innovation in the energy sector lessons learnt from r d expenditures and patents in selected iea countries abstract long time series of the iea and international patent offices offer a huge potential for scientific investigations of the energy innovation process thus this paper deals with a broad literature review on innovation drivers and barriers and an analysis of the knowledge induced by public research and development expenditures r d and patents in the energy sector the cumulative knowledge stock induced by public r d expenditures in 14 investigated iea countries is 102 3 bn eur in 2013 nuclear energy has the largest share of 43 9 bn eur followed by energy efficiency accounting for 14 9 bn eur fossil fuels with 13 5 bn eur and renewable energy with 12 1 bn eur a regression analysis indicates a linear relation between the gdp and the cumulative knowledge with each billion eur of gdp leading to an additional knowledge of 3 1 mil eur however linearity is not given for single energy technologies further the results show that appropriate public r d funding for research and development associated with a subsequent promotion of the market diffusion of a niche technology may lead to a breakthrough of the respective technology

interest rate arbitrage in currency baskets forecasting weights and measuring risk we use a time series modeling approach to address two related questions of interest to foreign exchange market participants and policy makers dealing with basket currencies first how are unknown weights appropriately extracted from basket currencies second how does one correctly account for the risk in terms of conditional variance of expected profits that time varying weights add to the standard basket hedge position we suggest a methodology that can provide answers to these questions and apply it to the heavily traded thai baht currency basket

energy consumption and economic growth in south africa reexamined a nonparametric testing apporach this paper is an effort to investigate claims concerning granger causality relationship from energy consumption to economic growth in south africa we adopt a nonparametric bootstrap method to reassess evidence supporting granger causality and unravel findings of long run unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to economic growth this implies that energy conservation policies will negatively impact economic growth in south africa in addition the results of this study have implications on co2 emissions in south africa given that coal accounts for about 72 of energy this suggests that energy use would have a long run effect of raising the country s co2 emission levels hence there might be a need to develop a more balanced energy structure which will include higher share of renewable energy a further monte carlo experiment performed reveals that asymptotic granger causality test suffers size distortion problem for south african data these findings provide support for use of a bootstrap methodology and also imply that the results presented in this study are likely to be more reliable

the impacts of transport energy consumption foreign direct investment and income on co2 emissions in asean 5 economies abstract in this study we incorporate new variables and assess the impact of transportation sector s energy consumption and foreign direct investment on co2 emissions for asean 5 economies using the cointegration and granger causality methods this study also attempts to validate the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis our results reveal that the co2 emissions and their determinants are co integrated only in indonesia malaysia and thailand the long run elasticity estimation suggests that income and transport energy consumption significantly influence co2 emissions whereas fdi is not significant economic growth plays a greater role in contributing to co2 emission in asean 5 nonetheless we find that the inverted u shape ekc hypothesis is not applicable to the asean 5 economies especially in indonesia malaysia and thailand in the long run the bi directional causality between economic growth and co2 emissions is detected in indonesia and thailand while we find unidirectional causality running from gdp to co2 emissions in malaysia we also observe bi directional causality between transport energy consumption fdi and co2 emissions in thailand and malaysia as an immediate policy option controlling energy consumption in transportation sector may result in a significant reduction in co2 emissions however this may slow the process of economic growth in malaysia and indonesia alternatively we suggest policymakers to place more emphasis on energy efficient transportation system and policies to minimise fossil fuel consumption thus the quality of environment can be improved with less deleterious impact on economic growth

testing for the presence of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors in energy system dynamics an analysis via the learning curve approach the purpose of this paper is to explain the sources of energy system lock in it presents a comparative analysis of the respective contributions of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors i e learning by doing learning by searching and returns to scale effects in explaining the technological change dynamics in the energy system the paper is technically based on a critical analysis of the learning curve approach econometric estimation of learning and scale effects inherent to seven energy technologies were performed by the use of several learning curve specifications these specifications permit to deal with some crucial issues related to the learning curve estimation which are associated with the problem of omitted variable bias the endogeneity effects and the choice of learning indicators results show that dynamic economies from learning effects coupled with static economies from scale effects are responsible for the lock in phenomena of the energy system they also show that the magnitude of such effects is correlated with the technology life cycle maturity in particular results point out that 1 the emerging technologies exhibit low learning rates associated with diseconomies of scale which are argued to be symptomatic of the outset of the deployment of new technologies characterized by diffusion barriers and high level of uncertainty 2 the evolving technologies present rather high learning rates meaning that they respond quickly to capacity expansion and r d activities development 3 conventional mature technologies display low learning rates but increasing returns to scale implying that they are characterized by a limited additional diffusion prospects

supplementing an emissions tax by a feed in tariff for renewable electricity to address learning spillovers abstract in the presence of learning spillovers related to renewable energy technologies an optimal strategy to mitigate climate change should complement an emissions tax by a subsidy for renewables this article addresses the question how such subsidy should be designed it is shown that the widely used approach of a revenue neutral fixed feed in tariff can yield an optimal outcome under restrictive conditions only it has to be adapted continuously as the electricity price changes moreover funding the tariff by a surcharge on the electricity price has important implications for the design of the emission tax the optimal tax rate has to be below the pigovian level differentiated across fossil fuels and adapted over time as the patterns of technological development change these requirements may pose a formidable challenge for practical decision making however it is important to point out that the eventual choices made with respect to the design and funding of a feed in tariff have to be based on a careful and more comprehensive policy assessment including inter alia economic effects beyond the electricity sector and existing institutional constraints

renewable energy certificate mechanism in india a preliminary assessment abstract the indian national action plan for climate change napcc envisages several measures to address global climate change one of the important measures identified involves increasing the share of renewable energy in total electricity consumption in the country this would mean napcc envisages renewable energy to constitute approximately 15 of the energy mix of india by 2020 to achieve the target set by the napcc indian ministry of power launched renewable energy certificate rec mechanism in november 2010 however participation in the rec markets is low and recs have failed to attract significant investment so far in this study a preliminary attempt has been made to assess the performance of existing rec mechanism in india after highlighting the salient features of the indian renewable energy policy framework a brief description of renewable purchase obligation rpo and source specific rpos for different states is discussed along with an overview of rec market in india to date the performance of indian rec mechanism is evaluated by cost competiveness decentralized distributed generation and renewable energy portfolio diversity and their effectiveness has also been measured on the basis of the available data although it is difficult to make any conclusive remark on the success or failure of rec mechanism due to its short experience this study examines the process to date to come out with some recommendations which can be used to fine tune the functioning of existing rec market in india for instance rec price bounds should be revised because it has been not explicitly supporting cost competiveness by offering 60 33 higher average price than the existing average feed in tariff fit it is also observed that state wise contribution in registered capacity is skewed towards few states like tamil nadu 27 maharashtra 23 and uttar pradesh 22 which puts pressure on policy makers to restructure the existing rec mechanism

effects of technological learning and uranium price on nuclear cost preliminary insights from a multiple factors learning curve and uranium market modeling this paper studies the effects of returns to scale technological learning i e learning by doing and learning by searching and uranium price on the prospects of nuclear cost decrease we use an extended learning curve specification named multiple factors learning curve mflc in a first stage we estimate a single mflc in a second stage we estimate the mflc under the framework of simultaneous system of equations which takes into account the uranium supply and demand this permits not only to enhance the reliability of the estimation by incorporating the uranium price formation mechanisms in the mflc via the price variable but also to give preliminary insights about uranium supply and demand behaviors and the associated effects on the nuclear expansion results point out that the nuclear cost has important prospects for decrease via capacity expansion i e learning by doing effects in contrast they show that the learning by searching as well as the scale effects have a limited effect on the cost decrease prospects conversely results also show that uranium price exerts a positive and significant effect on nuclear cost implying that when the uranium price increases the nuclear power generation cost decreases since uranium is characterized by important physical availability and since it represents only a minor part in the total nuclear cost we consider that in a context of increasing demand for nuclear energy the latter result can be explained by the fact that the positive learning effects on the cost of nuclear act in a way to dissipate the negative ones that an increase in uranium price may exert further results give evidence of important inertia in the supply and demand sides as well as evidence of slow correlation between the uranium market and oil market which may limit the inter fuels substituability effects that is nuclear capacity expansion and associated learning by doing benefits

a survey of the literature on the optimal peg abstract it is widely agreed that floating is not an appropriate exchange rate policy for most developing countries but in a world of generalized floating the question of exchange rate policy is not resolved by deciding to peg rather than to float it is also necessary to decide to what to peg this is the question of the optimal peg on which a significant literature has emerged since 1976 the present paper provides a survey of that literature section 2 summarizes the principal papers section 3 compares the objectives and rules advocated by different authors section 4 evaluates the alternative approaches arguing that in general the peg should be chosen to stabilize the nominal trade weighted effective exchange rate section 5 considers whether this criterion points to the sdr as a satisfactory peg

long term changes in co2 emissions in austria and czechoslovakia identifying the drivers of environmental pressures this study presents fossil fuel related co2 emissions in austria and czechoslovakia current czech republic and slovakia for 1830 2000 the drivers of co2 emissions are discussed by investigating the variables of the standard kaya identity for 1920 2000 and conducting a comparative index decomposition analysis proxy data on industrial production and household consumption are analysed to understand the role of the economic structure co2 emissions increased in both countries in the long run czechoslovakia was a stronger emitter of co2 throughout the time period but per capita emissions significantly differed only after world war i when czechoslovakia and austria became independent the difference in co2 emissions increased until the mid 1980s the period of communism in czechoslovakia explained by the energy intensity and the composition effects and higher industrial production in czechoslovakia counterbalancing factors were the income effect and household consumption after the velvet revolution in 1990 czechoslovak co2 emissions decreased and the energy composition effect and industrial production lost importance despite their different political and economic development austria and czechoslovakia reached similar levels of per capita co2 emissions in the late 20th century neither austrian eco efficiency nor czechoslovak restructuring have been effective in reducing co2 emissions to a sustainable level

innovation policy for directing technical change in the power sector this paper discusses policy instruments for redirecting technical change within the electricity sector to mitigate climate change first we unravel the mechanism behind directed technical change explaining why markets may underprovide innovations in expensive renewable technologies in comparison to innovations in energy efficient fossil fuel generators subsequently we characterize technical change in electricity generation technologies stressing the heterogeneity of knowledge spillovers both within and between clean electricity generation technologies we argue that there exists a rationale for a portfolio approach to innovation in the electricity sector i e optimal innovation policies are neither fully generic nor fully specific and they need to be adapted in response to new information learned by the government the existing innovation literature does not however provide a clear cut answer for designing such a policy we compare policy instruments and argue that public r d support to clean technologies either in the form of subsidies or prizes seems to be the prime candidate for implementing non generic innovation policy

technological learning and renewable energy costs implications for us renewable energy policy abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between current renewable energy technology costs and cumulative production research development and demonstration expenditures and other institutional influences combining the theoretical framework of learning by doing and developments in learning by searching with the fields of organizational learning and institutional economics offers a complete methodological framework to examine the underlying capital cost trajectory when developing electricity cost estimates used in energy policy planning models sensitivities of the learning rates for global wind and solar photovoltaic technologies to changes in the model parameters are tested the implications of the results indicate that institutional policy instruments play an important role for these technologies to achieve cost reductions and further market adoption

convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among industrialised countries revisited this paper examines the existence of stochastic and deterministic convergence of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 23 countries over the period 1960 2002 for that purpose we conduct unit root testing by employing the recently developed panel stationarity test of carrion i silvestre et al carrion i silvestre j l del barrio castro t lopez bazo e 2005 breaking the panels an application to the gdp per capita econometrics journal 8 159 175 which assumes a highly flexible trend function by incorporating an unknown number of structural breaks we accommodate general forms of cross sectional dependence as well as control for finite sample bias through bootstrap methods overall our analysis provides strong evidence supporting both stochastic and deterministic convergence in co2 emissions thus confirming strazicich and list strazicich m c list j a 2003 are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries environmental and resource economics 24 263 271 and westerlund and basher westerlund j basher s a 2007 testing for convergence in carbon dioxide emissions using a century of panel data environmental and resource economics forthcoming findings of convergence

systems option for sustainable development effect and limit of the ministry of international trade and industry s efforts to substitute technology for energy the global environmental consequences of co2 discharge resulting from energy use are causing increasing concern regarding the sustainability of our development future despite the fragile nature of its energy structure japan successfully overcame two energy crises in the 1970s and managed to maintain economic growth which resulted in a dramatic improvement in its industrial technology the success of these efforts can be attributed to the substitution of an unconstrained production factor technology for a constrained production factor energy a process similar to that seen in an ecosystem the ministry of international trade and industry s miti industrial technology policy functioned well in stimulating such substitution thereby inducing the vitality of industry for this substitution given the two sided nature of co2 emissions and energy consumption japan s experience can provide informative suggestions for addressing current worldwide concern regarding global warming particularly with respect to post kyoto countermeasures nevertheless following the relaxation of energy constraints and the succeeding bubble economy and its bursting miti s ability to induce substitution efforts by industry has weakened leading to a fear that japan may again face the prospect of energy and environmental constraints this paper attempts to analyze a systems option for sustainable development by introducing a comprehensive systems approach with a detailed description of energy and non energy technologies in an energy economic model by utilizing this approach miti s efforts to induce industry initiatives and subsequent efforts to overcome the two energy crises by substituting technology for energy are reviewed in addition sources of the current fear concerning energy and environmental constraints and the effectiveness of miti s industrial technology policy in view of this fear are analyzed

impact of industrialisation on co2 emissions in nigeria abstract developing countries including nigeria aim to achieve industrialisation and sustainable development however there are few empirical studies that examined the impact of industrialisation led economic transformation on carbon emissions in developing countries this is the focus of this study the paper investigates the impact of industrial value added on co2 emissions in nigeria using the kaya identity framework and augmented dickey fuller adf johansen s cointegration technique and vector error correction model vecm the data spans from 1980 to 2011 the result of the adf test indicates that continual long term policies that exert permanent shocks on the variables are required to achieve economic development industrialisation and co2 reduction the result of the analysis shows that industrial value added has an inverse and significant relationship with co2 emissions which suggests that there is no evidence that industrialisation increases carbon emissions in nigeria gdp per capita and population has positive and significant impacts on co2 emission energy intensity and carbon intensity has positive but very weak significant impact at 10 level on co2 emission the paper recommends that policy makers in nigeria should pursue pragmatic industrialisation policies coupled with modest decarbonisation and energy efficiency measures in order to ensure long term industrial economic and sustainable development

are fluctuations in electricity consumption per capita transitory evidence from developed and developing economies abstract this paper investigates the unit root properties of electricity consumption per capita of 67 developed and developing countries for the period 1971 2010 to examine the stationary properties of electricity consumption per capita we have adopted lee and strazicich 2003 2004 test of unit root that allows us to test for at most two endogenous breaks and uses the lagrange multiplier lm test statistics results show that 65 country series reject the unit root null hypothesis except for 2 country series thus our empirical findings provide significant evidence that electricity consumption per capita is stationary in almost all countries considered the stationarity of electricity consumption per capita indicates that it should be possible for the series to forecast future movements in the energy consumption based on the past behaviors of the series

a determination of the optimal currency basket a macroeconomic analysis abstract this paper analyzes the choice of the optimal currency basket using a general equilibrium macro model of a small open economy with perfect capital mobility the optimal weights are derived to minimize the variance of domestic output the general properties of the optimal basket so obtained are identified and a number of special cases are analyzed in detail the weights are also compared with those found in the existing literature which differs from the approach here in its more partial equilibrium nature its neglect of capital flows and its focus on the stabilization of more proximate policy objectives

is there a relationship between public expenditures in energy r d and carbon emissions per gdp an empirical investigation abstract energy innovation plays a crucial role in the reduction of carbon emissions in order to design climate and energy policies that promote the development deployment and diffusion of new energy technologies policy makers not only require a theoretical understanding of the energy innovation system but also empirical evidence of the effects that policy actions have had this paper focuses on public energy r d a traditional and controversial option among the various climate technology policies and empirically analyses its relationship with carbon emissions per gdp i e carbon intensity and its two components energy intensity and the carbon factor evidence of the causality links that have prevailed in 13 advanced economies over the 1980 2004 period has been obtained through dynamic panel models our findings confirm that government r d spending is not sufficient by itself to boost the energy innovation process public energy r d has been successful in improving energy efficiency at country level but it has failed to have a significant impact on the carbon factor and carbon intensity at the same time the formation of energy r d budgets is found to be significantly affected by carbon trends

will policies to promote renewable electricity generation be effective evidence from panel stationarity and unit root tests for 115 countries abstract this study examines whether policies to promote renewable electricity generation are likely to be effective by applying panel unit root and stationarity tests to time series data on renewable electricity generation for 115 countries over the period 1980 2008 we find that for the panel as a whole and almost three quarters of the individual countries renewable electricity generation is characterized by a unit root this result implies that policies to promote renewable electricity generation such as renewable portfolio standards which result in annual increases in renewable energy and as such which represent permanent positive shocks to the long run growth path of renewable electricity generation will be more effective in increasing renewable electricity generation than policies with a pre specified time horizon

carbon dioxide income and energy evidence from a non linear model abstract this study applies the panel smooth transition regression pstr model to explore the impacts of real income energy and investment on the co 2 income nexus for 99 countries covering the period from 1971 to 2010 we find that in the full sample as real income rises co 2 emissions rapidly increase first and then their increasing rate starts to slow down while the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for co 2 emissions is supported from the composite results of three income groups our results show that decreasing energy usage improving energy efficiency and enhancing clean energy usage could effectively ease the impacts of real income on co 2 emissions moreover countries with different energy trade conditions and income levels have different co 2 income correlations indicating that one size does not fit all

a review of learning rates for electricity supply technologies a variety of mathematical models have been proposed to characterize and quantify the dependency of electricity supply technology costs on various drivers of technological change the most prevalent model form called a learning curve or experience curve is a log linear equation relating the unit cost of a technology to its cumulative installed capacity or electricity generated this one factor model is also the most common method used to represent endogenous technical change in large scale energy economic models that inform energy planning and policy analysis a characteristic parameter is the learning rate defined as the fractional reduction in cost for each doubling of cumulative production or capacity in this paper a literature review of the learning rates reported for 11 power generation technologies employing an array of fossil fuels nuclear and renewable energy sources is presented the review also includes multi factor models proposed for some energy technologies especially two factor models relating cost to cumulative expenditures for research and development r d as well as the cumulative installed capacity or electricity production of a technology for all technologies studied we found substantial variability as much as an order of magnitude in reported learning rates across different studies such variability is not readily explained by systematic differences in the time intervals geographic regions choice of independent variable or other parameters of each study this uncertainty in learning rates together with other limitations of current learning curve formulations suggests the need for much more careful and systematic examination of the influence of how different factors and assumptions affect policy relevant outcomes related to the future choice and cost of electricity supply and other energy technologies

decomposition of ireland s carbon emissions from 1990 to 2010 an extended kaya identity in recent decades ireland has been an important example of a development pathway where rapid economic growth was accompanied by rising energy demand and increasing carbon emissions understanding the driving forces of carbon emissions is necessary for policy formulation and decomposition analysis is widely used for this purpose this study uses an extended kaya identity as the scheme and applies the log mean divisia index lmdi i as the decomposition technique change in carbon emissions is decomposed from 1990 to 2010 and includes a measure of the effect of renewable energy penetration results illustrate that scale effects of affluence and population growth act to increase emissions and are countered primarily by energy intensity and fossil fuel substitution renewable energy penetration has a minor effect but has been increasing in recent years policy will need to significantly reduce intensity and increase renewables if applicable targets are to be reached this requires not only a comprehensive suite of policies and measures but emphasis on the development path and non technical change for optimal outcomes

the impact of r d on innovation for wind energy in denmark germany and the united kingdom this paper examines the impact of public research and development r d support on cost reducing innovation for wind turbine farms in denmark germany and the united kingdom uk first we survey the literature in this field the literature indicates that in denmark r d policy has been more successful than in germany or the uk in promoting innovation of wind turbines furthermore such studies point out that subsidy induced capacity expansions were more effective in the uk and denmark in promoting cost reducing innovation than in germany the second part of the paper describes the quantitative analysis of the impact of r d and capacity expansion on innovation this is calculated using the two factor learning curve 2flc model in which investment cost reductions are explained by cumulative capacity and the r d based knowledge stock time series data were collected for the three countries and organized as a panel data set the parameters of the 2flc model were estimated focusing on the homogeneity and heterogeneity of the parameters across countries we arrived at robust estimations of a learning by doing rate of 5 4 and a learning by searching rate of 12 6 the analysis underlines the homogeneity of the learning parameters enhancing the validity of the 2flc formulation

emission path planning based on dynamic abatement cost curve abstract global climate change is one of the most serious environmental problems that has attracted an unprecedented global attention the scientific community has recognized that human activity is mostly responsible for global climate warming therefore states participating in the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc have initiated a series of negotiations on how to develop their own emission reduction targets however the realization of these targets is at the expense of economic development to a great extent therefore an abatement plan is necessary to decide how and when to implement emission reduction targets a marginal abatement cost curve macc often used as an important quantitative tool to estimate abatement burden or evaluate abatement performance should be considered carefully in this paper we enrich the traditional macc by introducing the concept of an immediate unit marginal abatement cost to describe its intrinsic incremental abatement difficulty this cost is proved to be agreed with the actual situation in many ways and is therefore very suitable for practical use two factor learning curve are considered in the model which can go some way in improving the performance of the revised macc using a parameterization method the original problem can be converted into a tractable nonlinear programming problem we use an algorithm to search for the approximate global optimal solution the effectiveness and the efficiency of the algorithm are discussed respectively in the results we find that the abatement path distinguishes largely under different abatement targets some plausible reasons and policy advices are given

analyzing cost of grid connection of renewable energy development in china abstract renewable energy is believed to be the central issue in sustainable development literatures on renewables costs are rather sparse especially on costs of integration and system balancing the objective of this paper is to fill the research gap by providing an assessment for the cost of china s grid connected renewable energy development and analyze its sharing between different stakeholders due to china s pricing mechanism of renewable energy and their cost decreasing potential the pricing model of feed in tariff and dynamic technological learning processes are employed in the estimation of purchasing cost the positive bias is overcome by considering china s energy saving dispatching policy the results suggest that purchasing cost would be 32 57 40 80 billion yuan over 2012 2020 and peak in 2017 grid integration costs which further involve costs of grid infrastructure and system balancing are also investigated we find that grid infrastructure will cost 27 88 billion yuan by 2015 and soar to 45 32 billion by 2020 while system balancing will cost 31 49 billion yuan in 2015 and 63 97 billion yuan in 2020 among which a substantial part over 60 comes from electricity loss in energy transfer the different parts of these costs are underwritten by disparate participants due to china s renewable energy policies and its institutional arrangement purchasing cost is shared by power consumers through res the cost of grid infrastructure is mainly covered by grid enterprises and there is no mechanism to specify how to share the cost electricity loss during system balancing which might become a major obstacle for system balancing

are co2 emission levels converging among industrial countries time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960 1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence both panel unit roottests and cross section regressions areperformed overall we find significantevidence that co2 emissions haveconverged

wind power costs expected to decrease due to technological progress abstract the potential for future cost reductions in wind power affects adoption and support policies prior analyses of cost reductions give inconsistent results the learning rate or fractional cost reduction per doubling of production ranges from 3 to 33 depending on the study this lack of consensus has we believe contributed to high variability in forecasts of future costs of wind power we find that learning rate can be very sensitive to the starting and ending years of datasets and the geographical scope of the study based on a single factor experience curve that accounts for capacity factor gains wind quality decline and exogenous shifts in capital costs we develop an improved model with reduced temporal variability using a global adoption model the wind learning rate is between 7 7 and 11 with a preferred estimate of 9 8 using global scenarios for future wind deployment this learning rate range implies that the cost of wind power will decline from 5 5 cents kwh in 2015 to 4 1 4 5 cents kwh in 2030 lower than a number of other forecasts if attained wind power may be the cheapest form of new electricity generation by 2030 suggesting that support and investment in wind should be maintained or expanded

optimal currency baskets for small developed economies optimal weights for a currency basket are derived under the assumption that the objective of the policymaker is to minimize fluctuation in the production of traded goods using the formulas derived in the analysis various optimal basket calculations are carried out for finland norway and sweden for all these countries the optimal basket weights for germany and united kingdom are found to be less than the trade share weights the opposite is true for united states moreover the actual weights in the basket of sweden are almost identical to those we have computed as optimal

the learning curve and pricing in the chemical processing industries data on 37 chemical products are used to test a number of hypotheses about the learning curve and industrial price behavior the results document a strong and consistent learning effect learning is found to be a function of cumulated industry output and cumulated investment rather than calendar time standard economies of scale appear significant but small in magnitude relative to the learning effect variations in the slope of the learning curve are linked to differences in r d expenditures and capital intensity market concentration is found to be a strong influence on price flexibility and the timing of learningrelated price changes

is the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis a sound basis for environmental policy in africa achieving economic development and environmental sustainability simultaneously is one of the most important development challenges for africa today the relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability is founded on the environmental kuznets curve ekc this paper examines the validity of the hypothesis and the driving factors of carbon dioxide co2 emission in five african countries using the stirpat empirical model panel cointegration and fully modified ordinary least squares unlike previous studies economic development is disaggregated into agriculture and industrial economic development the results show that there is no evidence of the validity of the hypothesis in africa regardless of whether economic development is driven by agriculture or industrialisation energy structure and energy intensity are the two major driving forces of co2 emissions in africa population growth and urbanisation have negative relationship with co2 emissions from our results the ekc is not a sound basis for environmental policy in africa rather environmental policy in africa specifically for co2 emissions mitigation should focus on encouraging energy efficiency enhancing the use of clean energy incorporating the impact of population growth and harnessing the positive impacts of urbanisation

reduction potential of co2 emissions in china s transport industry newhuadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program g 1311 19436 ministry of education 10 jbg 013 national social science foundation of china 71203186

experiments with the optimal currency composite this paper addresses the issue of the determination of an optimal currency composite in the context of a world characterized by generalized exchange rate flexibility the approach adopted here is macroeconomic in nature and stresses general equilibrium considerations the emphasis upon both monetary and real considerations capital mobility and rational expectations in the context of a multi country framework is what sets this paper apart from previous attempts to address this issue empirically the problem of choosing an optimal currency composite has if anything gained importance according to the annual report on exchange arrangements issued by the international monetary fund as many as 37 countries were reported to be practicing currency basket arrangements during 1980 81 while a year later i e 1981 82 the number of such countries had increased to 53 see annual report june 3 1983 as indicated in the annual report this increase can be attributed to the movement away from single currency dollar pegs in favor of increased use of currency composites including the sdr pg 9 the advantage of a composite peg over a single currency peg is clear a composite peg embodies automatic and systematic adjustment of bilateral exchange rates whenever necessary which may be preferable to an absolute peg against all currencies or to joint floating as implied by a single currency peg the latter arrangement may subject the economy in question to an undesirable degree of exchange rate volatility while the former carries with it heavy intervention costs thus the composite currency peg has proved to be an acceptable middle ground for economies as different as sweden and india in practice the shares assigned to various currencies comprising the basket where such arrangements have been maintained have usually been determined on the basis of the currency composition of the economy s international trade the appendix provides some institutional details regarding the weighting practices of the 53 currency composite countries over the period 1981 82 as indicated here 32 countries peg their currencies to a basket whose currency shares are determined in accordance with bilateral trade patterns of the economy in question an additional 21 countries peg their currencies to the sdr which is itself a 5 currency basket with the weights being set by the imf by reference to the currency denomination of world trade theoretical analysis of the composition of the optimal basket owes much to flanders and helpman 8 9 whose work is extended by

inventor networks in renewable energies the influence of the policy mix in germany technological change and gains in efficiency of renewable power generation technologies are to a large extent driven by governmental support various policy instruments that can broadly be categorized as technology push demand pull or systemic constitute part of the policy mix for renewable energies our goal is to gain insights into the influence of this policy mix on the intensity and organization of inventive activities for wind power and photovoltaics in germany since the 1980s we examine the effect of different instruments on the size and structure of co inventor networks based on patent data our results indicate notable differences between the technologies the network size for wind power is driven by technology push and systemic instruments while in photovoltaics demand pull is decisive for network growth by and large the instruments complement each other and form a consistent mix of policy instruments the structure of the networks is driven by demand pull for both technologies systemic instruments increase interaction especially in the wind power network and are complementary to demand pull in fostering collaboration