oil prices breaks and trends abstract this paper contributes to the literature of the stationarity of financial time series and the literature on oil and macroeconomics in several ways first it uses kejriwal and perron 2010 sequential procedure to endogenously determine multiple structural changes in real oil prices without facing the circular testing problem between structural changes and stationary assumptions of previous tests second it performs a diagnostic check to detect the significance and magnitude of the potential breaks third it uses the above information to test for the existence of stochastic trends in real oil prices and fourth it speculates about possible explanations for the break dates found in order to encourage further work and discussions the exercise uses monthly data from january 1861 to august 2011

cost efficiency and electricity market structure a case study of oecd countries the oecd electricity sector has witnessed significant institutional restructuring over the past three decades as a consequence many power generation utilities now act as unregulated companies that technically compete to sell power on an open market this paper analyses the performance in term of cost efficiency for electricity generation in oecd power sector while accounting for the impact of electricity market structures we employ the short run cost function in which capital stock is treated as a quasi fixed factor input empirical models are developed for the cost function as a translog form and analysed using panel data of 25 countries during the period 1980 to 2009 we show that it is necessary to model latent country specific heterogeneity in addition to time varying inefficiency the estimated economies of scale are adjusted to take account of the importance of the quasi fixed capital input in determining cost behaviour and long run constant returns to scale are verified for the oecd generation sector the research findings suggest there is a significant impact of electricity market regulatory indicators on cost in particular public ownership and vertical integration are found to have significant and sizable increasing impacts on cost thereby indicating policy lessons on the desirable ways to implement structural electricity generation reforms

efficiency and equalization payments in a federal system of government a synthesis and extensions of recent results this paper investigates the rationale for a system of equalization transfers in a federal system of government the existing sources of inefficiency of resource allocation in economies with more than one level of government are synthesized in the framework of a simple decentralized multiprovince model with mobile factors of production the sources of inefficiency arise first because migrants respond at the margin to incorrect signals owing to the phenomena of rent sharing and fiscal exterality and second because of global rather than local inefficiencies the model is then extended to consider the role of the federal government in providing intergovernmental transfers in the face of such inefficiencies in addition to synthesizing the sources of inefficiency in federal models the equity arguments for equalization are briefly recounted efficacite et paiements de perequation dans un systeme federal de gouvernement synthese et extensions de certains resultats recents ce memoire examine la logique qui soustend un systeme de paiements de perequation dans un systeme fdderal de gouverement les auteurs utilisent un modele simple d un systeme multi provincial decentralise avec des facteurs de production mobiles pour definir les sources d inefficacite dans l allocation des ressources dans les dconomies qui possedent plus d un niveau de gouvernement ces inefficacites proviennent de ce que d abord ceux qui se deplacent le font en reponse a la marge a des signaux incorrects engendres par le partage de la rente sur la base de la residence et par les phenomenes d exteralites fiscales elles sont aussi le resultat d inefficacites globales plutot que locales dans le cadre de ce modele les auteurs analysent le role du gouvernement federal effectuant des transferts inter gouverementaux pour corriger ces inefficacites en plus de presenter une synthese des sources d inefficacite dans les regimes federaux les auteurs font un bref rappel en passant a l ensemble des arguments fondes sur l equite qu on utilise pour rationaliser les paiements de perequation this paper is a linear combination of two papers presented at the may 1982 meetings of the canadian economics association in halifax entitled the case for equalization payments by the authors and recent developments in the theory of regional economic policy in canada by boadway the authors are grateful for comments by the discussants jim johnson and baxter macdonald and by jack mintz brian scarfe gerard belanger david sewell tom courchene and the referees we are especially heavily indebted to dan usher for many stimulating comments and suggestions while the work was in progress some of the above persons will undoubtedly disagree with the emphasis we have chosen to put on various aspects of the analysis for policy purposes support for some of this work has been provided by the economic council of canada and is gratefully acknowledged canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xv no 4 november novembre 1982 printed in canada imprimd au canada 0008 4085 82 0000 0613 01 50 1982 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 207 46 13 127 on wed 12 oct 2016 04 27 47 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms 614 robin boadway and frank flatters

contributions of public and private science and technology to u s agricultural productivity the impact of public and private research to agricultural productivity in the us between 1950 and 1982 were assessed using an econometric model analysis of us aggregate measures of multifactor agricultural productivity was undertaken using imputation accounting statistical meta function and statistical productivity decomposition methods the study indicated that public sector research should be focused on general and pretechnology sciences while private sector resources should be channeled to applied research and technology advancement

infrastructure and development a critical appraisal of the macro level literature this survey reviews the existing macro level empirical literature on the link between infrastructure and development outcomes in a critical light after providing a general framework that casts the relevant terms of the controversy on the real effect of infrastructure on growth in the context of an aggregate production function it signals what are the relevant empirical questions to be addressed this guides the systematic review of a number of empirical studies and the discussion of the main econometric challenges to the identification of the effect of infrastructure on output and productivity finally building on related research in particular in contract theory and political economy the paper spells out several promising research avenues

predatory versus productive government the case of u s agricultural policies this essay will argue that agricultural policy in the united states has led to both the enhancement of efficiency through productive policies and the transfer of wealth and income to special interests through redistributive or predatory policies these two activities can be labeled as pests and perts pest policies or political economic seeking transfers are meant to redistribute wealth from one social group to another and are not explicitly concerned with efficiency in contrast perts or political economic resource transactions are intended to correct market failures or to provide public goods these policies have neutral distributional effects at least in design a review of the history of public policy in agriculture reveals not only tension between the pert and pest roles of the public sector but also some coordination between these two types of activities as different interest groups pressure the political process the government trades off pests and perts in its attempts to acquire balance and secure political power at times this has led to combinations of programs that appear incoherent in such a world the challenge for economists is to design and advocate policies that are both economically productive and politically sustainable

liberalizing the energy markets of western europe a computable equilibrium model approach using a computable equilibrium model the short run effects of a radical liberalization of the west european natural gas and electricity markets are examined in each model country oil gas coal and electricity are produced traded and consumed there are world markets for oil and coal and well integrated competitive markets for gas and electricity in western europe gas and electricity are transported and traded across markets under the assumption of ideal third party access regimes for transportation and limited capacities in the transportation networks it is found that relative to the data year 1996 radical liberalization reduces the average end user price of natural gas by around 20 and the average end user price of electricity by around 50 the supply of electricity increases by around 20 mainly due to increased coal power production after such liberalization coal power emerges with the largest market share of electricity production in western europe

public investment and industry incentives in life science research life science research has shifted rapidly from the public to the private sector raising questions about government s remaining role we shed light on the issue by employing a dynamic investment response model to examine the public s impact on industry life science research effort and success we find that government expenditures in both basic biological research and agricultural and medical science create substantial spillovers for private firms the spillovers are unfortunately partly nullified by government competition for scarce research inputs yet even after accounting for such competition public investment has been strongly complementary to private investment indeed opportunities created through public research are the principal source of growth in industry life sciences copyright 2007 oxford university press

econometric analysis of australian emissions markets and electricity prices emissions trading schemes aim to reduce the emissions in certain pollutants using a market based scheme where participants can buy and sell permits for these emissions this paper analyses the efficiency of the two largest schemes in australia the nsw greenhouse gas abatement scheme and the mandatory renewable energy trading scheme through their effect on the electricity prices from 2004 to 2010 we use a long run structural modelling technique for the first time on this market it provides a practical long run approach to structural relationships which enable the determination of the effectiveness of the theoretical expectations of these schemes the generalised forecast error variance decomposition analysis finds that both schemes emissions prices have little effect on electricity prices generalised impulse response function analysis support this finding indicating that when shocks are applied to electricity by the two schemes it returns to equilibrium very quickly this indicates that these schemes are not having the effect anticipated in their legislation

a club convergence analysis of per capita energy consumption across australian regions and sectors we examine convergence in per capita energy consumption across nine sectors and seven states and territories in australia over the period 19902016 using the phillips sul club convergence approach we find evidence of multiple convergence clubs for aggregate energy consumption per capita and for energy consumption per capita in eight of the nine sectors with full club convergence in the case of electricity the presence of multiple equilibria for most sectors reflect that states with similar features in terms of climate economic activities and population size among others tend to exhibit similar energy consumption patterns our results highlight the need to tailor policies designed to reduce energy consumption in specific sectors to the consumption convergence paths unique to particular clusters of states

a parametric estimation of total factor productivity and its components in u s agriculture the present study aims at improving our understanding of the individual contribution of the components of total factor productivity tfp change to u s agricultural productivity a novel sequential primal dual estimation routine to calculate tfp change is proposed using a multi output input distance function in the first stage followed by a cost minimization routine in the second stage tfp change is estimated as the direct sum of the estimates of technical change technical efficiency change allocative efficiency change input price effects changes in output markup and changes in returns to scale in each state the validity of the proposed methodology is supported by the remarkable overlap and high correlation of our annual estimates of tfp change with the usda s measures of change in tfp by state although technical change tends to be the largest contributor to productivity change it bears a low and statistically insignificant correlation with tfp change on an annual basis whereas annual changes in the markup effect and returns to scale are highly and significantly correlated with tfp changes this is the first study to find a slowdown of technical progress in the u s farm sector in the 1990s and 2000s and technical regress during the farm crisis of the 1980s while technical efficiency shows a positive overall trend allocative efficiency shows a negative overall trend and their combined effect i e the overall cost efficiency slows down tfp growth the policy recommendations from previous studies on the drivers of tfp should be revised in light of these findings

post war productivity patterns in u s agriculture influences of aggregation procedures in a state level analysis annual data for forty eight states are used to account for changes in the composition of input and output aggregates over space and time and thereby to obtain new evidence on changes in inputs outputs and productivity in u s agriculture the measures change significantly when we use state specific rather than national prices and when we allow for changes in the composition of the aggregates especially of labor and capital inputs we compare our estimates and those reported by ball et al american journal of agricultural economics 81 1999 164 79 the national estimates are similar but substantial differences are found in state level productivity growth

optimality free mobility and the regional authority in a federation abstract this paper examines the efficiency properties of a federation characterized by strategically competing regions and freely mobile homogeneous individuals analyses of this economy have concluded that achieving a pareto optimal will require intervention by a national authority this paper makes one basic point the nash equilibrium of regional authority behavior is pareto optimal the implication is that there is no role for a national authority in either providing interregional transfers or correcting for decentralized provision of public goods the nash equilibrium involves samuelson public goods provision and regions purchasing preferred population distributions with optimal interregional transfers

renewable and non renewable energy consumption and economic activities further evidence from oecd countries this article examines the dynamic relationship between renewable and non renewable energy consumption and industrial output and gdp growth in oecd countries using data over the period of 1980 2011 the panel cointegration technique allowing structural breaks is used for empirical investigation the results show that there is a long term equilibrium relationship among non renewable and renewable energy sources industrial output and economic growth the panel causality analyses show bidirectional causality between industrial output and both renewable and non renewable energy consumption in the short and long run however there is evidence of bidirectional short run relationship between gdp growth and non renewable energy consumption while unidirectional causality between gdp growth and renewable energy consumption these results indicate that oecd economies still remain energy dependent for their industrial output as well as overall economic growth however expansion of renewable energy sources is a viable solution for addressing energy security and climate change issues and gradually substituting renewable to non renewable energy sources could enhance a sustainable energy economy

revisiting electricity liberalization and quality of service empirical evidence from new zealand abstractwhat effect does the firm structure have on the quality of service delivered by networks and infrastructure industries we answer this question by empirically assessing the impacts of complete vertical separation such as ownership unbundling on the quality of service delivered by a liberalized network industry electricity distribution utilities in new zealand are considered for this purpose and are analysed using panel data econometrics the results show robust evidence that ownership unbundling contributed to a fall in the duration and frequency of supply interruptions in electricity distribution however the results also show that unbundling has no effect on reducing distribution network losses these results overall highlight the nonsimple impacts of ownership unbundling on the quality of electricity distribution we suggest that the quality of service may largely improve when considered in the economic regulation of electricity networks than completely relying on specific reform measures

consumer electricity and gas prices across australian capital cities structural breaks effects of policy reforms and interstate differences abstract we detect and analyze the most significant structural changes in the quarterly growth rate of consumer electricity and gas prices in australia and estimate their corresponding seasonal effects to do so we apply the general modelling framework of the bai perron breaking regression to all available quarterly data for capital cities individually and australia as a whole 1989q3 2017q2 retail energy prices in most australian states were deregulated in the 2000s we find that increases in average quarterly growth rates of electricity and gas prices consistently occurred in the third september quarter and find very few instances of increases in any other quarters of the year in the post deregulation period price increases are significantly higher than in the pre deregulation era results for some capital cities are stark in perth third quarter growth in electricity prices has been five times higher after the structural break in australia as a whole third quarter growth in gas prices has been three times higher after the structural break we discuss several possible explanations for energy price rises in the period since deregulation

causes of u s farm commodity programs this paper i s an attempt to explain variations by commodity in producer protection afforded by farm price support programs since the1930s particularly emphasized are theideas that these programs are essentially income redistributional measures and that given political forces the programs are attempts to redistribute efficiently variables associated with the cost to producers of generating political pressure and the social cost deadweight losses of redistribution are both found to be empirically important copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

efficiency effects of agricultural economics research in the united states allocations of research funds across programs are often made for efficiency reasons social science research is shown to have small lagged but significant effects on u s agricultural efficiency when public agricultural r d and extension are simultaneously taken into account farm management and marketing research variables are used to explain variations in estimates of allocative and technical efficiency using a bayesian approach that incorporates stylized facts concerning lagged research impacts in a way that is less restrictive than popular polynomial distributed lags results are reported in terms of means and standard deviations of estimated probability distributions of parameters and long run total multipliers extension is estimated to have a greater impact on both allocative and technical efficiency than either r d or social science research

productivity growth and the effects of r d in african agriculture this article measures and compares total factor productivity growth in african agriculture under contemporaneous and sequential technology frontiers over the period 1970 2004 the sources of productivity growth are examined using a fixed effects regression model and a polynomial distributed lag structure for agricultural r d expenditures while conventional estimates show an average productivity growth rate of only 0 3 per year the improved measures under sequential technology show that african agricultural productivity grew at a higher rate of 1 8 per year technical progress rather than efficiency change was the principal source of productivity growth agricultural r d weather and trade reforms turned out to have significant effects on productivity in african agriculture with a rate of return of 33 per year r d is shown to be a socially profitable investment in african agriculture while a strong r d expenditure growth of about 2 per year in the 1970s led to strong productivity growth after the mid 1980s stagnation of r d expenditure in the 1980s and early 1990s led to slower productivity growth in the 2000s consistent with recent economic recovery in africa evidenced by stronger agricultural gdp growth rates results showed that policy reforms as well as improved weather contributed to the recovery of agricultural productivity after the mid 1980s

modeling the length and shape of the r d lag an application to uk agricultural productivity this article updates total factor productivity tfp growth in uk agriculture from 1953 2005 and shows that public and private research and returns to scale explain tfp cointegration and causality tests are used to investigate the validity of attempts to explain uk agricultural productivity with r d and related technology variables then the length and shape of the lag structures are modeled and compared with the structures that are commonly imposed on the data the rates of return ror to r d using the data determined lags differ considerably from those obtained by imposing lag shapes these comparisons show that the ror to public r d are sensitive to the lag shape as well as its length and that the omission of other technology variables such as mechanical and chemical patents pertaining to agriculture and farm size can bias the ror

jump dynamics with structural breaks for crude oil prices this study investigates the joint phenomena of permanent and transitory components in conditional variance and jump intensity along with verification of structural breaks for crude oil prices we adopt a component arji model with structural break analysis utilizing daily data on west texas intermediate crude oil spot and futures contracts the analytical results verify the existence of permanent and transitory components in conditional variance with the permanent component of conditional variance increasing with the occurrence of a sudden major event such as the iraqi invasion of kuwait operation desert storm and the war between the us and iraq and a relatively greater increase in the transitory component over the same period notably jump intensity fluctuates with an increase in the transitory component of conditional variance in response to abnormal events it is the transitory component which serves as the primary influential factor for jumps in returns therefore speculators are willing to take large risks particularly with respect to anticipating future price movements or gambling in the hopes of rapidly making substantial gains thus speculators prefer the temporary volatility component and engage in trade activities however investors prefer the permanent volatility component because they may well be better off relocating their assets into more stable portfolios to outperform the market portfolio over the long run

breaks trends and unit roots in spot prices for crude oil and petroleum products abstract this study examines the trend properties in energy price series using weekly spot price data for crude oil heating oil and regular gasoline in particular the procedures proposed by perron and yabu 2009b are employed to test for a one time break in the trend function of each price series with no prior knowledge of whether the noise component is stationary or has an autoregressive unit root based on the results of the break estimate the unit root test developed by kim and perron 2009 is performed to examine the stationarity of the prices finally we extend the one break analysis to the case with multiple breaks by employing the break test proposed by kejriwal and perron 2010 and the unit root test of carrion i silvestre et al 2009 the results consistently demonstrate evidence of structural breaks and reject the unit root null hypothesis for all the price series suggesting that energy prices are persistently influenced by long term economic fundamentals instead of temporal policy changes

a literature review of economic studies on carbon pricing and australian wholesale electricity markets abstract with the ongoing development of australian anthropogenic climate change mitigation policies there has been a steady increase in modelling studies undertaken to estimate australian carbon prices and their impact on existing electricity markets this article summarises some of the more prominent studies completed by many of australia s foremost economic modelling firms we developed a simple approach for testing the consistency of these studies and their findings in relation to carbon pass through unfortunately we have established that the studies are entirely inconsistent in their estimation of carbon pass through furthermore we were unable to establish why the estimation of carbon pass through varies so significantly this has important implications for policy makers given much of the compensation to be paid to households and businesses under the clean energy future package is predicated on simple assumptions of carbon pass through based upon our analysis of these economic studies our conclusion is that australian policy makers are best guided by relying upon the numerous a posteriori estimations of pass through in the european union emissions trading scheme ets rather than australian a priori studies

the political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture an empirical study the paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture we use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures pari the empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses the analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers but also to invest in public agricultural research furthermore the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision making on pari is non linear and conditional on other factors regarding the impact of political institutions the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers agricultural protection nor to lower investment in public goods pari

ethnic diversity energy poverty and the mediating role of trust evidence from household panel data for australia abstract energy poverty is now a major concern on the public policy agenda in many countries however evidence on the determinants of energy poverty is relatively scant our study contributes to the debate on the determinants of energy poverty by being the first to examine the impact of ethnic diversity on household energy poverty using 12 waves of longitudinal data from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey we find that in australia ethnic diversity is positively associated with energy poverty our preferred instrumented estimates suggest that a standard deviation increase in ethnic diversity is associated with a 0 103 0 422 standard deviation increase in energy poverty depending on how energy poverty is measured this finding is generally robust to alternative ways of measuring ethnic diversity and energy poverty we identify trust as an important channel through which ethnic diversity operates and point to the need for policies that engender social capital in multicultural societies as a means to harness the benefits of diversity

motivations for market restructuring evidence from u s electricity deregulation abstract the purpose of this paper is to examine whether electricity restructuring was brought about due to the public interest theory that regulatory changes are undertaken to benefit society or the interest group theory that groups hoping to gain from deregulation lobby for regulatory changes from 1996 to 2002 eighteen states developed restructuring programs targeted at improving efficiency through the use of increased wholesale trading abolition of cost of service regulation measures to open electricity production to non utility entities and the unbundling of transmission and distribution results indicate some evidence of the public interest theory and strong evidence of the interest group theory

price discrimination in australia s retail electricity markets an analysis of victoria southeast queensland when capital intensive monopoly industries are restructured and deregulated consumer prices commence a natural drift from regulated uniform average cost tariffs to competitive differential prices and this can raise problems for policymakers deep discounts are welcomed high standing offers are not but price discrimination is unremarkable in economics indeed in industries where fixed sunk costs represent a significant portion of total cost discriminatory pricing is usually welfare enhancing conversely theory predicts and empirical evidence confirms that regulatory efforts to cherry pick differential prices in asymmetric markets will damage consumer welfare in this article we analyse differential retail electricity offer prices in the australian states of victoria and queensland and contrast these with industry average total cost and the marginal cost of retail supply we find deregulated victoria displays high price dispersion with standing offer tariffs 10 above industry average total cost and marginal offers at break even prices i e 20 below average total cost in the semi regulated southeast queensland market where a regulated price cap exists there is lower dispersion but marginal offers include a 6 7 retail mark up efficient pricing requires the marginal unit produced to be priced at marginal cost and victoria meets this criteria but we identify an episode of inter consumer misallocation due to high standing offers we conclude policy initiatives designed to help firms shift vulnerable households from standing offer tariffs is desirable

revitalising the wind power induced merit order effect to reduce wholesale and retail electricity prices in australia this paper investigates the effect of increasing the number of wind turbine generators on wholesale spot prices in the australian national electricity market s nem given the existing transmission grid from 2014 to 2025 we use a sensitivity analysis to evaluate the effect of five different levels of wind power penetration on prices ranging from scenario a no wind to scenario e that includes existing and planned wind power sufficient to meet australia s original 2020 41twh large scale renewable energy target lret we find divergence in prices between states and similar prices for nodes within states this supports the garnaut climate change review assessment on the prevalence of gold plating the intrastate transmission network and underinvesting in interstate connectivity we find that increasing wind power penetration decreases wholesale spot prices but that retail prices have increased in deregulated south australia and queensland similarly in victoria we argue that there is a pressing need to split the large generator retail companies into separate retail and generator companies and to reassess regulatory rules more generally interconnector congestion limits the potential for wind power to further reduce wholesale prices across the nem so the need for a high capacity transmission backbone in the nem is becoming clearer and will become pressing when australia moves beyond its current 2020 lret

transmission of prices and price volatility in australian electricity spot markets a multivariate garch analysis this paper examines the transmission of spot electricity prices and price volatility among the five regional electricity markets in the australian national electricity market namely new south wales queensland south australia the snowy mountains hydroelectric scheme and victoria a multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model is used to identify the source and magnitude of price and price volatility spillovers the results indicate the presence of positive own mean spillovers in only a small number of markets and no mean spillovers between any of the markets this appears to be directly related to the physical transfer limitations of the present system of regional interconnection nevertheless the large number of significant own volatility and cross volatility spillovers in all five markets indicates the presence of strong autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity and generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity effects this indicates that shocks in some markets will affect price volatility in others finally and contrary to evidence from studies in north american electricity markets the results also indicate that australian electricity spot prices are stationary

australian retail electricity prices can we avoid repeating the rising trend of the past abstract after a stable or declining real trend that persisted for more than half a century australian retail electricity prices have experienced a substantial increase in real terms since 2007 this has mainly been driven by increases in the cost of electricity distribution and to a lesser degree in the cost of electricity generation reducing greenhouse gas emissions which is a bipartisan political goal in australia will likely deliver further increases in generation costs due to the expected higher cost of low emission technology participating in global negotiations on emission reduction targets and designing efficient policy mechanisms have been a major focus of governments over the last several decades in contrast managing distribution system costs has received less attention while there were a number of factors which drove historical increases in distribution costs management of peak demand growth could help contain or reduce the extent to which consumers particularly households experience further increases in distribution costs the paper demonstrates how different combinations of carbon price and peak demand scenarios could impact future residential and industrial retail electricity prices to 2050 and discusses some behavioural and technological solutions to manage peak demand and potential barriers to their deployment

consumer welfare effects of increased food and energy prices in this study the authors evaluated how much price changes in food and energy two basic living expenditures competing for consumers budgets would affect consumer welfare we first estimated a us complete demand system to quantify the interdependent demand relationships among 11 categories of consumption expenditures among the estimates the own price elasticities of both food and energy are relatively inelastic a finding that explains the dynamics of the recent soaring food and energy prices the estimated demand elasticities were then incorporated into the measurement of hicksian compensating variation to analyse the consumer welfare effects of price changes in food and energy the results indicated that an increase in food and energy prices would increase compensated expenditures or incur a substantial consumer welfare loss creating an especially heavy burden for low income households

a dynamic equalisation model for economic and social capital grants with a south african example abstract a capital grant model has been developed which can be used in developing economies to allocate grants to sub national governments for economic or social capital the model allows these allocations to happen in a way that increases the value of the capital stock whilst at the same time addresses any inter regional inequities or economic inefficiencies the model is also applied to south africa as an illustrative example and the results of three model simulations for that country are presented there is a discussion of the data requirements for the model and how it might be replicated by researchers for other economies

structural and productivity change in us agriculture 1950 1982 this paper tests whether structural change in us agriculture is an important channel to tfp growth and evaluates the relative impact of i public research and education policies ii private r d and market forces and iii government farm programs on structural change we specify a structural econometric model fit it to us state aggregate data 1953 1982 and use the associated reduced form model to perform counter factual policy simulations the findings include structural change is a channel to tfp growth in both crop and livestock subsector i e specialization size and part time farming do impact tfp holding other variables constant public r d and education have been at least as important as private r d and market forces for changing livestock specialization farm size and farmers off farm work participation over the study period but private r d and market forces have been relatively more important for crop specialization changes in farm commodity programs had little impact on farm structure over these study period overall we conclude that if public r d and education policies had been unchanged at their 1950 values over 1950 1982 major structural changes in us agriculture would have occurred anyway the forces of private r d and market forces were at work including a decline in the price of machinery services and agricultural chemicals relative to the farm wage

does human capital matter for energy consumption in china this article investigates the dynamic relationship between human capital and energy consumption using chinese provincial data over the period 1990 2010 considering for cross sectional dependence and parameter heterogeneity across space and over time we identify a significant and negative human capital energy consumption relationship in china specifically we find that a 1 increase in human capital reduces energy consumption by a range between 0 18 and 0 45 furthermore this negative relationship can be attributed to stronger accumulation of post school human capital in eastern china this finding suggests that energy conservation in china could be achieved by improving post school human capital components such as on the job training experience and learning by doing

the impact of ownership unbundling on cost efficiency empirical evidence from the new zealand electricity distribution sector abstract several countries around the world have introduced reforms to the electric power sector one important element of these reforms is the introduction of an unbundling process i e the separation of the competitive activities of supply and production from the monopole activity of transmission and distribution of electricity there are several forms of unbundling functional legal and ownership new zealand for instance adopted an ownership unbundling in 1998 as discussed in the literature ownership unbundling produces benefits and costs one of the benefits may be an improvement in the level of the productive efficiency of the companies due to the use of the inputs in just one activity and a greater level of transparency for the regulator this paper analyzes the cost efficiency of 28 electricity distribution companies in new zealand for the period between 1996 and 2011 using a stochastic frontier panel data model a total cost function and a variable cost function are estimated in order to evaluate the impact of ownership unbundling on the level of cost efficiency the results indicate that ownership separation of electricity generation and retail operations from the distribution network has a positive effect on the cost efficiency of distribution companies in new zealand the estimated effect of ownership separation suggests a positive average one off shift in the level of cost efficiency by 0 242 in the short run and 0 144 in the long run

good volatility bad volatility what drives the asymmetric connectedness of australian electricity markets efficient delivery of network services and the electricity infrastructure to meet the long term consumer s interests are the main objectives and the strategies of a national electricity market while the main interests of generators are to maximize their profit through pricing strategies therefore the objective of this study is to explore whether electricity prices across the four australian states display symmetric price volatility connectedness the study is the first attempt in the literature to make use of intraday 5 min australian dispatch electricity prices spanning the period december 8th 1998 to may 5th 2016 to quantify asymmetries in volatility connectedness emerging from good and bad volatility the results provide supportive evidence that the australian electricity markets are connected asymmetrically implying the presence of some degree of market power that is exercised by generators across regional electricity markets

renewable energy regulation and structural breaks an empirical analysis of spanish electricity price volatility abstract international experience proves that electricity prices have undergone major changes in volatility since the entry of green technologies the intermittency of renewable sources is one of the reasons for these changes as it leads to higher volatility in periods of higher participation by renewables we argue that the development of the regulatory system promoting renewable electricity also plays a crucial role we raise a question that deserves attention could an incentive scheme induce higher share of renewables and lower volatility simultaneously in this paper we conduct an empirical analysis with spanish data we analyze possible ensuing structural changes in spanish electricity spot price volatility from january 2002 to december 2017 we identify two structural breaks linked to important measures related to renewable electricity i the abolishment of the feed in tariff scheme and ii the establishment of a more market oriented regulation based on investment and operating costs we conclude that stable regulatory policies reduce volatility even though the presence of renewable sources is greater furthermore market based policy measures achieve lower volatility encouraging good integration of intermittent renewable electricity

energy price uncertainty energy intensity and firm investment this paper examines the effect of energy price uncertainty on firm level investment an error correction model of capital stock adjustment is estimated with data on u s manufacturing firms higher energy price uncertainty is found to make firms more cautious by reducing the responsiveness of investment to sales growth the result is robust to consideration of energy intensity by industry the effect is greater for high growth firms it must be emphasized that the direct effect of uncertainty is not estimated conditional variance of energy price is obtained from a garch model findings suggest that stability in energy prices would be conducive to greater stability in firm level investment

structural breaks and electricity prices further evidence on the role of climate policy uncertainties in the australian electricity market the primary objectives and the strategies of a national electricity market are the efficient delivery of network services and the electricity infrastructure to meet the long term consumer s interests therefore the objective of this study is to explore whether electricity prices across the six australian states display instability such instability is closely associated with the presence of structural breaks in relevance to policy events on australian carbon policies the study makes use of weekly australian wholesale electricity prices spanning the period from june 8th 2008 to march 30th 2014 along with linear and non linear unit root testing methodologies the results provide supportive evidence that the australian electricity market can be described as a less stable electricity market which implies that a high degree of market power is exercised by generators across regional markets these findings are expected to have substantial consequences for the effectiveness of carbon dioxide mitigating policies especially when there is uncertainty as to whether the planned environmental policy is put in place for the lifespan of undertaken investments