aggregate demand for electricity in south africa an analysis using the bounds testing approach to cointegration abstract electricity demand in south africa has grown at a very rapid rate over the past decade as part of reform initiatives to enhance long term sustainability of the country s electricity industry south africa s authorities have in recent years sought to develop an electricity pricing framework that is cost reflective and forms the cornerstone of demand management schemes meant to foster changes in consumption behaviour and enhance efficiency in resource use the effects of any pricing policy on aggregate electricity consumption will depend on a useful understanding of the factors that influence electricity demand and the magnitude to which electricity demand responds to changes in such factors in this context this paper applies the bounds testing approach to cointegration within an autoregressive distributed lag framework to examine the aggregate demand for electricity in south africa during the period 1960 2007 the results indicate that in the long run income is the main determinant of electricity demand with electricity prices having an insignificant effect on aggregate electricity demand future pricing policies will need to ensure that electricity prices are cost reflective and enhance efficiency of electricity supply and use

statistical efficiency of double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the statistical efficiency of conventional dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys can be improved by asking each respondent a second dichotomous choice question which depends on the response to the first question if the first response is yes the second bid is some amount greater than the first bid while if the first response is no the second bid is some amount smaller this double bounded approach is shown to be asymptotically more efficient than the conventional singlebounded approach using data from a survey of californians regarding their willingness to pay for wetlands in the san joaquin valley we show that in a finite sample the gain in efficiency can be very substantial

the demand for residential electricity new evidence on time varying elasticities this study employs a generalized functional form to examine demand for residential electiricity the appropriatenes of the conventional double log and linear forms are tested time varying elasicities are estimated major findings are summarized as follows 1 the double log and linear forms can be rejected at the 0 05 and 0 01 levels respectively 2 long run own price elasticities declined in absolute value consistently from 2 13 to 1 19 during the period 1950 87 3 long run income elasticities also decreased from 1 29 to 0 97 during the same period and 4 long run corss price elasticities with respect to the price of natural gas dropped form 0 40 to 0 29 these results may be heplful to decision makers in determining the change in total revenues owning to the change in prices pricing strategies the effectiveness of energy conservation programmes the effect of rising real income on the demand for residential electricity and future demand

liberalisation and r d in network industries the case of the electricity industry abstract electricity sector liberalisation has coincided with a significant decline in r d spending this paper reviews the industrial organisation literature on r d and innovation to explore the likely causes of the decline in r d spending in the electricity sector meanwhile r d productivity and innovative outputs in utilities and equipment suppliers appear to have improved however a lasting decline in r d expenditure can have a negative long term effect on technological progress and innovation in the sector we conclude that the decline in r d could have been predicted from the literature we also discuss the need to reorient the post liberalisation technology policy

willingness to pay for voluntary climate action and its determinants field experimental evidence the determinants of individual voluntary climate action vca in combating climate change and its potential scale are frequently debated in public but largely underresearched we provide estimates of the willingness to individually reduce eu greenhouse gas emissions by one ton using the european union emissions trading scheme estimates are derived from an online field experiment with a large highly heterogenous and internet representative sample of voting aged germans jointly estimating willingness to pay wtp non indifference to vca and prior knowledge we uncover important determinants of preferences for vca such as education the information structure among the population and exogenous environmental conditions

does microfinance reduce poverty in bangladesh new evidence from household panel data abstract the study examines whether loans from microfinance institutions mfi reduce poverty in bangladesh drawing upon the nationally representative household panel with four rounds from 1997 to 2004 the effects of general microfinance loans and loans for productive purposes on income food consumption and women s body mass index are estimated overall effects of mfi loans on income and food consumption were positive and the purpose of the loan is important in predicting which household welfare indicator is improved alternative estimation methods confirm a positive impact of mfi loans on food consumption growth which supports the poverty reducing effects of microfinance in bangladesh

the demand for residential electricity in south africa abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in south africa as a function of real gross domestic product per capita and the price of electricity during the period 1978 2005 we make use of the bounds testing approach to cointegration within an autoregressive distributed framework suggested by pesaran et al 2001 bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships journal of applied econometrics 16 3 289 326 following the literature we use a linear double logarithmic form using income and price as independent variables in the empirical analysis in the long run we find that income is the main determinant of electricity demand while electricity price is insignificant

scale economies and over capitalization in japanese electric utilities this paper presents empirical evidence on scale economies and overcapitalization in japanese electric utilities we employ the short run equilibrium model in which the variable cost function treats capital stock as a quasi fixed factor we specify the variable cost function as a translog form and estimate it using panel data of nine japanese electric utility firms during the period 1981 to 1985 our results show that eight of the nine firms experience scale economies in the short run but diseconomies in the long run and that seven firms significantly over capitalize as expected by the averch johnson effect

the role of subsidies in microfinance evidence from the grameen bank the grameen bank of bangladesh has been in the vanguard of the microfinance movement showing the potential to alleviate poverty by providing credit to poor house holds part of this success has been built on subsidies in 1996 for example total subsidies evaluated at the economic opportunity cost of capital amounted to about us 26 30 million the evidence helps to explain why institutions like grameen have not just sprung up on their own as private commercial ventures and it underscores the value of openly addressing the costs and benefits of subsidization the paper also describes recent difficulties in maintaining high repayment rates q 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

why and how to subsidise energy r d lessons from the collapse and recovery of electricity innovation in the uk the uk electricity sector liberalisation was a pioneer in the worldwide reform trend and its reform model and outcomes have been the subject of many studies however lesser known are the effects of privatisation market based reforms and incentive regulation of networks on research and development as well as patenting activities in the sector this paper updates our previous studies of this subject and discusses the recent developments in the innovative activities in the uk electricity sector we find that in recent years the initial absence of support policies and the subsequent decline in innovation efforts in the aftermath of the reform has resulted in efforts towards forming an energy technology and innovation policy although we already observe some positive outcomes from these efforts we discuss whether the balance of the innovation efforts are calibrated appropriately and whether the institutional framework can be further improved to promote long term progress

microfinance and poverty a macro perspective we test the hypothesis that microfinance reduces poverty at the macro level using cross country and panel data which are constructed by the microfinance information exchange data on microfinance institutions mfis and the world bank data taking account of the endogeneity associated with mfis loans we show that a country with higher mfis gross loan portfolio per capita tends to have lower levels of poverty indices contrary to recent micro evidence our results suggest that microfinance significantly reduces poverty at macro level and thus reinforce the case for channeling funds from development finance institutions and governments of developing countries into mfis

microfinance and poverty in bolivia both in its institutional range and in its penetration of financial markets the microfinance sector in bolivia rivals any in the world and has played a major part in extracting the macro economy from meltdown since the mid 1980s we seek specifically to assess its impact on poverty and do this through small sample surveys on four microfinance institutions two urban and two rural using a range of poverty concepts income generated both through the borrower s enterprise and through the labour market asset holdings and diversity and various measures of vulnerability all the institutions studied had on balance positive impacts on income and asset levels with income impacts correlating negatively with income on account of poor households choosing to invest in low risk low return assets microfinance may however augment vulnerability average debt service ratios of microfinance clients are disturbingly high and if the coping mechanisms used by borrowers fail borrowers may be forced out of the

the demand for residential industrial and total electricity 1973 1998 this paper estimates residential industrial and total electricity demand by a partial adjustment approach and by a simultaneous equation approach simultaneous equation models are more appropriate since they provide negative price elasticity estimates for the residential industrial and total electricity samples flow adjustment models yield positive price elasticity estimates in some cases suggesting they fail to identify proper supply considerations that may be influencing prices the simultaneous equation approach suggests that residential customers are more price sensitive than industrial customers weather seems to have the greatest impact on the residential sector and cold weather appears to affect demand more than hot weather

the price elasticity of electricity demand in south australia abstract in this paper the price elasticity of electricity demand representing the sensitivity of customer demand to the price of electricity has been estimated for south australia we first undertake a review of the scholarly literature regarding electricity price elasticity for different regions and systems then we perform an empirical evaluation of the historic south australian price elasticity focussing on the relationship between price and demand quantiles at each half hour of the day this work attempts to determine whether there is any variation in price sensitivity with the time of day or quantile and to estimate the form of any relationships that might exist in south australia

residential electricity demand dynamics in turkey abstract this article provides fresh empirical evidences for the income and price elasticies of the residential energy demand both in the short run and long run for turkey over the period 1968 2005 using the bounds testing procedure to cointegration the computed elasticities of income and price are consistent with the previous studies and as expected the long run elasticities are greater than the short run elasticities an augmented form of granger causality analysis is implemented among residential electricity income price and urbanization in the long run causality runs interactively through the error correction term from income price and urbanization to residential energy but the short run causality tests are inconclusive the parameter stability of the short run as well as long run coefficients in the residential energy demand function are tested the results of these tests display a stable pattern

the evolution of price elasticity of electricity demand in south africa a kalman filter application abstract in south africa the electricity mismatch of supply and demand has been of major concern additional to past problems the 2008 electricity crisis made the solution crucial after its damaging consequences to the economy the disagreement on the need and consequences of the continuous electricity price hikes worsens the situation to contribute to the recent electricity debate this paper proposes a time varying price elasticity of demand for electricity the sensitivity of electricity consumption to price fluctuations changes throughout the years the main purpose of this study is the estimation of the price elasticity of electricity in south africa during the period 1980 2005 by employing an advanced econometric technique the kalman filter apart from the decreasing effect of electricity prices to consumption 71 8 in the 1990s and 94 5 in the 2000s in average our results conclude to an important finding the higher the prices for example in the 1980s the higher the sensitivity of consumers to price fluctuations thus further increases of the electricity prices may lead to changes in the behaviour of electricity consumers focusing their efforts on improving their efficiency levels by introducing demand side management techniques or even turning to other sources of cheaper energy

expanding credit access using randomized supply decisions to estimate the impacts expanding access to commercial credit is a key ingredient of financial development strategies there is less consensus on whether expanding access to consumer credit helps borrowers particularly when loans are extended at high interest rates popular skepticism about unproductive usurious lending is fueled by research highlighting behavioral biases that may induce overborrowing we estimate the impacts of expanding access to consumer credit at a 200 annual percentage rate apr using a field experiment and follow up data collection the randomly assigned marginal loans produced significant net benefits for borrowers across a wide range of outcomes there is also some evidence that the loans were profitable the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

an identification robust test for time varying parameters in the dynamics of energy prices summary we test for the presence of time varying parameters tvp in the long run dynamics of energy prices for oil natural gas and coal within a standard class of mean reverting models we also propose residual based diagnostic tests and examine out of sample forecasts in sample lr tests support the tvp model for coal and gas but not for oil though companion diagnostics suggest that the model is too restrictive to conclusively fit the data out of sample analysis suggests a random walk specification for oil price and tvp models for both real time forecasting in the case of gas and long run forecasting in the case of coal copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

r d investment of electricity generating firms following industry restructuring abstract since electricity market restructuring questions over adequate levels of r d investments persisted using an unbalanced panel data of 70 electricity generating firms across 15 organisations of economic co operation and development countries from 1990 to 2008 this paper empirically examines the impacts of entry liberalization allowing third party access establishing a wholesale market and deregulating a retail market vertical unbundling privatization and firm size on r d investments entry liberalization is associated with a decline in r d investment establishing a wholesale market exhibits the greatest negative effects on r d investment regulated tpa and retail market deregulation also decrease r d the effect of privatization is not independently salient but interacts with a wholesale pool to lower r d investments large firms spend more on r d investment than small firms results indicate that the restructuring of the electricity industry reduces r d investment which may be detrimental to the reliability and the efficiency of the electricity system as well as to the creation and maintenance of the innovation capabilities necessary to address demand and environmental concerns

modeling energy demand some emerging issues abstract the proliferation of papers on energy demand modeling has offered different dimensions both in terms of methodology and estimation while this development has strengthened our understanding of the subject it may render the identification of gaps in the literature arduous for future research thus this study sets out to document some emerging issues that seem to have engendered new directions on energy demand modeling ranging from asymmetric price responses time varying demand parameters triangulation analyses to seasonal and climate change effects it is hoped that access to this review complemented with the previous ones will facilitate the comprehension of the extant literature as well as areas of future research in energy demand modeling

what s to know about hypothetical bias in stated preference valuation studies abstract hypothetical bias arises in stated preference valuation studies when respondents report a willingness to pay wtp that exceeds what they actually pay using their own money in laboratory or field experiments although this bias is not found in all stated preference surveys hypothetical wtp typically exceeds the actual value by a factor of two to three unfortunately there is no widely accepted general theory of respondent behaviour that explains hypothetical bias therefore two meta analyses are reviewed to test current hypotheses regarding the causes of this overstatement of wtp and the associated recommendations to mitigate the bias suggestions for future research are made including the development of a general theory

price and income elasticities of residential and industrial electricity demand in the european union this study examines the short and long run price and income elasticities of residential and industrial electricity demand in the european union between 1996 and 2016 instrumental variable models using the between estimator as well as dynamic panel models are employed to present robust estimates and to assess the impact of different methodologies on the reported elasticities the long run price elasticity of residential electricity consumption is estimated between 0 53 and 0 56 these elasticities are more inelastic than that of industrial electricity use which is reported between 0 75 and 1 01 the choice of different econometric methodologies has only moderate impact on the estimates while long run residential income elasticity estimates are moderately inelastic and estimated around 0 61 industrial electricity use tends to be closely tied to income with elasticities between 0 76 and 1 08 electricity demand in all sectors is highly price and income inelastic in the short run additionally population density temperatures and policy measures also influence sectoral electricity use the above estimates can aid the design of european energy and environmental policy

the developing world is poorer than we thought but no less successful in the fight against poverty a new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world we find that 25 of the population lived in poverty in 2005 as judged by what poverty typically means in the world s poorest countries this is higher than past estimates substantial overall progress is still indicated the corresponding poverty rate was 52 in 1981 but progress was very uneven across regions the trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology though precise counts are more sensitive

time varying income and price elasticities for energy demand evidence from a middle income panel abstract we estimate time varying income and price elasticities for energy demand for a 26 country middle income balanced panel that spans 1996 2014 to do so we employ a recently developed local linear dummy estimation method to estimate the trend and coefficient functions we find that the price elasticity for energy demand is either insignificant or positive and small while the income elasticity for energy demand behaves in a non linear fashion over time it is always less than unity and is generally within 0 6 0 8 a gdp elasticity of less than one suggests that these middle income countries are on the right hand side of an inverted u energy intensity gdp path that is consistent with the dematerialization process also this finding suggests that energy intensity but not energy consumption in these countries will fall with economic growth hence intensity based targets may be met in a business as usual setting but aggregate or per capita based carbon emissions targets would likely require policy interventions

valuing environmental and health risk in agriculture a choice experiment approach to pesticides in italy abstract the widespread use of pesticides in agriculture shows a complex ramification of multiple negative externalities ranging from food safety related effects to the deterioration of farmland ecosystems recent research has demonstrated that the assessment of the economic implications of such negative processes is fraught with many uncertainties this paper presents the results of an empirical study recently conducted in northern italy aimed at estimating the economic value of reducing the wide ranging impacts of pesticide use by deploying a choice experiment approach the experimental design provides a meaningful tool to assign monetary values to the negative environmental effects associated with agrochemicals use in this connection the paper addresses in particular the reduction of farmland biodiversity groundwater contamination and harm to human health the resulting estimates confirm that on average respondents demonstrate a substantial willingness to pay a premium for agricultural goods in particular foodstuffs produced in environmentally benign ways

change in consumer sensitivity to electricity prices in response to retail deregulation a panel empirical analysis of the residential demand for electricity in the united states abstract about ten years have passed since the deregulation of the u s retail electricity market and it is now generally accepted that the available data is adequate to quantitatively assess and compare conditions before and after deregulation this study therefore estimates the changes in price elasticity in the residential electricity market to examine the changes if any in household sensitivity as a result of retail electricity market deregulation policies to residential electricity rates specifically six types of panel data are prepared based on three cross sections all states except for alaska and hawaii and the district of columbia deregulated states and non deregulated states and two time series the period before deregulation and the period after deregulation the panel empirical analysis techniques are used to determine whether or not the variables are stationary and to estimate price elasticity we find that there is no substantial difference in the price elasticity between deregulated and non deregulated states for both periods before deregulation and after deregulation thus it can be said that the deregulation of the retail electricity market has not made consumers more sensitive to electricity rates and that retail deregulation policies are not the cause of price elasticity differences between deregulated and non deregulated states

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

microfinance and household poverty reduction new evidence from india the objective of the present study is to examine whether household access to microfinance reduces poverty using national household data from india treatment effects model is employed to estimate the poverty reducing effects of micro finance institutions mfis loans for productive purposes such as investment in agriculture or non farm businesses on household poverty levels these models take into account the endogenous binary treatment effects and sample selection bias associated with access to mfis despite some limitations such as those arising from potential unobservable important determinants of access to mfis significant positive effect of mfi productive loans on multidimensional welfare indicator has been confirmed the significance of treatment effects coefficients has been verified by both tobit and propensity score matching psm models in addition we found that loans for productive purposes were more important for poverty reduction in rural than in urban areas however in urban areas simple access to mfis has larger average poverty reducing effects than the access to loans from mfis for productive purposes this leads to exploring service delivery opportunities that provide an additional avenue to monitor the usage of loans to enhance the outreach

regulatory reforms and productivity an empirical analysis of the japanese electricity industry the japanese electricity industry has experienced regulatory reforms since the mid 1990s this article measures productivity in japan s steam power generation sector and examines the effect of reforms on the productivity of this industry over the period 1978 2003 we estimate the luenberger productivity indicator which is a generalization of the commonly used malmquist productivity index using a data envelopment analysis approach factors associated with productivity change are investigated through dynamic generalized method of moments gmm estimation of panel data our empirical analysis shows that the regulatory reforms have contributed to productivity growth in the steam power generation sector in japan

regional electric power demand elasticities of japan s industrial and commercial sectors abstract in the assessment and review of regulatory reforms in the electric power market price elasticity is one of the most important parameters that characterize the market however price elasticity has seldom been estimated in japan instead it has been assumed to be as small as 0 1 or 0 without proper examination of the empirical validity of such a priori assumptions we estimated the regional power demand functions for nine regions in order to quantify the elasticity and found the short run price elasticity to be 0 09 0 30 and the long run price elasticity to be 0 12 0 56 inter regional comparison of our estimation results suggests that price elasticity in rural regions is larger than that in urban regions popular assumptions of small elasticity of 0 1 for example could be suitable for examining japan s aggregate power demand but not power demand functions that focus on respective regions furthermore assumptions about smaller elasticity values such as 0 01 and 0 could not be supported statistically by this study

financial performance and outreach a global analysis of leading microbanks microfinance contracts have proven able to secure high rates of loan repayment in the face of limited liability and information asymmetries but high repayment rates have not translated easily into profits for most microbanks profitability though is at the heart of the promise that microfinance can deliver poverty reduction while not relying on ongoing subsidy the authors examine why this promise remains unmet for most institutions using a data set with unusually high quality financial information on 124 institutions in 49 countries they explore the patterns of profitability loan repayment and cost reduction the authors find that institutional design and orientation matter substantially lenders that do not use group based methods to overcome incentive problems experience weaker portfolio quality and lower profit rates when interest rates are raised substantially for these individual based lenders one key to achieving profitability is investing more heavily in staff costs a finding consistent with the economics of information but contrary to the conventional wisdom that profitability is largely a function of minimizing cost

the willingness to adopt agro ecological innovations application of choice modelling to caribbean banana planters this paper proposes an ex ante evaluation of the willingness to adopt agro ecological innovations aimed at reducing pesticide use for banana production in the french west indies four innovative systems including intercropping improved fallow and new pest tolerant varieties are proposed to a sample of 607 planters with innovation and policy attributes calibrated from a bio economic farm model the model interacts technological and economic innovation attributes with farmer individual factors and allows for a dual source of unobserved heterogeneity we estimate a system of random coefficient logit models to obtain marginal values of innovation traits that can be useful for targeting farm types with appropriate innovations and designing policies for securing agricultural revenue

exploring preference anomalies in double bounded contingent valuation double bounded dichotomous choice dbdc contingent valuation offers increased efficiency of willingness to pay wtp estimates compared with the single bounded format however evidence suggests dbdc generates anomalous respondent behaviour this paper provides the first investigation and explanation of these anomalies in health results suggest the incentives for truthful preference revelation are altered in the presence of a follow up question this result is found using both regression techniques and analysis of raw responses although findings suggest very certain respondents exhibit less anomalous behaviour inconsistencies remain across bounds the results of this study question the use of iterative valuation formats

deregulation market competition and innovation of utilities evidence from japanese electric sector this paper explores the determinants of electric utility innovation and examines the impact of electric sector deregulation and market competition on it using a balanced panel database of nine japanese utilities from 1978 to 2014 both input r d expenditure and output patent application number and patent quality aspects of innovations are examined the empirical results indicate that deregulation and market competition decrease the former but increase the latter these results are followed by a discussion on why this scenario occurs the results also suggest that after deregulation utilities focus more on short term business oriented r d projects hence we call for governments to support long term public oriented and environmental research in the electric sector

estimation of elasticities for electricity demand in brazilian households and policy implications abstract this paper aims to identify the demand elasticity in energy consumption by brazilian families by using an original household level sample we are the first to identify the average price and income elasticities for brazil we also investigate heterogeneous effects across different quantiles through a quantile regression qr analysis finally we extend the results of the qr analysis and combine them with aggregated data to assess the effects of two price policies a cross subsidy and the recently adopted tariff flags the primary data comes from the household budget survey pof for two periods 1998 99 and 2008 13 conducted in the metropolitan area of sao paulo the price and income elasticities range from 0 46 to 0 56 and from 0 20 to 0 32 respectively the qr results indicate that households behavioral response to a price increase is non uniform across groups and that the reaction is stronger for the lower quantiles additionally tariff flags lead to a more significant reduction in consumption for the low income residences therefore representing a regressive policy on the other hand a cross subsidy that increases the energy price to ordinary residences by 1 could mean a decrease in electricity prices of between 7 5 and 12 4 to low income families

economic valuation of biodiversity a comparative study abstract in recent years an intensive debate on the economic valuation of biodiversity has entered the environmental economics literature the present paper seeks to offer first a critical review of key concepts that are essential for a proper understanding of such evaluation issues particular attention is given here to various monetary valuation approaches and to comparative i e meta analytical methods from the perspective of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity several illustrative examples are presented in order to highlight the usefulness of the various approaches discussed next an attempt is made to infer general findings and lessons from past applied research by means of meta analysis in this context a multi dimensional technique originating from the field of artificial intelligence is deployed it allows us to identify the most important variables responsible for changes in economic estimates of biodiversity

modelling and forecasting turkish residential electricity demand abstract this research investigates the relationship between turkish residential electricity consumption household total final consumption expenditure and residential electricity prices by applying the structural time series model to annual data over the period from 1960 to 2008 household total final consumption expenditure real energy prices and an underlying energy demand trend are found to be important drivers of turkish residential electricity demand with the estimated short run and the long run total final consumption expenditure elasticities being 0 38 and 1 57 respectively and the estimated short run and long run price elasticities being 0 09 and 0 38 respectively moreover the estimated underlying energy demand trend which as far as is known has not been investigated before for the turkish residential sector should be of some benefit to turkish decision makers in terms of energy planning it provides information about the impact of past policies the influence of technical progress the impacts of changes in consumer behaviour and the effects of changes in economic structure furthermore based on the estimated equation and different forecast assumptions it is predicted that turkish residential electricity demand will be somewhere between 48 and 80 twh by 2020 compared to 40 twh in 2008

cotton farmers willingness to pay for pest management services in northern benin this study was carried out to assess cotton farmers willingness to pay wtp for pest management services in northern benin targeted staggered control tsc has been introduced to reduce pesticide use in cotton cropping and generate an estimated benefit of fcfa48 800 74 40 per cotton hectare accruing from increased productivity and reduced pesticide cost however tsc application requires extra time for pest identification and scouting and its adoption remains low due to the lack of funding to boost farmers awareness and cover training costs an interval regression model was used to analyze responses to a double bounded contingent valuation survey with data collected from 300 cotton farmers the results showed that 87 3 of cotton farmers were willing to pay for tsc services annual wtp per cotton hectare was estimated at fcfa16 962 25 80 revealing an existing demand for tsc adoption respondents wtp was driven by farm and socio economic characteristics financial mechanisms managed by farmers could thus potentially foster technology adoption and in turn generate economic and environmental benefits

perception of price when price information is costly evidence from residential electricity demand a bstract residential electricity consumption is an example of a good for which it is costly to determine marginal price since price changes with the quantity purchased according to multistep block rate schedules this paper investigates the effect of the price information problem on consumers price perceptions an alternative hypothesis of average price perception is tested against the marginal price postulate which assumes wellinformed consumers the model which includes a price perception variable allows the estimation of the price to which consumers actually respond the empirical results support the hypothesis that consumers respond to average price perceived from the electricity bill

sensitivity of price elasticity of demand to aggregation unobserved heterogeneity price trends and price endogeneity evidence from u s data abstract price elasticity estimates of residential electricity demand vary widely across the energy economics and policy literature in this paper we seek to explain these findings using three nationwide datasets from the u s the american housing survey forms eia 861 and the residential energy consumption survey we examine the role of the sample period level of aggregation use of panel data use of instrumental variables and inclusion of housing characteristics and capital stock our findings suggest that price elasticities have remained relatively constant over time upon splitting our panel datasets into annual cross sections we do observe a negative relationship between price elasticities and the average price whether prices are rising or falling appears to have little effect on our estimates we also find that aggregating our data can result in both higher and lower price elasticity estimates depending on the dataset used and that controlling for unit level fixed effects with panel data generally results in more inelastic demand functions addressing the endogeneity of price and or measurement error in price with instrumental variables has a small but noticeable effect on the price elasticities finally controlling for housing characteristics and capital stock produces a lower price elasticity

a meta analysis on the price elasticity and income elasticity of residential electricity demand abstract price elasticity and income elasticity can quantitatively measure the impact of price volatility and income diversity on household electricity demand to analyze household electricity demand and better identify the main factors affecting residential electricity demand elasticity in previous literature a meta analysis based on a comprehensive and systematic summary of 103 articles is presented in this study the influencing factors are identified with a weighed least squares wls linear regression model to evaluate their strength the price elasticities and income elasticities are discussed from three dimensions namely short term long term and unmarked the results show that residential electricity demand is almost price inelastic and income inelastic in the short term but in the long term some residential electricity demand is price elastic and income elastic the results also reveal that residential electricity demand elasticity is affected by many factors such as time interval and sample period these conclusions can support the formulation of more effective electricity price and energy policy

keeping up appearances motivations for socially desirable responding in contingent valuation interviews abstract the tendency to give socially desirable rather than true statements of willingness to pay wtp is an often reported form of bias in contingent valuation surveys while previous research on this bias has exclusively focused on the detection of mode effects the present study directly assesses a respondent s motivation to state wtp in a socially desirable manner this study tests the effect of three theoretical motivations for socially desirable responding on wtp responses a general need for social approval a perceived social norm calling for a high contribution and perceived lack of anonymity of the interview situation questions for the empirical assessment of these factors are developed results of a valuation study in southwest china show differing and independent impacts of these factors while there is no effect of perceived anonymity need for social approval biases wtp responses upwards but does not influence the general decision to state a positive wtp it also turns out that rather the fear of losing social status than the striving for higher social approval is the main driver of this bias respondents perceiving a social norm for high wtp are more likely to state a positive wtp but the specific amount is not affected

evaluating the validity of the dichotomous choice question format in contingent valuation hypothetical and actual cash willingness to pay wtp for an art print were elicited with dichotomous choice and open ended question formats comparing hypothetical and actual dichotomous choice responses using both a likelihood ratio test and the method of convolutions suggests we reject equality at the 0 05 but not the 0 01 level hypothetical wtp was roughly two times actual wtp with the dichotomous choice format there were no significant differences between the open ended and dichotomous choice question formats when both were used to estimate hypothetical wtp or both used to estimate actual wtp

modeling the impact of a carbon tax a trial analysis for washington state abstract in recent years energy policy makers have proposed a carbon tax as an economy wide policy tool to curb greenhouse gas ghg emissions the quantification of its impact on ghg emissions has relied on an energy economy model whose complexity often makes it difficult to comprehend how it simulates the interaction of a carbon tax and energy demand this study therefore aims at developing an alternative model called the carbon tax analysis model c tam the elasticity based approach used in c tam is less sophisticated than an equilibrium based approach used in an energy economy model but c tam is designed to maximize its predictive capabilities by using a wide range of elasticities for each sector and fuel use accounting for likely changes in fuel mix for electricity generation and addressing the model s sensitivity to elasticity estimates with monte carlo simulation the trial analysis in this study evaluates a potential carbon tax in washington state suggesting a carbon tax at us 30 per metric ton of co 2 tco 2 lowers ghg emissions by 8 4 from the business as usual bau scenario in 2035 the study concludes that c tam can provide meaningful policy implications by forecasting detailed impact on revenues and energy demand for each sector and fuel use

modeling the effect of social factors on improving biodiversity protection the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of social factors expressed as social and institutional trust social norms and social networks on the decision of individuals to pay for improvement of environmental protection of biodiversity for this purpose an empirical study was carried out in two national parks of northern greece three scenarios were proposed differing in the management options regulatory market based and community based scenarios and the payment mechanism our empirical results show that social capital variables especially social norms and social trust have a strong influence both on the decision of individuals to pay and the specific amount stated specifically we find that social norms have a positive influence for the willingness to pay wtp of individuals of a state tax and an entrance fee regulatory and market based scenario respectively furthermore social trust has a positive impact for the wtp through an entrance fee and a community tax market based and community based scenario respectively we also find a higher wtp of individuals towards the market based scenario where participation of citizens is higher compared to the current management status concerning the impact of demographic factors we find that income does not influence the specific amount stated by individuals

industrial and residential electricity demand dynamics in japan how did price and income elasticities evolve from 1989 to 2014 abstract this study estimates the price and income elasticities of industrial and residential electricity demand in japan with the annual data from 1989 to 2014 a time varying parameter tvp model with the kalman filter is applied to monitor the evolution of consumer behaviors in the post bubble period given the exogenous shock financial crisis in 2008 and the structural breaks electricity deregulation and fukushima daiichi crisis the tvp model can provide a robust estimation of elasticities and can detect the outliers and the structural breaks the results suggest that both industrial and residential consumers become less sensitive to price after the electricity deregulation and the financial crisis and more sensitive to price after the fukushima daiichi crisis especially the industrial sector is less sensitive to price after the retail deregulation by contrast the income elasticities of industrial and residential sector consumers are stable during the examined period results also indicate that a negative relationship exists between the price elasticity of electricity demand and the price level of electricity after the electric sector deregulation some insights on the further electric sector reform and the environmental taxation in japan are also provided

estimation of japanese price elasticities of residential electricity demand 1990 2007 abstract this paper estimates elasticities of japanese residential price electricity from 1990 to 2007 the first difference generalized method of moment estimator is employed to avoid dynamic panel bias which is not considered in most previous studies the results show that while short run elasticities are similar to those in previous studies long run elasticities are significantly lower in our study we also find that the price elasticity of japanese residential electricity consumption is notably affected by income inequality and severe weather based on these results we provide some insights to tailor environmental taxation so as to effectively attain the kyoto protocol

the cross price effect on willingness to pay estimates in open ended contingent valuation abstract previous literature has shown that potential buyers use a reference price or product to form their opinion about the value of a new product therefore the pricing decision is an interactive process we investigate the two generalizations of the cross price effect the neighborhood price effect and the asymmetric price effect on consumer willingness to pay wtp for multiple similar products in an open ended contingent valuation context results show that the cross price effect on wtp is prominent with the neighborhood price effect holding in contingent valuation no conclusions are reached about the asymmetric price effect

impact of bt cotton on pesticide poisoning in smallholder agriculture a panel data analysis while substantial research on the productivity and profit effects of bt cotton has been carried out recently the economic evaluation of positive and negative externalities has received much less attention here we focus on farmer health impacts resulting from bt related changes in chemical pesticide use previous studies have documented that bt cotton has reduced the problem of pesticide poisoning in developing countries but they have failed to account for unobserved heterogeneity between technology adopters and non adopters we use unique panel survey data from india to estimate unbiased effects and their developments over time bt cotton has reduced pesticide applications by 50 with the largest reductions of 70 occurring in the most toxic types of chemicals results of fixed effects poisson models confirm that bt has notably reduced the incidence of acute pesticide poisoning among cotton growers these effects have become more pronounced with increasing technology adoption rates bt cotton now helps to avoid several million cases of pesticide poisoning in india every year which also entails sizeable health cost savings