a comparison of four methods to evaluate the effect of a utility residential air conditioner load control program on peak electricity use abstract we analyzed the peak load reductions due to a residential direct load control program for air conditioners in southern ontario in 2008 in this program participant thermostats were increased by 2 c for four hours on five event days we used hourly whole house data for 195 participant households and 268 non participant households and four different methods of analysis ranging from simple spreadsheet based comparisons of average loads on event days to complex time series regression average peak load reductions were 0 2 0 9 kwh h per household or 10 35 however there were large differences between event days and across event hours and in results for the same event day hour with different analysis methods there was also a wide range of load reductions between individual households and only a minority of households contributed to any given event policy makers should be aware of how the choice of an analysis method may affect decisions regarding which demand side management programs to support and how they might be incentivized we recommend greater use of time series methods although it might take time to become comfortable with their complexity further investigation of what type of households contribute most to aggregate load reductions would also help policy makers better target programs

impacts of wind and solar spatial diversification on its market value a case study of the chilean electricity market abstract renewable energy is expected to become the main electricity source in the world in the coming decades with solar and wind power taking a big share of the energy supply although there has been a remarkable advance on renewable energy technologies their integration is still difficult for regulators market designers and system operators due to the high variability and limited predictability of solar and wind resources measures can be adopted to ease their integration among them geographical diversification there is plenty of literature about the diversification of solar and wind resources and there is a common conclusion greater dispersion smooths out power production however literature on the effects of spatial diversification on the power system electricity prices and renewable energy market value is much scarcer this paper studies the effects of spatial diversification and questions whether integration policies are incentivizing the placement of renewable generators where they provide the highest value to the electricity system in chile using real data and a simplified dispatch model the analysis presented shows evidence of the effects of diversification on wind and solar market value in chile results suggest that spatial diversification has a strong positive effect on the market value of renewable energy especially in scenarios with active transmission and hydro storage constraints wind market value may vary up to us 10 mw h depending on the level of diversification and the spatial and temporal constraints of the system and given current storage capacity of hydro reservoirs the solar market value may increase us 5 mw h due to diversification if transmission capacity is enough even though these results must be observed with caution because they depend on the assumptions made there is an important effect of renewable spatial diversification that should be observed by regulators

measuring positive externalities from unobservable victim precaution an empirical analysis of lojack lojack is a hidden radio transmitter device used for retrieving stolen vehicles because there is no external indication that lojack has been installed it does not directly affect the likelihood that a protected car will be stolen there may however be positive externalities due to general deterrence we find that the availability of lojack is associated with a sharp fall in auto theft rates of other crime do not change appreciably at least historically the marginal social benefit of an additional unit of lojack has been fifteen times greater than the marginal social cost in high crime areas those who install lojack however obtain less than 10 percent of the total social benefits leading to underprovision by the market

the effect of utility time varying pricing and load control strategies on residential summer peak electricity use a review abstract peak demand for electricity in north america is expected to grow challenging electrical utilities to supply this demand in a cost effective reliable manner therefore there is growing interest in strategies to reduce peak demand by eliminating electricity use or shifting it to non peak times this strategy is commonly called demand response in households common strategies are time varying pricing which charge more for energy use on peak or direct load control which allows utilities to curtail certain loads during high demand periods we reviewed recent north american studies of these strategies the data suggest that the most effective strategy is a critical peak price cpp program with enabling technology to automatically curtail loads on event days there is little evidence that this causes substantial hardship for occupants particularly if they have input into which loads are controlled and how and have an override option in such cases a peak load reduction of at least 30 is a reasonable expectation it might be possible to attain such load reductions without enabling technology by focusing on household types more likely to respond and providing them with excellent support a simple time of use tou program can only expect to realise on peak reductions of 5

out of passivity potential role of ofdi in ifdi based learning trajectory this study discusses how outward foreign direct investment fdi can complement the inward fdi based technological capability building process through an analysis of the shanghai automotive industry corporation case when a firm is upgrading its technological capability outward fdi can allow learners to have access to human embedded skills and knowledge and other intellectual assets that are hardly accessible through the inward globalization strategy access to a wide range of external resources is a critical ingredient for improving technological capability and it can also promote self learning capability by encouraging subsequent learning by doing practices accordingly outward fdi can augment active nature in the passive learning mode created by the inward globalization strategy copyright 2013 the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the determinants of occupational success in britain this paper is concerned with measuring the true impact of certain human capital variables on an individual s occupational position the particular variables which are analysed are training qualifications and spells of sickness and unemployment the longitudinal nature of the data enables us to control for all relevant individual attributes which remain fixed over the period of the sample this is vitally important because these attributes are strongly correlated with the variables of interest and would seriously corrupt estimates derived from a single cross section a method of generating consistent estimates as n oo t fixed for a dynamic model with fixed effects is also illustrated

on the electrical two part tariff the brazilian perspective this paper discusses in terms of brazil s situation the use of a nonlinear pricing approach in the application of a two part tariff to electricity distribution networks the principles that uphold charging access and usage are to optimize energy systems that are based on a generation technology mix such a pricing approach is used in brazil where the generation mix is mainly hydro generation this study shows that in a case like brazil s a two part tariff may be used as a tool for network optimization the paper presents a design for a two part tariff for a distribution system with varying consumer behavior to validate the discussion we offer a numerical example finally remarks are given concerning pricing access and usage for low voltage level consumers

state capitalism and performance persistence of business group affiliated firms a comparative study of china and india business groups emerged in developing economies through direct or indirect support from the state in order to overcome a variety of institutional voids and or to further state objectives of economic growth however the efficacy of this organizational form and its associated governance structures have been debated given the dual possibility of business groups to allocate resources among its affiliates for cross subsidization or winner picking we argue that elements of the institutional environment comprising of the state s approach to organizations and the political context of these interactions vary across countries thereby influencing business groups resource allocation strategies and affecting the persistence of affiliated firms superior performance contrasting the types of state capitalism in china and india we develop and test our hypotheses we find that the effect of business group affiliation on firms superior performance persistence is stronger in a state led system of state capitalism e g china than in a co governed system e g india and that this divergence of the business group effect is weakened as affiliated firms internationalize our findings have implications for understanding business groups across institutional contexts and the influence of diversity in the types of state capitalism on organizational strategies

driving to opportunity local rents wages commuting costs and sub metropolitan quality of life we examine variation in local rents wage levels commuting costs household characteristics and amenities within metropolitan areas for 2071 areas covering the united states by density and central city status we demonstrate the sensibility of estimating wage levels by workplace not residence and recover decentralized rent gradients that fall with commuting costs we construct and map a willingness to pay index which indicates the quality of life typical households receive from local amenities when households are similar mobile and informed this index varies considerably within metros and is typically high in areas that are dense suburban sunny mild safe entertaining and have elevated school funding

behavioral responses to risk in rural china does risk perpetuate poverty in a credit constrained economy jalan and ravallion study portfolio and other behavioral responses to measured risk using household panel data for rural china one quarter of wealth is held in unproductive liquid forms but only a small share of this appears to be a precaution against income risk the authors estimate that eliminating income risk would reduce the share of wealth held in liquid form by less than 1 percentage point moreover that effect is confined largely to middle income groups high income households do not it seems need to hold unproductive cautionary wealth and the poor probably cannot afford to do so the authors find no evidence that income risk discourages schooling but risk does inhibit the out migration of labor generally the results provide only limited support for the idea that uninsured risks promote unproductive portfolio behavior in this setting there is such an effect but it is small in magnitude and cannot be deemed an important cause of poverty

modelling weather effects for impact analysis of residential time of use electricity pricing abstract analyzing the impact of pricing policies such as time of use tou is challenging in the presence of confounding factors such as weather motivated by a lack of consensus and model selection details in prior work we present a methodology for modelling the effect of weather on residential electricity demand the best model is selected according to explanatory power out of sample prediction accuracy goodness of fit and interpretability we then evaluate the effect of mandatory tou pricing in a local distribution company in southwestern ontario canada we use a smart meter dataset of over 20 000 households which is particularly suited to our analysis it contains data from the summer before and after the implementation of tou pricing in november 2011 and all customers transitioned from tiered rates to tou rates at the same time we find that during the summer rate season tou pricing results in electricity conservation across all price periods the average demand change during on peak and mid peak periods is 2 6 and 2 4 respectively changes during off peak periods are not statistically significant these tou pricing effects are less pronounced compared to previous studies underscoring the need for clear reproducible impact analyses which include full details about the model selection process

effect of stopping hydroelectric power generation on the dynamics of electricity prices an event study approach abstract supply shocks in electricity markets that disrupt energy production cause unexpected spikes in prices which in turn have economic consequences such as higher risk and therefore higher costs and losses for producers and consumers of electricity one relevant shock in this sector is the halting of hydroelectric power generation due to the freezing of water reservoirs after the temperature drops below zero degrees celsius and therefore less efficient technologies such as thermal plants must begin to produce electricity using an event study approach this shock in the nord pool market is explicitly identified and the economic importance of expanding the interconnected market and the inclusion of more renewable sources in the generation mix of the system to smooth out price spikes is quantified when a freezing event occurs it is found that the average electricity prices increase between 1 and 6 and that the negative relationship between temperature and prices also increases for each degree that the temperature decreases prices increase between 1 and 3 however as expected these changes are more pronounced in countries that are most dependent on hydropower generation by identifying this supply shock relevant insights are presented for market players such as policy makers investors and consumers and producers whose decisions are influenced by the effect of temperature particularly when it causes the stopping of hydroelectric plants

mode of rivalry and comparative behaviour of multinational and local enterprises the case of indian manufacturing abstract in order to maximize the revenue productivity of their intangible assets affiliates of mnes are more likely to pursue non price rivalry than their host country counterparts the choice of rivalry is expected to get reflected on different aspects of firms conduct and performance comparing the behaviour of two groups of firms in 49 indian industries this paper finds in tune with the predictions that mne affiliates operate at relatively larger scales enjoy higher profit margins are more vertically integrated and fund flush witm more skilled personnel for advertising and r d inputs they benefit also from the global expenditures of their associates

optional time of use prices for electricity econometric analysis of surplus and pareto impacts we estimate a model of time of use tou consumption and choice among optional tou tariffs in which the customer s choice among tariffs is based on its demand parameters which vary in the population we simulate the impact on consumption consumer surplus and profit of several optional tou rates that were offered experimentally in northern california the analysis suggests that with one possible exception the offering of these optional rates did not constitute a pareto improvement however total surplus excluding measurement costs is estimated to have risen by 1 41 to 2 55 per month per customer who chose the tou rates

a field study using an adaptive in house pricing model for commercial and industrial customers in korea abstract demand response programs provide customers with economic incentives for load reductions at times of high market prices and system reliability constraints one type of demand response programs price based program induces customers to respond to changes in product rates however some large scale customers find it difficult to change their electricity consumption patterns even with rate changes because their electricity demands are commercial and industrial this study proposes an adaptive in house pricing model for large scale customers particularly those with multiple business facilities for self regulating price based program the adaptive in house pricing model charges higher rates to customers with lower load factors by employing a peak to off peak usage ratio in order to reduce usage at times of high prices at each facility this study analyzes the daily electricity consumption patterns of large scale customers through a field trial of the proposed pricing model at a telecom company with 447 offices and worksites for one month the results show that the pricing model corresponds to average reductions of 3 54 28 69 during peak demand times for four different types of workplaces however reductions in electricity consumption during off peak periods did not show a significant difference the results of this study prove that this proposed pricing model can be successfully applied to large scale operations

perceived price complexity of dynamic energy tariffs an investigation of antecedents and consequences dynamic tariffs have the potential to contribute to a successful shift from conventional to renewable energies but tapping this potential in europe ultimately depends on residential consumers selecting them this study proposes and finds that consumer reactions to dynamic tariffs depend on the level of perceived price complexity that represents the cognitive effort consumers must engage in to compute the overall bill amount an online experiment conducted with a representative sample of 664 german residential energy consumers examines how salient characteristics of dynamic tariffs contribute to perceived price complexity subsequently a structural equation model sem reveals that the depth of information processing is central to understand how price complexity relates to consumers behavioral intentions the results suggest that it will be challenging to convince european consumers to select complex dynamic tariffs under the current legal framework policymakers will need to find ways to make these tariffs more attractive

valuing smart meters abstract this paper assesses to what extent consumers are willing to make use of the features and capabilities offered by smart meters via a choice experiment households are offered the choice between a set of smart meters described by six attributes impact on the comfort and privacy level functionality visibility cost savings and investment outlay we estimate a main effects conditional logit model and a main effects random parameter logit model including interactions with socio demographic characteristics the results show that households have heterogeneous preferences for some attributes but not for others the estimates are used to assess marginal willingness to pay values from a policy perspective our findings suggest that sufficient effort should be devoted to designing the smart metering devices and to informing households without careful preparation a mandatory or voluntary roll out of smart meters risks to be unsuccessful because device characteristics do not meet consumer needs

the impact of violence surges on neighbourhood business activity theoretical and empirical arguments suggest that fear of violence will cause consumers employees and entrepreneurs to alter their routine activities in areas that experience a surge in violent activity this paper argues that understanding how businesses respond to violence has important implications for understanding community crime cycles and offers further evidence of how crime impacts the choices individuals make with regard to where they live shop and work using newly available longitudinal business data and homicide data disaggregated to the zip code level an examination is made of the impact of violence surges on the creation destruction and growth of business establishments in five large us cities between 1987 and 1994 controlling for pre existing levels of violence it is found that increased violence has the greatest consequences for service related establishments in low crime neighbourhoods this finding is consistent with the notion that the fear of victimisation imposes additional indir

residential implementation of critical peak pricing of electricity this paper investigates how critical peak pricing cpp affects households with different usage and income levels with the goalof informing policy makers who are considering the implementation of cpptariffs in the residential sector using a subset of data from thecalifornia statewide pricing pilot of 2003 2004 average load changeduring summer events annual percent bill change and post experimentsatisfaction ratings are calculated across six customer segments categorized by historical usage and income levels findings show thathigh use customers respond significantly more in kw reduction than dolow use customers while low use customers save significantly more inpercentage reduction of annual electricity bills than do high usecustomers results that challenge the strategy of targeting only high usecustomers for cpp tariffs across income levels average load and billchanges were statistically indistinguishable as were satisfaction ratesresults that are compatible with a strategy of full scale implementationof cpp rates in the residential sector finally the high use customersearning less than 50 000 annually were the most likely of the groups tosee bill increases about 5 percent saw bill increases of 10 percent ormore suggesting that any residential cpp implementation might considertargeting this customer group for increased energy efficiencyefforts

crime and social interactions the high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and benefits of crime we present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross city variance of crime rates this model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes moderate in more serious crimes and almost negligible in murder and rape

is there a compensating wage differential for high crime levels first evidence from europe abstract this paper investigates whether high regional crime levels lead to a compensating wage differential paid by firms in the respective region using data from german social security records official police statistics and official statistics for 2003 2006 i consider both violent and non violent crimes and use three way error components estimators to control for individual and regional heterogeneity the findings suggest that wages are practically unrelated to changes in crime rates this result is robust over a wide range of subgroups there is however some evidence that crime rates influence land prices

location and the multinational enterprise a neglected factor this article first traces the changing world economic scenario for international business over the past two decades and then goes on to examine its implications for the location of foreign direct investment and multinational enterprise activity it suggests that many of the explanations of the 1970s and early 1980s need to be modified as firm specific assets have become mobile across natural boundaries a final section of the article examines the dynamic interface between the value added activities of multinational enterprises in different locations

analysis of reflectivity predictability of electricity network tariff structures for household consumers distribution network operators charge household consumers with a network tariff so they can recover their network investment and operational costs with the transition towards a sustainable energy system the household load is changing through the introduction of photovoltaics and electric vehicles the tariff structures which are currently employed in the eu are either capacity and or energy consumption based in light of the changes in the household load the question whether these tariff structures are the most suitable merits renewed attention in this work the cost reflectivity of various tariff structures has been computed based on a distribution network planning approach next to this the predictability of a network tariff i e how much change would a household experience in network charges in two consecutive years has also been computed to gain insight into how well users will be able to react to the tariff the results show that a peak load based network tariffs score best on the reflectivity while having an acceptable level of predictability the switch from an energy consumption based network tariff which is now most often applied towards a peak load based network tariff should therefore be considered

knowledge creates markets the influence of entrepreneurial support and patent rights on academic entrepreneurship we use an exogenous change in german federal law to examine how entrepreneurial support and the ownership of patent rights influence academic entrepreneurship in 2002 the german federal government enacted a major reform called knowledge creates markets that set up new infrastructure to facilitate university industry technology transfer and shifted the ownership of patent rights from university researchers to their universities based on a novel researcher level panel database that includes a control group not affected by the policy change we find no evidence that the new infrastructure resulted in an increase in start up companies by university researchers the shift in patent rights may have strengthened the relationship between patents on university discovered inventions and university start ups however it substantially decreased the volume of patents with the largest decrease taking place in faculty firm patenting relationships

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

who determines mexican trade policy using a political economy approach the authors analyze the pattern of protection in mexico s manufacturing sector during the period of trade policy reforms 1985 89 when mexico experienced significant trade liberalization and an important inflow of foreign direct investment they take into account the potential effect of foreign direct investment on endogenous tariff formation it turns out that the data support this analytic approach in which the formulation of trade policy reflects political support and in which the presence of foreign direct investment in the sector strongly affects the pattern of tariff protection before and after reform in mexican manufacturing especially sectors with heavy foreign direct investment received greater protection in import competing sectors although the move toward greater openness was associated with a reduction in the influence of industrial and foreign investor lobbying

financial incentive approaches for reducing peak electricity demand experience from pilot trials with a uk energy provider abstract whilst tariff based approaches to load shifting are common in the residential sector incentive based approaches are rare this is so even though providing customers incentives to shape their power consumption patterns has substantial potential this paper presents findings from an exploratory uk pilot study that trials financial payments and detailed energy feedback to incentivise load shifting of residential electricity consumption an intervention study was implemented measuring actual energy use by individual households as well as conducting surveys and interviews from the trials it was found that the approaches resulted in reductions in peak time energy use evidence from the study found that the incentives based approaches were able to overcome some of the barriers to response experienced in time of use studies though less good on others interestingly the height of the barriers varied by the electricity using practice and the incentivising approach applied the height of the barriers also varied by participant the study concludes by identifying that broad participation in demand response is likely to require a suite of incentivising approaches that appeal to different people a key policy finding of interest to international agencies government public and private sector entities

r d and manufacturing production specialization in developed economies a study of the relation between technology and manufacturing production specialization in a series of developed economies is performed by means of models relating indicators of revealed symmetric comparative advantage of value added and exports to similar measures of comparative performance of r d expenditure capital intensity total factor productivity and wage costs the production and r d specialization are shown to be substantial and sticky this contrasts with the evidence of a substantial degree of convergence in the patterns of the other variables regression estimates show that although all variables play their part the impact of comparative r d efforts on production specialization is by far the strongest this impact is found to be stronger in the smaller economies and it is especially important in research intensive industries the influence of comparative wages is moreover found to be positive here suggesting the dominance of a labour skill and efficiency wage effect over a wage cost comp

reducing household electricity demand through smart metering the role of improved information about energy saving abstract the international roll out of residential smart meters has increased considerably in recent years the improved consumption feedback provided and in particular the installation of in house displays has been shown to significantly reduce residential electricity demand in some international trials this paper attempts to uncover the underlying drivers of such information led reductions by exploring two research questions first does feedback improve a household s stock of information about potential energy reducing behaviours and second do improvements in such information help explain the demand reductions associated with the introduction of smart metering and time of use tariffs data is from a randomised controlled smart metering trial ireland which also collected extensive information on household attitudes towards energy conservation and self reported stocks of information related to energy saving as with previous results in ireland we find that participation in a smart metering programme with time of use tariffs significantly reduces demand although treated households also increased their self reported energy reducing information such improvements are not correlated with demand reductions in the short run given this result it is possible that feedback and other information provided in the context of smart metering are mainly effective in reducing and shifting demand because they act as a reminder and motivator

identifying electricity saving potential in rural china empirical evidence from a household survey in recent years there has been a fast growing body of literature examining energy saving potential in relation to electricity however empirical studies focusing on non western nations are limited to fill this gap this study intends to examine the electricity saving potential of rural households in china using a unique data set from the china residential electricity consumption survey crecs in collaboration with the china general social survey cgss conducted nationwide at the household level in rural china we use a stochastic frontier model which allows us to decompose residential electricity consumption into the minimum necessary amount of consumption based on physical characteristics e g house size house age number of televisions or refrigerators and estimate the consumption slack i e the amount of electricity consumption that could be saved which depends on various factors we find that rural households in china are generally efficient in electricity saving and the saving potential is affected by fast information feedback and social demographic characteristics instead of by the averaged electricity price or energy efficiency labelling signals in addition we find no evidence of regional heterogeneity on electricity saving potential for rural households policy implications are derived

a disaggregated nonhomothetic modeling of responsiveness to residential time of use electricity rates in addition to quantifying the load impacts of time differentiated rates on aggregate peak off peak groupings a very finely disaggregated rotterdam demand system is described and estimated for explaining changes in detailed features of customers electricity load patterns this linear first difference formulation allows for nonhomotheticity permits an examination of load impacts on critical hours of the week and makes use of both control and time of use data moreover the proposed specification is parameter parsimonious an illustrative use of this model is portrayed through recent empirical evidence from a residential experiment of a northern winter peaking utility in ontario canada copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

compensating differentials and unmeasured ability in the labor market for nurses why do hospitals pay more nurses employed in hospitals realize a large wage advantage relative to nurses employed elsewhere this paper examines alternative sources of the hospital premium a topic of some interest given the current shifting of medical care out of hospitals whereas cross sectional estimates indicate a hospital rn wage advantage of roughly 20 percent longitudinal analysis suggests that a third to a half of the advantage is due to unmeasured worker ability the remainder is likely to reflect compensating differentials for hospital disamenities we further probe possible sources of the rn hospital premium by examining the receipt of fringe benefits differences in cognitive ability as measured by afqt test scores differences in the quality of experience the role of labor unions and rents earnings on second jobs and the magnitude of wage differentials associated with work shift

the impact of terrorism on italian employment and business activity despite the growth in research examining direct economic impacts of terrorism the indirect impact of terrorism on the stability of local economies has generally been overlooked using panel data regression models and the most comprehensive open source database on terrorism currently available to researchers the paper examines the impact of terrorism on employment and business outcomes in italy from 1985 to 1997 it is found that terrorist attacks reduce the number of firms and employment in the year following an attack by disaggregating net outcomes into their component gross flows it is also found that these impacts are primarily attributable to reduced business formations and expansions

serial correlation and the fixed effects model this paper generalizes the durbin watson type statistics to test the ols residuals from the fixed effects model for serial independence also generalized are the tests proposed by sargan and bhargava for the hypothesis that the residuals form a random walk a method for efficient estimation of the parameters is also developed finally an earnings function is estimated using the michigan survey of income dynamics in order to illustrate the uses of the tests and the estimation procedures developed in this paper

on the influence of jurisdiction on the profitability of residential photovoltaic storage systems a multi national case study policy makers in many jurisdictions have implemented incentive schemes such as feed in tariffs fit and upfront purchase subsidies to encourage consumers to self generate parts of their power requirements by solar energy we quantitatively study the impact of jurisdiction specific solar radiation profile the typical residential loads the cost of system components the price of grid electricity and incentive programs on photovoltaic pv and storage system profitability in germany ontario and austin texas in each jurisdiction for a range of pv and storage system sizes we compute the optimal use of the system and hence the best possible profitability of that system in that jurisdiction over a 20 year life span this methodology allows us to quantitatively estimate the influence of a jurisdiction on the best possible profitability of pv storage systems we find that the choice of jurisdiction has significant impact on the profitability of pv storage systems we also find that policy makers can use the price of grid electricity as well as upfront subsidies to influence profitability and therefore adoption

uncertainty and currency crises evidence from survey data this paper studies empirically how uncertainty aects speculation in the foreign ex change markets we use the dispersion of survey forecasts of key macroeconomic variables to measure uncertainty about fundamentals we nd that uncertainty has a non monotone eect on exchange rate pressures namely uncertainty heightens speculative pressures when expected fundamentals are good and eases them when they are bad we prove that this prediction arises from a broad class of currency crisis theories ranging from rst generation to global game models we also show that the proposed empirical strategy remains valid in the presence of forecasters with strategic objectives and use a novel set of instrumental variables to address potential endogeneity bias

temperature and seasonality influences on spanish electricity load abstract deregulation of the spanish electricity market in 1998 and the possible listing of electricity or weather derivative contracts have encouraged the study of the relationship between electricity demand and weather in spain in this paper a transfer function intervention model is developed for forecasting daily electricity load from cooling and heating degree days the influence of weather and seasonality is proved and is significant even when the autoregressive effects and the dynamic specification of the temperature are taken into account the estimated general model shows a high predictive power the results and information presented in this paper could be of interest for current users and potential traders in the deregulated spanish electricity market

the fisher hypothesis and the interaction between share returns inflation and supply shocks abstract recent tests reject the fisher hypothesis even when expected income growth is accommodated in the estimates this paper suggests that the coefficient of expected inflation is biased downwards when supply shock variables are omitted from standard tests of the fisher hypothesis because they simultaneously affect inflation and real profits using data for 16 oecd countries over the past four decades it is shown that the fisher hypothesis cannot be rejected when supply shock variables are accommodated in the estimates

compensating differentials for shift work a model analyzing the choice of shift is developed and estimated using data from two supplements to the current population survey the findings show a positive wage premium for shift work that varies with personal characteristics and there is strong evidence showing the importance of self selection as workers with low potential daytime earnings are more likely to choose night work and supplement their earnings the findings demonstrate that cross section estimates of wage premiums for union membership and firm size are biased upward because they pick up some of the compensating differential for shift work

international evidence on how income inequality and credit market imperfections affect private saving rates abstract this paper empirically examines the hypothesis that income distribution exerts an independent effect on private saving rates across countries and tests particular channels for income inequality to affect private saving rates cross sectional and panel regression results show that inequality has a robust positive effect on private saving rates that depends on financial market development and credit available to the private sector the paper thus identifies credit market imperfections as the likely reason for the inequality private saving link the data provide no evidence supporting a subsistence channel for inequality to affect private saving as suggested by nonhomothetic utility functions

the welfare cost of violence across countries the cost of violence goes beyond its material dimension including also the welfare loss due to higher mortality a given mortality and its distribution across age groups determines a reduction in life expectancy that can be valued using the marginal willingness to pay approach we estimate the health dimension of the welfare cost of violence for 73 countries on average 1 year of life expectancy lost to violence is associated with a yearly social cost of 3 8 of gdp the health dimension increases the estimated social costs of violence by 40 in the united states and by 57 in latin america

myopic deterrence policies and the instability of equilibria we develop a general equilibrium model of crime in which honest workers face an effective tax rate on earnings consisting of an exogenous income tax used to pay for policing and an endogenous crime tax given by the proportion of their disposable income that is stolen when there are two stable equilibria the low crime equilibrium is welfare dominant and furthermore welfare is a decreasing function of the income tax rate however as the income tax rate is reduced the degree of stability of the low crime equilibrium diminishes until for sufficiently low tax rates the low crime equilibrium is unstable with respect to any small positive perturbation in the crime rate thus myopic maximization of social welfare exposes the economy to random shocks in the crime rate that can destroy the preferred low crime equilibrium we argue that this dilemma between economizing on resources used for deterrence and ensuring the stability of the most desirable equilibrium is a fundamental trade off in the design of many institutions intended to control antisocial behavior including rent seeking corruption and theft

capital market regimes and bank structure in europe we hypothesize that fundamental features that distinguish european capital markets have predictably influenced emerging national differences in bank capitalization and loan growth using bank level data from 13 european countries 1998 to 2004 we find evidence of positive effects of equity friendly market features on bank capitalization and positive effects of both equity friendly and credit friendly market features on loan growth the findings are strongest in small banks and in banks with cooperative charters our results suggest that ongoing and prospective integration of european banking markets is mitigated by relatively static features of the equity and credit markets on which banks rely

the effect of demand response on purchase intention of distributed generation evidence from japan participation in demand response dr may affect a consumer s electric consumption pattern through consumption load curtailment a shift in the consumption timing or increasing the utilization of distributed generation dg this paper attempts to provide empirical evidence of dr s effect on dg adoption by household consumers by using the original internet survey data of 5442 household respondents in japan conducted in january 2015 we focus on the effect of the time of use tou tariff on the purchasing intention of photovoltaic systems pv the empirical results show the following 1 current tou plan users have stronger pv purchase intentions than the other plan users 2 respondents who are familiar with the dr program have relatively higher purchase intentions compared with their counterparts and 3 when the respondents are requested to assume participation in the virtual tou plan designed for the survey which resembles plans currently available through major companies 1 2 of the households have decided to purchase pv in addition we provide calculations of tou s impacts on the official pv adoption and emissions reduction targets and discuss policy recommendations to increase recognitions and participations in tou programs

the link between crime risk and property prices in england and wales evidence from street level data this paper uses street level data on property sales and crime rates for england and wales to investigate compensating differentials for crime risk my identification strategy relies on the use of non parametric regional time trends on various levels of spatial aggregation as well as various fixed effects for streets and wider areas to control for unobserved amenities and regional economic conditions the data comes from transaction data collected by the land registry and recently published crime maps for the whole of the uk my estimates which are robust to a range of sensible specification changes suggest that each case of anti social behaviour per ten population in the same street leads to an approximately 0 6 0 8 drop in property prices while a corresponding increase in violent crime decreases prices by roughly 0 6 1 6 and a corresponding increase in non violent crime by about 0 2 0 4 the majority of estimates are at the upper end of these intervals estimates for robbery burglary and vehicle c

information strategies for energy conservation a field experiment in india abstract little is known about the effectiveness of information strategies on energy conservation in developing countries in this study we conduct a field experiment in an apartment complex in india to test how information about electricity usage impacts the electricity consumption of urban middle class households our results based on fifteen minute electricity readings over an academic year show that non monetary messages that framed electricity consumption in terms of environmental and health impacts were more effective than messages emphasizing the monetary savings of reducing electricity consumption households in the environmental health group accessed the online energy monitoring dashboard more frequently and reduced their electricity usage by 18 4 relative to the control group households in the monetary group did not significantly alter their usage these results about revealed preferences are contrasted with stated preferences disclosed in a survey of urban indians who describe money not health as the main motivation for energy conservation our findings have important implications for the development non monetary strategies for energy conservation in developing countries

categorization of residential electricity consumption as a basis for the assessment of the impacts of demand response actions abstract in a smart er grid context the existence of dynamic tariffs and bidirectional communications will simultaneously allow and require an active role from the end user concerning electricity management however the residential end user will not be always available to manage energy resources and decide based on price signals and preferences needs the best response actions to implement or the best usage of the electricity produced locally therefore energy management systems are required to monitor consumption generation storage and to make the best decisions according to input signals and the user s needs and preferences the design of adequate algorithms to be implemented in those systems require the prior characterization of domestic electricity demand and categorization of loads according to availability typical usage patterns working cycles and technical constraints automated demand response actions must be tailored and chosen according to this previous analysis of load characteristics in this paper a characterization of household electricity consumption is presented and an operational categorization of end use loads is proposed the existing potential for demand response to a diversified set of management actions is described and a tool to assess the impact of implementing several actions with different rates of penetration of energy management systems is presented the results obtained show the potential savings for the end user and expected changes in the load diagram with a decrease of the aggregated peak electricity demand and a smoothed valley

perfect competition urbanization and tax incidence in the retail gasoline market i introduction in applied tax incidence studies it is typically assumed that prices respond one for one to changes in sales and excise taxes chernick and reschovsky 1997 pechman 1985 shepard 1976 state of wisconsin department of revenue 2004 wiese rose and schluter 1995 zupnick 1975 is this assumption reasonable despite the fundamental role of tax incidence in the study of public finance there is surprisingly little empirical analysis that sheds light on who bears the burden of taxes in this article we examine the incidence of state gasoline excise taxes using monthly price data for all 50 states in the united states over the period 1984 1999 our estimation results generally indicate full shifting of gasoline taxes to the final consumer with changes in gasoline taxes fully reflected in the tax inclusive gasoline price almost instantly we also find that the incidence of excise taxes depends on the competitiveness of retail gasoline markets e g urban vs rural markets gasoline markets in urban states typically exhibit full shifting but those in rural states demonstrate somewhat less than full shifting although the issue of sales and excise tax incidence has received considerable attention over the years most research has focused on tax incidence theory and the standard conclusion of much of this theoretical analysis is that consumers bear the full burden of any sales and excise taxes 1 based primarily on this theoretical foundation most applied incidence studies assume that sales and excise taxes are fully reflected in consumer prices and the distribution of tax burdens across income classes necessarily reflects this assumption however actual empirical testing of this assumption of full forward shifting has been surprisingly sparse 2 in important recent research poterba 1996 and besley and rosen 1999 have conducted empirical analyses of the incidence of excise taxes poterba 1996 uses city specific clothing and personal care price data covering the 1947 1977 and the 1925 1939 periods to examine the degree to which state and local retail sales taxes are shifted to consumers with two data sets based on bureau of labor statistics bls city specific consumer price indices using these bls data on tax inclusive prices poterba 1996 constructs quarterly price indices for each of 28 standard metropolitan statistical areas smsas many of these 28 smsas experienced significant changes in sales tax rates and poterba 1996 uses these tax shocks to determine the incidence of sales taxes his estimation results are somewhat variable but in general he finds for the postwar period that taxes are fully shifted to consumers in some cases he finds limited evidence of overshifting although it is never possible to reject the null hypothesis that prices rise point for point with the changes in the tax and he also finds that full shifting typically though not always occurs in the first quarter of the tax change poterba 1996 also examines tax incidence for individual smsas during the depression era and his results indicate significant differences across metropolitan areas in the degree of tax shifting for example prices on women s clothing in chicago show significant overshifting but atlanta shows negative shifting a result that does not seem plausible besley and rosen 1999 also examine the incidence of sales taxes using price data for 12 narrowly defined commodities in 155 different u s cities using quarterly price data for the period 1982 1990 issued by the american chamber of commerce researchers association accra 3 they not only find full shifting for a number of commodities but also find overshifting for more than half the products a result they attribute to imperfect competition in the retail sector while this recent empirical research has significantly expanded our understanding of the actual nature of sales and excise tax incidence we believe that our work here on gasoline excise taxes makes several contributions to the empirical literature

economic freedom and taxation is there a trade off in the locational competition between countries this paper investigates the relationshipbetween economic freedomand taxation we argue that an economicallyfree environment improvesthe attractiveness of a location which inturn enables governmentsto levy higher business taxes to test thishypothesis empirically weestimate the impact of economic freedom onthe national tax policy where the latter is measured by thecorporate tax revenue related tognp corporate tax ratio we utilize adata set of 46 developed and lessdeveloped countries between 1980 and 1997and find a clear confirmationof our hypothesis further a simulationanalysis reveals that the observedchange in economic freedom has equalizedthe international distributionof corporate tax ratios

effects of voluntary time of use pricing on summer electricity usage of business customers economic inefficiency can be caused by time invariant retail electricity prices because they do not reflect variations in the cost of providing electricity during the day time of use tou pricing higher electricity prices during peak hours and lower electricity prices during off peak hours is by far the most common way to achieve more efficient levels of electricity consumption through reducing peak demand the empirical evidence of the effectiveness of tou pricing is sparse in the commercial and industrial sectors and there is no consensus in the literature on the statistical significance and magnitude of the effects applying a quasi experimental design this study evaluates an ongoing experiment of voluntary business tou pricing plan by a major utility company in the phoenix metropolitan area using the nearest neighbor matching method we identify control customers for the voluntary participants of the business tou pricing from difference in differences analysis we find a statistically significant reduction in peak hour electricity demand in response to the tou pricing we also find that there is no conservation effect meaning that the total level of electricity consumption does not change under the tou pricing

estimating temperature effects on the italian electricity market abstract this paper provides empirical evidence of the effects that weather conditions exert on the electricity market offering a new contribution to the understanding of hourly regional price formation in the day ahead market in italy the empirical estimation uses a new data set of hourly data on both market variables and temperature variables there is a vast body of literature on the effect of temperature on final consumers and on wholesale electricity market equilibrium however the influence of temperature on the behavior of the wholesale electricity market has not been studied at the hourly level a new econometric estimation shows some evidence of different effects of temperature and provides a more accurate estimation of the hourly prices forecasting out of sample performance of the model is satisfactory the present results have welfare improving policy implications because appropriate policy strategies can help public decision makers promote regulation such as issuing public weather alert and designing contingent plans to face extreme weather conditions which improves production efficiency network management and consumer saving behavior taking specific weather conditions into account

density forecasting for long term peak electricity demand long term electricity demand forecasting plays an important role in planning for future generation facilities and transmission augmentation in a long term context planners must adopt a probabilistic view of potential peak demand levels therefore density forecasts providing estimates of the full probability distributions of the possible future values of the demand are more helpful than point forecasts and are necessary for utilities to evaluate and hedge the financial risk accrued by demand variability and forecasting uncertainty this paper proposes a new methodology to forecast the density of long term peak electricity demand peak electricity demand in a given season is subject to a range of uncertainties including underlying population growth changing technology economic conditions prevailing weather conditions and the timing of those conditions as well as the general randomness inherent in individual usage it is also subject to some known calendar effects due to the time of day day of week time of year and public holidays a comprehensive forecasting solution is described in this paper first semi parametric additive models are used to estimate the relationships between demand and the driver variables including temperatures calendar effects and some demographic and economic variables then the demand distributions are forecasted by using a mixture of temperature simulation assumed future economic scenarios and residual bootstrapping the temperature simulation is implemented through a new seasonal bootstrapping method with variable blocks the proposed methodology has been used to forecast the probability distribution of annual and weekly peak electricity demand for south australia since 2007 the performance of the methodology is evaluated by comparing the forecast results with the actual demand of the summer 2007 2008

impact of energy technology patents in china evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model abstract enhancing energy technology innovation performance which is widely measured by energy technology patents through energy technology research and development r d activities is a fundamental way to implement energy conservation and emission abatement this study analyzes the effects of r d investment activities economic growth and energy price on energy technology patents in 30 provinces of china over the period 1999 2013 several unit root tests indicate that all the above variables are generated by panel unit root processes and a panel cointegration model is confirmed among the variables in order to ensure the consistency of the estimators the fully modified ols fmols method is adopted and the results indicate that r d investment activities and economic growth have positive effects on energy technology patents while energy price has a negative effect however the panel error correction models indicate that the cointegration relationship helps to promote economic growth but it reduces r d investment and energy price in the short term therefore market oriented measures including financial support and technical transformation policies for the development of low carbon energy technologies an effective energy price mechanism especially the targeted fossil fuel subsidies and their die away mode are vital in promoting china s energy technology innovation

crime and the timing of work abstract two striking facts describe work timing in the united states a lower propensity to work evenings and nights in large metropolitan areas and a secular decline in such work since 1973 one explanation is higher and possibly increasing crime in large areas i link current population survey data on work timing to fbi crime reports neither fact is explained by changes in nor inter area differences in crime rates but higher homicide rates do reduce such work this reduction implicitly costs the economy between 4 and 10 billion this negative externality illustrates a larger class of previously unmeasured costs of social pathologies

consumer demand for time of use electricity tariffs a systematized review of the empirical evidence abstract time of use tou tariffs if widely adopted could help make electricity more secure clean and affordable however quite little is known about whether consumers will switch to a tou tariff or what might increase uptake if switching rates are lower than required this paper presents the results of a systematized review and meta analysis combining the results of 66 measures of uptake to a variety of tou tariffs across 27 studies conducted in six countries it provides the first robust estimate of consumer demand and correlates of demand for tou tariffs that is not based on the results from just a single study or tariff four main conclusions emerge first if consumers are left to opt in to tou tariffs uptake could be as low as 1 unless efforts are made to close the intention action gap otherwise enrolment could reach 43 second if enrolment is opt out uptake could approach 100 third whilst national surveys indicate the potential appetite for tou tariffs in a population they are insufficient for predicting future tou tariff adoption rates the median proportion of domestic energy bill payers who say they would be willing to switch to a tou tariff in national surveys is five times higher than the median enrolment rate to tou tariffs offered by utilities fourth real time pricing tariffs in which the price of electricity varies freely throughout the day are less popular than static tou tariffs which have fixed peak and off peak rates this paper discusses the limitations of opt out enrolment for tou tariffs and presents results suggesting that small upfront payments bill protection and automation are promising alternative methods of increasing opt in enrolment policymakers and researchers should now consider how recruitment will be performed weighing up the benefits to society as a whole against the distributional impacts for individuals and groups

india s outward foreign direct investments in steel industry in a chinese comparative perspective indian and chinese enterprises have emerged as important outward investors in recent times with their involvement in a number of prominent greenfield investments and acquisitions the theory of international business posits that the ownership of some unique advantages having a revenue generating potential abroad combined with the presence of internalization and locational advantages leads to outward fdi conventional mnes based in the industrialized countries have grown on the strength of ownership advantages derived from innovatory activity that is largely concentrated in these countries it examines the case of steel industry that has become an important sector of overseas activity for chinese and indian companies with a string of major acquisitions of foreign mnes for acquiring footprints and natural resources in order to identify the sources of ownership advantages and strategies of outward investments from emerging countries