we document that newer buildings are most resilient when exposed to hotter weather those buildings that have a building manager on site and whose tenants face a positive marginal cost for electricity also demonstrate a better environmental performance

factors influencing commercial buildings to obtain green certificates abstractidentifying the key factors that influence commercial buildings decision to obtain voluntary green certificates is essential to building sustainability enhancement using commercial buildings in the state of new york multinomial logit and nested logit models demonstrate that there is a significant correlation between the characteristics of commercial buildings such as square footage lot size and years built and green certification more interestingly if a commercial building is occupied by its owner likelihood of green certification is actually smaller this finding not only confirms that ongoing energy savings are heavily discounted when deciding whether to incur the upfront cost of green certification but also suggests that the rental premium enjoyed by green buildings is likely greater in terms of present value than the expected operating cost savings another explanation could be that investor owners must operate in a competitive market for tenants while owner occupiers do not operate

producer and consumer responses to green housing labels we find green labels increase residential property values by an average of 5 this premium varies by label stringency and across market segments builders respond to the stringency of labels by strategically incorporating green features to achieve higher ratings this strategy seems reasonable as there is no market premium for green features that lead to scores between label rating cutoff values these results raise important questions as to how green label policies should be designed in order to foster the supply of green features gradations of green attributes are influential particularly for highly rated homes the most stringent labels have the greatest role at the high price end of the market jel q20 q40 r31

does energy efficiency matter to home buyers an investigation of epc ratings and transaction prices in england abstract this paper investigates whether energy performance ratings as measured by mandatory energy performance certificates epcs are reflected in the sale prices of residential properties this is the first large scale empirical study of this topic in england involving 333 095 dwellings sold at least twice in the period from 1995 to 2012 applying hedonic regression and an augmented repeat sales regression we find a positive relationship between the energy efficiency rating of a dwelling and the transaction price per square metre the price effects of superior energy performance tend to be higher for terraced dwellings and flats compared to detached and semi detached dwellings the evidence is less clear cut for rates of house price growth but remains supportive of a positive association overall the results of this study suggest that energy efficiency labels have a measurable and significant impact on house prices in england

the impacts of energy efficiency policies meta analysis abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively summarize the existing empirical evidence on the effects of energy efficiency policies on energy demand and on the price of associated durable goods as well as to identify the main factors that systematically affect the estimated impacts to this end a meta regression analysis of the effects of energy efficiency policies is carried out on the basis of an extensive review of the existing literature selecting those studies that analyze the impact of energy efficiency policies with respect to a business as usual setting taking into account the econometric problems associated with this type of analysis intra class correlation cross sectional dependence publication bias in pursuit of robust outcomes the results show that the studies analyzing the effects of energy efficiency policies estimate a significant impact of these policies on energy demand 10 5 8 8 and the price of related durable goods 7 9 6 the main factors that influence results are the policy instrument the targeted sector the type of country the analyzed period the consideration of free riders and the type of analysis data and publication energy demand and the sector and analyzed period price of durables

empirics on the long run effects of building energy codes in the housing market we study the effectiveness of building energy codes taking a long run perspective the focus is on regulation s impact on energy demand in both high and low quality residences in other words the diffusion and the entry of green buildings in the housing market we develop a measure for regulation intensity and apply this to a panel error correction regression model for energy requirements of a large sample of german apartment houses built between 1950 and 2005 we show that regulation is effective in saving energy in particular regulation pushes investors in the low quality housing market segment toward the technological frontier indirectly it also affects the high quality segment jel q41 r52

regulation capital vintage and technical change in the electric utility industry this paper presents estimates of the rate of technical change in the electric power industry over the period 1951 78 the estimated model directly incorporates the effects of rate of return regulation and uses both a time trend and a vintage index to represent disembodied and embodied technical change respectively the results indicate that disembodied technical change was the primary source of cost reduction during 1951 70 and that tighter regulation as represented by a one point reduction in the rate of return would have reduced the rate of technical change by an average of 1 2 during 1951 78 34 references 18 footnotes 3 tables