planning of renewables schemes deliberative and fair decision making on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non cooperation abstract the main issues related to successful implementation policies concern the socio economic institutions that are conditional to planning in the energy policy domain but also in the domain of spatial planning successful investments and the siting of renewable power plants eventually determine the success rate of national efforts in establishing renewable capacity central planning usually has several objectives and these often have a detrimental effect on the goal of renewable energy application current problems related to implementation decisions concerning wind power schemes are an example to those who will be faced by other renewable power plants notably biomass regarding community acceptance of wind power schemes the visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on the values of the landscape is by far the most dominant factor in explaining opposition or support type of landscape fully overshadows other attitudinal attributes as well as other visual and scenic factors such as the design of wind turbines and wind farms and the number and the size of turbines planning regimes and decision making practices that really enhance the implementation processes of renewable energy require strong ecological modernization this means institutional changes that create involvement and trust of actors at the actual implementation level local opposition cannot be explained by the egotistical motives of local residents when the inclination to behave according to supposed backyard motives is investigated the scale to measure this phenomenon appears to indicate commitment to equity issues and fairness of decision making hence for wind power local involvement to represent the local values of site specific landscapes is crucial for other renewables the source specific features are different but conflicts can be expected as well because the fairness of implementation decisions will be equally significant

problems with identifying adjustment costs from regressions of investment on q abstract most econometricians evaluate investment q regressions by using the coefficients to estimate adjustment costs however these coefficients do not uniquely identify average adjustment costs or speeds nor do they appear in the expression for marginal adjustment costs in terms of observables

the taylor principle fights back part ii abstract the existing literature holds that the taylor principle often leads to indeterminacy in new keynesian models that allow for capital accumulation and limited asset market participation this conclusion is special however to the case of continuous full employment when the assumption of perfect wage flexibility is relaxed very slightly so that the labor market clears quickly but not instantaneously determinacy is the norm the threat of indeterminacy is limited to a tiny irrelevant corner of the parameter space where the elasticity of labor supply is unusually high and real wage adjustment is unbelievably fast everywhere else the taylor principle guarantees a unique rational expectations equilibrium the dramatic difference in results reflects the sensitivity of the monetary transmission mechanism to the speed of adjustment in the labor market

cash flow constraints and firms investment behaviour this paper examines the role of cash flow as a determinant of investment in fixed capital at the firm level a criterion was established for classifying firms as cash flow constrained or unconstrained on a year by year basis firms were then assigned to one of these two categories data for a sample of 58 australian firms for the period 1974 75 to 1989 90 were used to estimate separate regressions incorporating a common set of facilitating and incentive variables for constrained and unconstrained cases the results suggest that the investment behaviour of firms when they are financially constrained exhibits a greater sensitivity to cash flow than that of firms when they are unconstrained in addition incentive variables such as tobin s q and sales growth only have an explanatory role when firms are unconstrained the implications of these findings for monetary policy are also discussed

factors influencing buying behaviour of green energy consumer green energy has gained significant research attention across the globe due to its ability to reduce environmental damage however for complete acceptance of green energy only government regulations are not enough the willingness to use green energy and contribute to the wellbeing of the environment should spring from within consumers such willingness may be developed by enhancing consumers perceived value of green energy however in order to do so it is necessary to assess existing levels of consumers perceived value towards green energy the present study develops a multidimensional green perceived value scale to measure existing levels of consumers perceived value the scale considers green perceived value as a multidimensional second order construct comprising functional value social value conditional value and emotional value dimensions such an attempt has not been made before which highlights the originality value of the present study the scale can be used to assess consumers perception towards green energy such information would help in formulating strategies that encourage consumers to voluntarily adopt green energy the study also reveals that it is not only the financial aspects that lead consumers to decide on adoption of green energy consumers are also driven by emotional and social considerations thus policy makers could formulate pro green energy programmes and mass messages that appeal to consumers sense of responsibility to voluntarily adopt green energy without having to rely on financial incentives researchers could examine the considered dimensions of the scale further with respect to other constructs related to consumer behaviour

optimal strategic petroleum reserve policies a steady state analysis a simple model is presented which allows us to determine the optimal size fillup and drawdown rates for a strategic petroleum reserve spr under a variety of supply and demand conditions the optimal policy variables are determined by minimizing an analytic expression which we derive for the expected insecurity cost rate to the u s due to uncertainty in supply of imported oil the oil market is modeled in terms of an elastic demand curve and two levels of supply which alternate according to a stationary continuous time markov process the spr policy is characterized by a fixed fillup rate up to the reserve s capacity when supply is at its normal level and a fixed drawdown rate during shortages the insecurity cost rate being minimized includes consumer welfare loss due to price hikes reserve holding cost and capital appreciation of the reserve base case results and sensitivity analysis are presented and compared to results obtained by previous approaches these comparisons suggest that the proposed model can reasonably approximate the more computationally demanding stochastic dynamic programming formulation the main advantage of the new approach is that it permits extensive sensitivity analysis which is important given the quality of the data

community perspectives of wind energy in australia the application of a justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community s social well being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day to day interactions outcomes that are perceived to be unfair can result in protests damaged relationships and divided communities particularly when decisions are made which benefit some sections of the community at the perceived expense of others through empirical research using a wind farm pilot study community perceptions of a community consultation process are explored using procedural justice principles to evaluate fairness findings from the pilot study indicate that perceptions of fairness do influence how people perceive the legitimacy of the outcome and that a fairer process will increase acceptance of the outcome a key research finding was that different sections of a community are likely to be influenced by different aspects of justice namely by outcome fairness outcome favourability and process fairness based on this finding a community fairness framework was developed which has potential application in community consultation to increase social acceptance of the outcome

supply management with intermittent trade disruptions when the probabilities are not fully known abstract previous studies of trade disruptions have assumed that the probabilistic transition rates between normal and disrupted markets are known this may be unreasonable if disruptions occur infrequently in this paper a bayesian procedure for estimating the transition rates is derived under the assumption that the transition processes are exogenous and poisson the procedure is applied to the problem of managing emergency reserves in an import dependent economy time consistent plans for consuming and replenishing reserves are derived optimal reserves are found to be generally larger than if the transition rates were known and equal to current expected values

nimby or not exploring the relevance of location and the politics of voiced opinions in renewable energy siting controversies local protests against renewable energy facilities have added fuel to the debate about the so called nimby not in my back yard effect this paper identifies six variables that can hamper the comparison between different public perception studies and offers two broad conclusions on aggregate proximity does have strong influence on public attitudes to proposed projects but the nature strength and spatial scale of this effect may vary according to local context and value of the land residents of stigmatised places are more likely to welcome facilities that are relatively green while people who derive a more positive sense of identity from particular rural landscapes are likely to resist such potential developments especially if they also live there secondly the fear of being branded a nimby and the positive ethics associated with the notion of renewable are both likely to colour the responses of many interviewees these aspects need to be clarified and accounted for in analyses of elicited responses both quantitative and qualitative if we are to improve our understanding of the social construction of individual attitudes in siting conflicts

drivers promoting renewable energy a dynamic panel approach we study the commitment to renewable energy sources focusing on a set of 24 european countries and applying panel dynamic estimators europe is a leading player in the fight against climate change and the estimators we use reveal themselves to be appropriate in handling the persistency effect on renewables the level of renewable energy use in the previous period has a positive and highly significant effect on the current level of use traditional energy sources restrain the impetus towards renewables social awareness of sustainability climate change mitigation and co2 reduction targets are not enough to motivate the switch from traditional to renewables energy sources income and prices of fossil based fuels were not significant for the development of renewables in the period from 1990 to 2006 suggesting that it was not the market that encouraged renewables

how to predict future pro environmental intention the spillover effect of electricity saving behavior under environmental and monetary framing abstract the spillover effect in the environmental realm has attracted attention from many researchers the present study took electricity saving as an example to explore the mechanism of the spillover effect under environmental framing ef or monetary framing mf and examine the effect of labeling on the spillover effect to add value to existing environmental research three studies showed that both environmental and monetary framing could promote environmental intention study 1 tested the effectiveness of the intervention materials and found that both ef and mf increased the intention to save electricity study 2 and 3 revealed that the spillover effect was influenced by framing specifically the spillover of ef was positive whereas that of mf was negative at the same time environmental self identity mediated both positive and negative spillover moreover enhancing individuals environmental self identity by labeling them as environmentalists could prevent negative spillover and increase positive spillover the results of the present study also provided practical guidance regarding pro environmental education and campaigns by emphasizing environmental benefits rather than monetary benefits and by strengthening environmental self identity through labeling

vector rational error correction abstract systems of forward looking linear decision rules can be formulated as vector rational error correction models the closed form solution of the restricted error corrections is derived and a full information estimator is suggested the error correction format indicates that the assumptions of convex adjustment costs and rational expectations impose different types of a priori restrictions on the dynamic structure of the error corrections an empirical model of the producer decision rule for capital investment illustrates that the data rejects dynamic restrictions imposed by a standard model of adjustment costs but supports a more general description of convex frictions

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

the complex relationship between households climate change concerns and their water and energy mitigation behaviour climate change will require commitment by all levels of the community but there is still uncertainty surrounding the best way to influence individual mitigation behaviour this study analyses household survey data on water and energy climate change mitigation behaviour from eleven oecd countries in 2011 and provides new evidence of a form of maladaptation namely a complex rebound relationship between climate change attitudes and mitigation behaviour first results confirm other studies that climate change concerns and economic incentives in terms of electricity and water charges positively influence mitigation behaviour second we find that the more costly in terms of time and or money are the mitigation actions of a household the more likely undertaking such actions directly lessens respondents climate change concerns this negative rebound effect is more likely to occur in environmentally motivated households who are more likely to have stated they believe human actions can help mitigate climate change conversely economic incentives in driving energy and water pro environmental behaviour work better in non environmentallymotivated households this highlights that a portfolio of policies is needed to drive mitigation behaviour

sustainable development case study in the implementation of renewable energy in brazil abstract in response to demands by new clean renewable energy sources emerged in brazil in the last 10 years many investors interested in implementing wind farms thus arises the question of how the surrounding communities may be affected positively and or negatively by installing wind farms projects and other energy renewable sources the aim of this study is to propose a set of guidelines and best practices for public managers public authorities and owners of wind farms and other energy renewable sources about the perspective of the sustainable development of the surrounding communities the research was conducted in three phases literature review on sustainable development case study in major community a and minor communities b c and d where were implemented wind farms development of the best practice and guidelines through the brainstorming focus group current reality tree and creating shared value the results show the political dimension of sustainability as a root cause of underdevelopment of communities were proposed a set of 22 guidelines and best practices that contribute to the sustainable development of communities

monetary or environmental appeals for saving electricity potentials for spillover on low carbon policy acceptability abstract the acceptability of low carbon policies is an important precondition for energy system transitions such as the german energiewende this long term experimental study examines the potential for behavioural spillover on the acceptability of low carbon policies caused by a framed intervention to promote electricity saving behaviour clients of a german energy provider were randomly assigned to continuously receive electricity saving tips with either monetary framing saving potential in or environmental framing saving potential in co2 the control group did not receive any information in two follow up surveys four n 333 and nine months n 258 later participants rated the acceptability of several low carbon policies a pre survey assessed the personal ecological norm for saving electricity participants with strong personal ecological norms reported generally higher policy acceptability after environmental framing they also indicated higher acceptability compared to the monetary framing or control group these results indicate that information campaigns should be designed carefully in order to promote positive spillover effects environmental framing of private sphere behaviour can increase the disposition for further pro environmental behaviour in the public sphere e g policy acceptability when appealing to monetary benefits in pro environmental behaviour there is a risk of inhibiting positive spillover effects

the risky spread investment and monetary policy transmission evidence on the role of asymmetric information financing constraints can arise when there are important information asymmetries in financial markets using canadian panel data the authors reject a symmetric information specification of investment behavior in favor of an agency cost specification in which the shadow cost of finance can diverge from the market interest rate the authors empirical estimates suggest that shocks to net worth as reflected in the risky spread and firm specific balance sheet variables can dramatically increase the shadow cost of finance tests which draw on distinctive institutional features of the canadian economy show that it is firms in a weak informational position which tend to be responsible for this result copyright 1996 by mit press

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

does green consumerism increase the acceptance of wind power abstract in this paper we discuss what might be termed an action based learning approach to promoting important pro environmental actions such as support for or acceptance of environmental policy such an approach involves promoting simple and easy behaviours as entry points for more radical steps towards sustainability referred to as catalytic or wedge behaviours despite the obvious need for innovative approaches to promote important pro environmental behaviour and sound theoretical backing for such concepts there is a lack of research testing the key propositions of this approach in a survey study based on a random sample of residents of the state of maine usa we find that both everyday green behaviour and the acceptance of an expansion of wind power are rooted in environmental concern and that everyday green behaviour gives a significant contribution to predicting acceptance of wind power when controlling for environmental concern hence the promotion of everyday green behaviours may prepare the grounds for increasing acceptance of more far reaching changes in the population such as an expansion of wind power

on the optimal level of a small country s strategic petroleum reserve abstract decisions relating to a country s strategic petroleum reserve must take into account the level of risk inherent in its petroleum imports the cost resulting from any shortfall in the import level the cost of storage and finally the effects of stockpiling transactions on the sensitive spot oil markets of course small countries need not take into account their effect on the global market a fact that drastically simplifies their decision problem we present such a simple decision model for a small country s petroleum reserve which in addition to the above factors take into account the uncertainty of the country s refining capacity a complete analytical treatment is feasible for this model and a specific numerical example is presented for the case of greece

embargo threats and the management of emergency reserves this paper develops a model of a country that can import oil in normal times but is subject to random trade disruptions to mitigate the effects of these disruptions some of the imported oil is stockpiled there are two kinds of uncertainty involved the date at which an embargo will be imposed is not known in advance and given that an embargo has been imposed the date at which it will end is uncertain optimal behavior is analyzed by means of dynamic programming 13 references

pricing and depletion of an exhaustible resource when there is anticipation of trade disruption this paper considers pricing and depletion of an exhaustible nonrenewable resource in an economy wherein domestic consumption is provided for by supplementing extraction from the economy s own resource stock with imports the future supply of which is not assured the socially optimal response to threat of trade disruption is a more conservationist depletion program for the domestic resource stock than would be called for if import supplies were assured to persist competitive domestic firms adopt the socially optimal conversationist program however firms anticipating domestic market power after the disruption of import supplies are revealed to overextract the domestic resource stock 33 references 2 figures

investment behaviour of dutch industrial firms a panel data study abstract this study describes a putty clay model of investment for a monopolistic firm in which factor price movements also affect expected output the specifications are tested on a set of panel data for individual dutch industrial firms factor prices are significant and expected output effects of factor prices dominate substitution effects in investment demand corrections are made for attrition and for measurement errors correction for attrition does not make an important difference but correction for measurement errors does

a re examination of the q theory of investment using u s firm data investment models based on tobin s q are theoretically appealing but they have been an empirical disappointment when applied to aggregate time series data this paper explores two potential explanations for the poor empirical performance of q investment models problems arising from aggregation and imperfect competition the results suggest that aggregation is responsible for spurious evidence of dynamic misspecification and at least partially responsible for an upward bias in estimated adjustment costs the evidence also suggests that imperfect competition in output markets may have an effect on the investment behaviour of some firms

the welfare effects of intermittent interruptions of trade consider the problem of a buyer purchasing a costlessly storable good at a fixed price under threat of interruption of trade suppose there are two distinct and exhaustive regimes either one can buy as much as desired at the going price or one can purchase nothing at all and must rely on accumulated stocks for consumption the market moves randomly over time between these two states which will be referred to here as on and off respectively given the stochastic process governing the evolution of market regimes the price faced when the market is on and the intertemporal preferences of the buyer one may inquire as to the optimal acquisition rate for storage and consumption when the market is on and the optimal usage of accumulated stocks when the market is off solutions for these problems could then be used to ascertain the degree to which buyer and seller welfare is affected by the probabilistic curtailment of trading opportunities and the willingness to pay of the buyer for greater security of supply as well the possibility of inferring from purchase and storage behavior the buyer s perception of the likelihood and duration of trade interruptions may be explored this paper presents a general solution to this problem for stationary environments that is assuming intertemporal preferences to be representable by the expected present value of a uniformly discounted time independent flow utility function and taking the stochastic process governing change in regimes to be stationary markov optimal behavior and associated expected discounted utility are derived the method employed adapts to this context the dynamic programming arguments of my 1981 paper and is similar in structure to that employed in the analysis of resource depletion with technological uncertainty in partha dasgupta and geoffrey heal 1974 and dasgupta and joseph stiglitz 1981 there are many industrial markets in which these considerations are important recent events in the world oil market have stimulated much interest in the study of strategic mineral reserves see for example thomas teisberg 1981 in markets where demand fluctuates randomly and prices are inflexible for example the industrial market for natural gas the possibility of stochastic rationing has important implications for firm behavior see dennis carleton 1978 the prospect of strike upstream or lag in the delivery of goods on order has significant implications for inventory holdings in some industries the framework of this paper may even be adapted to the study of labor supply and savings behavior over the life cycle for a worker facing intermittent and uncertain unemployment

stock market and investment the signaling role of the market the author examines the role of the stock market as a signal to managers in undertaking capital expenditures he concludes that while both managerial and market perceptions are integral managerial perception is of greater importance the evidence suggeststhat as a statistic the q ratio is not sufficient to explain firms capital expenditure decisions thus the standard q model of investment should be modified to provide a more meaningful description of a firm s capital spending decisions overall the results suggest that stock market activity has only limited implications for the economy s resource allocation process evidence for the q theory of investment confirms previous findings in the literature that the model s poor empirical perfomance was partly the result of using aggregate data for the whole economy also since market perception plays only a limited role in determining capital expenditures shareholder myopia is unlikely to result in managerial myopia the implications for developing countries are while the stock market may not be central to a firm s capital spending decisions it is not a sideshow either the market plays an important signaling role for managers this is a powerful rationale for financial reform and capital development in developing countries the results also suggest that complaints that stock market activity leads to misallocation of resources may be exaggerated

monopolistic competition and the q theory of investment abstract in this paper we analyse the implications for q models of investment of replacing the assumption of perfect competition in the output market with the assumption of monopolistic competition the structural investment equation that can be derived in this case has a richer dynamic structure than the conventional one and it contains in addition to present and future q output as an explanatory variable in the applied section we discuss the extent to which monopolistic competition helps in providing a remedy for the empirical weaknesses of q models the estimates are obtained using aggregate data for u k industrial and commercial companies for the period 1951 1979

rural amenity values and length of residency new residents of rural communities are often assumed to have preferences for development and conservation that differ from those of longer term residents however the literature offers little to quantify presumed preference heterogeneity this article assesses whether stated preferences differ according to length of residency results are based on a conjoint choice experiment survey of rhode island rural residents heterogeneity according to length of town residency is modeled using dummy variables multiplicative interactions and lagrangian interpolation polynomials results are compared across the three models and identify a range of attributes for which willingness to pay depends on length of residency