wind power price trends in the united states struggling to remain competitive in the face of strong growth the amount of wind power capacity being installed globally is surging with the united states the world leader in terms of annual market share for three years running 2005 2007 the rapidly growing market for wind has been a double edged sword however as the resulting supply demand imbalance in wind turbines along with the rising cost of materials and weakness in the u s dollar has put upward pressure on wind turbine costs and ultimately wind power prices two mitigating factors reductions in the cost of equity provided to wind projects and improvements in project level capacity factors have helped to relieve some of the upward pressure on wind power prices over the last few years because neither of these two factors can be relied upon to further cushion the blow going forward policymakers should recognize that continued financial support may be necessary to sustain the wind sector at its current pace of development at least in the near term though this article emphasizes developments in the u s market for wind power those trends are similar to and hold implications for the worldwide wind power market

a review of renewable investment and power system operational issues in bangladesh generation investments especially large scale variable renewable energy requires careful scrutiny of the state of the power system power system planning and operations in a developing country like bangladesh can often achieve significant improvements in economics and security of supply through modest and prudent investments a review of the bangladesh power sector is presented in this paper that highlights a changes to dispatch protocols to undertake fuel constrained dispatch optimization and ancillary services co optimization and pricing b issues related to the allocation of natural gas between sectors and c a technology neutral investment framework the study uses an hourly dispatch and ancillary services co optimization model that also optimizes short to medium term investment decisions the results demonstrate bangladesh can a reduce its production costs by 63 through more efficient dispatch b reduce production costs by 77 by using an additional natural gas quota of 212 mmcfd or a 23 increase and c should have invested in power import and baseload gas coal rather than expensive solar pv projects proposed in 2011 at substantially higher cost at the time when a carbon price is imposed in the model the implied break even cost to justify the solar program is very high in excess of 150 tonne

electricity consumption and economic growth nexus in bangladesh revisited evidences abstract in this paper an attempt is being made to examine the causal relationship between per capita electricity consumption and per capita gdp of bangladesh using the vector error correction specified granger causality test to search their short run long run and joint causal relationships for the period of 1971 2008 empirical findings reveal that there is a short run unidirectional causal flow running from per capita electricity consumption to per capita gdp without feedback the presence of a positive short run causality explains that an increase in electricity consumption directly affects economic activity in bangladesh likewise results from joint causality exhibit the same as in short run by contrast long run results show a bi directional causality running from electricity consumption to economic growth with feedback these findings can provide essential policy insights to design immediate and long term growth prospect for bangladesh keeping in mind its present planned growth strategy and dismal power and energy sector

the location of activities of manufacturing multinationals in the asia pacific analysis of survey results from 440 manufacturing multinationals active in the asia pacific shows that there are significant differences in the patterns of location decisions for different corporate activities in the region analysis of a random effects mixed model of activity location suggests relationships between a variety of location and firm attributes and foreign investment in different activities and shows that the patterns of significance among the explanatory variables differ across different activities the results are consistent with the view that firm activities along with resources and knowledge should be viewed as fundamental components of the multinational firm

political risk institutions and foreign direct investment how do they relate in various european countries this paper examines theoretically and empirically the extent to which the decision by foreign firms to invest in a group of countries is influenced by economic factors as opposed to political risk and institutional performance we consider the importance of these factors as drivers of foreign direct investment fdi for 32 european countries subsequently divided into three pooled clusters by means of panel regression techniques in two specifications over the 1995 2008 period our results suggest that risk and institutional factors considered in both static and dynamic perspectives significantly influence the behaviour of investors policies and institutions that vary widely between countries modify their decision making so that the purely economic factors have different statistical significance and impacts on the intensity of fdi as was revealed by clustering countries into three groups according to levels of economic maturity additionally not all factors of risk have an identical impact on fdi decisions in particular groups of countries however we find that as measures of political risk monetary discipline low regulation effective government and good education prove to be highly significant for most country groupings all of these measures reduce political risk and positively affect the level of fdi this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

perception of risks in renewable energy projects the case of concentrated solar power in north africa the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent climate change while meeting the energy needs of developed and developing economies recent studies suggest that generation of electricity from concentrated solar power in north african countries and its transmission to europe could provide european and north african partners with low carbon electricity the private capital will be likely required to achieve the scale of new investment and yet the north african region experience difficulties with sustaining high levels of foreign direct investment from the private sector the literature identifies a number of risks as barriers to investment and we examine these in the particular context of renewable energy development we conducted three stages of interviews with stakeholders to learn their perceptions of the risks most likely to affect renewable energy projects three class of risks regulatory political and force majeure which includes terrorism stand out as being of high concern of these regulatory risks are perceived as being the most consequential and the most likely to occur this suggests that attention to building the capacities of north african countries to develop implement and enforce sound regulations in a transparent manner could be an important step in promoting renewable energy cooperation with europe

stochastic growth with correlated production shocks this paper extends the stochastic growth model of brock and mirman j econ theory 4 1972 497 513 to allow the production shocks to be correlated over time the resultant optimal savings and consumption policies depend not only upon the current level of output but also upon the most recent realization of the random shock the properties of these policy functions are studied and it is shown that the markov process on output capital stock and consumption resulting from the application of these policies converges to a stationary distribution

energy consumption real income and temporal causality results from a multi country study based on cointegration and error correction modelling techniques abstract unlike previous studies on the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth this paper illustrates how the finding of cointegration i e long term equilibrium relationship between these variables may be used in testing granger causality based on the most recent johansen s multivariate cointegration tests preceded by various unit root or non stationarity tests we test for cointegration between total energy consumption and real income of six asian economies india pakistan malaysia singapore indonesia and the philippines non rejection of cointegration between variables rules out granger non causality and imples at least one way of granger causality either unidirectional or bidirectionial secondly by using a dynamic vector error correction model we then analyse the direction of granger causation and hence the within sample granger exogeneity or endogeneity of each of the variables thirdly the relative strength of the causality is gauged through the dynamic variance decomposition technique by decomposing the total impact of an unanticipated shock to each of the variables beyond the sample period into proportions attributable to shocks in the other variables including its own in the bivariate system results based on these tools of methodology indicate that while all pair wise relationships shared common univariate integrational properties only relationships for three countries india pakistan and indonesia were cointegrated for these countries temporal causality results were mixed with unidirectional causality from energy to income for india exactly the reverse for indonesia and mutual causality for pakistan the vdcs were not inconsistent with these results and provided us with an additional insight as to the relatively more dominant direction of causation in pakistan simple bivariate vector autoregressive models for the three non cointegrated systems did not indicate any direction of causality significantly in either direction

nexus between non renewable energy demand and economic growth in bangladesh application of maximum entropy bootstrap approach abstract the paper analyzes the causal relationship between energy demand and economic growth in bangladesh using annual time series data from 1980 to 2011 from world development indicator wdi database of the world bank since the results of causal direction are sensitive to the models being employed the paper uses maximum entropy bootstrap meboot due to its superiority to overcome small sample bias and limitation of asymptotic distribution theory to avoid the omitted variables bias the paper uses multivariate framework in production function specification the paper finds that a unidirectional causality runs from economic growth to energy demand which indicates that conservative policy might not harm the bangladesh economy but since economic progress leads higher energy consumption demand side management of energy and exploring renewable energy sources are must the implications are discussed

why and how fdi stocks are a biased measure of mne affiliate activity many international business ib studies have used foreign direct investment fdi stocks to measure the aggregate value adding activity of multinational enterprises mne affiliates in host countries we argue that fdi stocks are a biased measure of that activity because the degree to which they overestimate or underestimate affiliate activity varies systematically with host country characteristics first most fdi into countries that serve as tax havens generate no actual productive activity thus fdi stocks in such countries overestimate affiliate activity second fdi stocks do not include locally raised external funds funds widely used in countries with well developed financial markets or volatile exchange rates resulting in an underestimation of affiliate activity in such countries finally the extent to which fdi translates into affiliate activity increases with affiliate labor productivity so in countries where labor is more productive fdi stocks also result in an underestimation of affiliate activity we test these hypotheses by first regressing affiliate value added and affiliate sales on fdi stocks to calculate a country specific mismatch and then by regressing this mismatch on a host country s tax haven status level of financial market development exchange rate volatility and affiliate labor productivity all hypotheses are supported implying that fdi stocks are a biased measure of mne affiliate activity and hence that the results of fdi data based studies of such activity need to be reconsidered

an investigation of co integration and causality between energy consumption and economic activity in taiwan applying hsiao a version of the granger causality method this paper examines the causality between energy and gnp and energy and employment by applying recently developed techniques of co integration and hsiao s version of the granger causality to taiwanese data for the 1955 1993 period the phillips perron tests reveal that the series with the exception of gnp are not stationary and therefore differencing is performed to secure stationarity the study finds causality running from gdp to energy consumption without feedback in taiwan it is also found that causality runs from gdp to energy but not vice versa

chinese energy investments in europe an analysis of policy drivers and approaches abstract enhancing the understanding of china eu energy relations the article examines chinese energy investments in europe from 2008 to 2015 and analyzes the energy interests and policy approaches underpinning them analysis of this data shows that within the eu 30 chinese investments largely focused on the oil and gas sector especially through the acquisition of company shares chinese energy investments in europe reflect a clear political and commercial strategy that addresses the prc s need to balance supply chain security of fossil fuels environmentally friendlier energy production and use as well as to enhance the market position and energy industrial capabilities of chinese state owned or state supervised energy companies based on a comprehensive set of domestic incentives for international investment the chinese penetration of the european energy sector is embedded within two levels of political cooperation the first level revolves around bilateral investment agreements between china and 27 eu member states on the second level china and the eu have established a variety of formats that guide their energy cooperation the conclusion of the proposed bilateral investment agreement between the prc and the eu would create a uniform investment environment across the continent and facilitate mutual economic benefits for both parties

an economic perspective on experience curves and dynamic economies in renewable energy technologies this paper analyzes dynamic economies in renewable energy technologies the paper has two contributions the first is to test the robustness of experience in solar photovoltaic solar thermal and wind energy to the addition of an explicit time trend which has been done in experience studies for other industries but not for renewable energy technologies estimation is carried out on the assumption that cumulative capacity industry production average firm production and electricity generation affect experience and thus the fall in price the second contribution is to test the impact of r d on price reduction in general cumulative experience is found to be highly statistically significant when estimated alone and highly statistically insignificant when time is added to the model the effect of r d is small and statistically significant in solar photovoltaic technology and statistically insignificant in solar thermal and wind technologies

employment impacts of solar energy in turkey abstract solar energy is considered a key source for the future not only for turkey also for all of the world therefore the development and usage of solar energy technologies are increasingly becoming vital for sustainable economic development the main objective of this study is investigating the employment effects of solar energy industry in turkey some independent reports and studies which analyze the economic and employment impacts of solar energy industry in the world have been reviewed a wide range of methods have been used in those studies in order to calculate and to predict the employment effects using the capacity targets of the photovoltaic pv and concentrated solar power csp plants in the solar roadmap of turkey the prediction of the direct and indirect employment impacts to turkey s economy is possible as a result solar energy in turkey would be the primary source of energy demand and would have a big employment effects on the economics that can only be achieved with the support of governmental feed in tariff policies of solar energy and by increasing research development funds

political governance civil liberties and human capital evaluating their effect on foreign direct investment in emerging and developing economies we study the influence of a country s political governance on its attractiveness to foreign direct investors we argue that democracy is not a unidimensional concept and that the effect of host country political governance on incoming foreign direct investment fdi differs depending on whether fdi originates from a democratic or an autocratic country we also hypothesize that the effect of civil liberties depends on the motivations of investing multinational enterprises mnes and that human capital moderates this relationship we test our hypotheses on a sample of 35 000 investments in emerging and developing countries between 2003 and 2013

historical construction costs of global nuclear power reactors the existing literature on the construction costs of nuclear power reactors has focused almost exclusively on trends in construction costs in only two countries the united states and france and during two decades the 1970s and 1980s these analyses koomey and hultman 2007 grubler 2010 and escobar rangel and leveque 2015 study only 26 of reactors built globally between 1960 and 2010 providing an incomplete picture of the economic evolution of nuclear power construction this study curates historical reactor specific overnight construction cost occ data that broaden the scope of study substantially covering the full cost history for 349 reactors in the us france canada west germany japan india and south korea encompassing 58 of all reactors built globally we find that trends in costs have varied significantly in magnitude and in structure by era country and experience in contrast to the rapid cost escalation that characterized nuclear construction in the united states we find evidence of much milder cost escalation in many countries including absolute cost declines in some countries and specific eras our new findings suggest that there is no inherent cost escalation trend associated with nuclear technology

causal relationship between energy consumption and gdp revisited the case of korea 1970 1999 abstract causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is investigated applying a multivariate model of capital labor energy and gdp usual btu energy aggregate is substituted with a divisia aggregate in an attempt to mitigate aggregation bias to test for granger causality in the presence of cointegration among the variables we employ a vector error correction model rather than a vector autoregressive model empirical results for korea over the period 1970 1999 suggest a long run bidirectional causal relationship between energy and gdp and short run unidirectional causality running from energy to gdp the source of causation in the long run is found to be the error correction terms in both directions

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

the contribution of renewable resources in meeting turkey s energy related challenges abstract the aim of this paper is to point out the importance of renewable energy as a key way for resolving the turkey s energy related challenges as a consequence of economic and social development turkey s energy consumption has risen dramatically over the past three decades at present fossil fuels account for more than 90 of the total energy consumption in the country turkey has no large oil and natural gas reserves and it import nearly all of these fossil fuels turkey s current energy mix is not likely to support development of sustainable energy the energy mix shows a relatively small contribution from renewable energy sources in the country they have the potential to make a large contribution to turkey s sustainable and independent energy future in particular they can help to reach the environmental goals of turkey and to increase the security of energy supply by reducing the dependence on imported fuel supplies

chinese investment in the eu renewable energy sector motives synergies and policy implications abstract this paper addresses three questions how have trade and investment in wind and solar sectors evolved between the eu and china in recent years is there a link between rising trade conflicts and trade and investment trends and what wider motivations and synergies can be identified in chinese investments in the eu s re sector to address these questions we analyze trade and investment data as well as qualitative data including information from media and company reports large increases in trade and investment were followed by rapid falls since 2012 13 trade tensions have not led to increases in investment rather the inverse we find that chinese investment in these two sectors is very concentrated in germany the key motivation for investment is market seeking although r d is also important especially for wind most investments are greenfield a preference that has persisted over time our qualitative analysis of several key acquisitions indicates that technology integration and the consolidation of capacities across the supply chain were key motivations in most of the cases studied we conclude with some policy orientations

trends in foreign direct investment flows a theoretical and empirical analysis this paper seeks to provide a rationale for changing trends in the flow and determinants of foreign direct investment fdi as a result of macro economic and firm strategy considerations we identify several factors that impact on such trends and develop propositions that could explain the phenomenon generically the study then provides preliminary empirical support for the propositions presented and outlines the path for further research needed to investigate more causal links the statistical analysis of investments by us multinational enterprises mnes reveals significant changes in the regional distribution of fdi and a change in some of its traditional determinants results show that us mnes are now making increasing investments into asia to exploit low wage levels and to secure entry into new markets

foreign direct investments fdis in turkish power sector a discussion on investments opportunities and risks abstract power sector is important for managing the transition towards sustainable and cleaner energy systems and foreign investments can contribute to overcome the problems encountered in the process despite the vast literature on foreign direct investments fdi in other sectors studies on the power sector have been limited to either developed economies or major developing economies such as china or india therefore this study aims to discuss turkish case by using panel data analysis for 2002 2012 period results have shown that the major drivers of fdi inflows in turkish power sector were privatization and low real effective exchange rate during the period in addition turkey has the potential and opportunities to attract more investments with the recent reforms and increasing incentives for renewable energy technologies however business environment and the quality of institutions may create obstacles for realizing its potential moreover fiscal incentives and macroeconomic stability are important to sustain investments and economic and institutional reforms notably the eu integration process are important for fdi inflows

foreign direct investment in the energy and power sector in bangladesh implications for economic growth abstract in this paper we present a discussion on current energy and power situation of the country and examine the causal relationship between fdi in the energy and power sector and economic growth in bangladesh for the period 1972 2010 related trend reveals a considerable gap between energy production and energy use during this period moreover inflow trend of fdi was also fluctuating over the studied period we also find that there are robust positive and unidirectional short run causal relationships running from fdi to energy use and from energy use to gdp growth empirical results also confirm a causal relationship for the energy use equation in the long run considering the resource and technology gap and requirements for the development of the energy and power sector fdi should be encouraged to this sector that would be imperative to the targeted gdp growth

probabilistic decision model of wind power investment and influence of green power market this paper presents results from a model of a representative wind power investor s decision making process using a monte carlo simulation of a project financial analysis data in the form of probability distribution functions pdfs for key input variables were collected from interviews with investors and other professionals active in the u s wind power industry using a formal expert elicitation protocol this study presents the first quantitative estimates of the effect of the u s voluntary renewable energy certificate rec market on renewable energy generation the results indicate that the investment decisions of wind power project developers in the united states are unlikely to have been altered by the voluntary rec market the problem with the current voluntary rec market is that it does not offer developers a reliable risk adjusted revenue stream consequently the claims by u s green power retailers and promoters that voluntary market recs result in additional wind power projects lack credibility even dramatic increases in voluntary market rec prices in the absence of long term contracts were found to have only a small effect on investor behavior

the relationship between energy and gnp further results this paper reexamines the casuality between gnp and energy consumption by using updated us data for the period 1947 1979 as a secondary contribution we investigate the causal relationship between energy consumption and employment applying sims technique we find no causal relationship between gnp and energy consumption we find further that there is a slight unidirectional flow running from employment to energy consumption economic interpretations of the empirical results are also presented

adaptations of renewable energy policies to unstable macroeconomic situations case study wind power in brazil despite the massive cost reduction in the last decade wind power generation is generally still more expensive than conventional energy sources which benefit from the exclusion of externality costs in the price structure support policies for renewable energies guarantee the economic viability of this type of electrical power generation in many european countries in latin america brazil has become the pioneer state for renewable energy with the implementation of the proinfa programme that supports among other sources wind power development of 1100 mw this article presents an overview of the differences between the german and brazilian wind power promotion policies with a special focus on how proinfa can be adapted to the unstable macroeconomic situation of brazil the document specifically examines the adaptation of wind power promotion policies to large inflation and interest rates in brazil

the determinants of foreign direct investment in services this paper has two main objectives first to consider country specific determinants that attract services fdi and second to compare the importance of these determinants vis a vis traditional determinants that attract manufacturing fdi using oecd countries as our sample and 1980 to 2003 as our time period we consider the determinants of inward fdi in a panel setting our results provide empirical evidence to support the view that no new theories may be necessary to explain the determinants of services fdi

overview of the photovoltaic technology status and perspective in turkey abstract the republic of turkey located in southeastern europe and southwestern asia that portion of turkey west of the bosporus is geographically part of europe nowadays turkey with its young population and growing energy demand per person its fast growing urbanization and its economic development has been one of the fast growing electrical energy markets of the world for the last two decades unfortunately turkey s energy is largely dependent on foreign countries and the country s energy is imported spending billions of dollars each year on the other hand the effects on global and environmental air quality of pollutants released into the atmosphere from fossil fuels in electric power plants provide strong arguments for the development of renewable energy resources solar energy is one of the best available among renewable energy sources there are possess many advantages of solar energy such as relativity viability silent non polluting little maintenance suitable for remote site application not require any fuel and independent from electricity network turkey has advanced a great deal in the generation of electricity from solar energy because of much higher solar energy potential than lots of developed countries on solar energy applications this study is taken into account that overview of the photovoltaic technology status and perspective in turkey and the contains of photovoltaic power systems utilization and potential status in the world energy consumption and demand in turkey geographic description of the solar energy in turkey pv industry current and potential status in turkey solar energy legislation framework in turkey r d status of photovoltaic industry in turkey future strategy of pv industry in turkey current and future status photovoltaic power systems economics in the world also this paper on the basis of this subjects is analyzed the swot of turkey s photovoltaic industry its advantages weaknesses opportunities and threats

the effect of political events on united states direct foreign investment a pooled time series cross sectional analysis this paper examines the effect of political events on the manufacturing direct foreign investment mdfi decisions of u s multinational corporations the relationship between political events and nonpolitical factors and mdfi is investigated through regression analysis of pooled time series 21 years and cross sectional 24 countries data and through various tests of the homogeneity of the relationship across groups of countries the study finds that the relationship between political events in mdfi is different for less developed countries as opposed to developed countries for the less developed countries both inter nation and intra nation conflict and cooperation affect mdfi in contrast u s mdfi in developed countries appears to be affected only by inter nation conflict and cooperation

the impact of institutional hazards on foreign multinational activity a contingency perspective prior studies have shown that institutional hazards in the form of formal governance deficiencies and informal cultural distance are both negatively related to the amount of foreign multinational activity in countries we argue that the strength of these negative relationships varies systematically with the type of foreign activity horizontal or vertical and the type of institutional hazard governance or cultural because institutional hazards striking vertical affiliates generally also have negative consequences for other parts of a multinational enterprise mne while those striking horizontal affiliates do not we hypothesize that institutional hazards are more negatively related to vertical foreign activity than to horizontal foreign activity since cultural hazards can generally be reduced or resolved once they materialize while governance hazards cannot we also hypothesize that the impact of governance hazards on each type of foreign activity is more negative than the impact of cultural hazards on that type of activity a panel data analysis of sales by us foreign affiliates to affiliated and local unaffiliated customers over the period 1996 2004 lends support to these hypotheses our findings thus show that the impact of institutional hazards on foreign mne activity is more complex than previously assumed

a review of renewable energy investment in the brics countries history models problems and solutions abstract this paper reviews the history of renewable energy development in the brics countries the financing models for renewable energy development of brics countries include bank financing institutional loans industry funds and international financing this paper identified several problems with financing in brics countries including a lack of financing channels investment shortage for small and medium sized enterprises and imperfect government policies the solutions to these problems include expanded capital markets the financing of leasing services and build operate transfer and build own operate projects further a financial citizen participation model should be employed similar to that as germany and european union emissions trading system eu ets a financial citizen participation model means that legal entities private individuals and agricultural enterprises invest in renewable energy infrastructure through equity a regional reserve ratio monetary policy is suggested to allow regions to develop renewable energy

energy and output dynamics in bangladesh the relationship between energy consumption and output is still ambiguous in the existing literature the economy of bangladesh having spectacular output growth and rising energy demand as well as energy efficiency in recent decades can be an ideal case for examining energy output dynamics we find that while fluctuations in energy consumption do not affect output fluctuations movements in output inversely affect movements in energy use the results of granger causality tests in this respect are consistent with those of innovative accounting that includes variance decompositions and impulse responses autoregressive distributed lag models also suggest a role of output in bangladesh s energy use hence the findings of this study have policy implications for other developing nations where measures for energy conservation and efficiency can be relevant in policymaking

solar energy markets economics and policies abstract solar energy has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years due to both technological improvements resulting in cost reductions and government policies supportive of renewable energy development and utilization this study analyzes the technical economic and policy aspects of solar energy development and deployment while the cost of solar energy has declined rapidly in the recent past it still remains much higher than the cost of conventional energy technologies like other renewable energy technologies solar energy benefits from fiscal and regulatory incentives including tax credits and exemptions feed in tariff preferential interest rates renewable portfolio standards and voluntary green power programs in many countries the emerging carbon credit markets are expected to provide additional incentives to solar energy deployment however the scale of incentives provided by the existing carbon market instruments such as the clean development mechanism of the kyoto protocol is limited despite the huge technical potential the development and large scale deployment of solar energy technologies world wide still has to overcome a number of technical financial regulatory and institutional barriers the continuation of policy supports might be necessary for several decades to maintain and enhance the growth of solar energy in both developed and developing countries

understanding wind turbine price trends in the u s over the past decade understanding wind turbine price trends in the u s over the past decade mark bolinger and ryan wiser lawrence berkeley national laboratory pre print of article submitted to energy policy abstract on a per kw basis wind turbine prices in the u s have declined by nearly one third on average since 2008 after having previously doubled over the period from 2002 through 2008 these two substantial and opposing trends over the past decade and particularly the earlier price doubling run counter to the smooth gradually declining cost trajectories predicted by standard learning curve theory taking a bottom up approach we examine seven possible drivers of wind turbine prices in the u s with the goal of estimating the degree to which each contributed to the doubling in turbine prices from 2002 through 2008 as well as the subsequent decline in prices through 2010 in aggregate these seven drivers which include changes in labor costs warranty provisions manufacturer profitability turbine scaling raw materials prices energy prices and foreign exchange rates explain from 70 to 90 depending on the year of empirically observed wind turbine price movements in the u s through 2010 turbine scaling is found to have been the largest single contributor to the price doubling through 2008 although the incremental cost of scaling has been justified by greater energy capture resulting in a lower cost of wind generation acknowledgments the work described in this article was funded by the u s department of energy s wind water power program within the office of energy efficiency and renewable energy under contract no de ac02 05ch11231 disclaimer this document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by the united states government while this document is believed to contain correct information neither the united states government nor any agency thereof nor the regents of the university of california nor any of their employees makes any warranty express or implied or assumes any legal responsibility for the accuracy completeness or usefulness of any information apparatus product or process disclosed or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights reference herein to any specific commercial product process or service by its trade name trademark manufacturer or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement recommendation or favoring by the united states government or any agency thereof or the regents of the university of california the views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the united states government or any agency thereof or the regents of the university of california ernest orlando lawrence berkeley national laboratory is an equal opportunity employer

institutions and inflows of foreign direct investment a fuzzy set analysis this study addresses the essential question of causal complexity and diversity related to the influence of institutions on the direct investments fdi of multinational enterprises using a relatively new methodological approach of fuzzy set analysis and 47 host countries from the period 1999 to 2003 the paper analyses how and why countries with different degrees of membership in different institutional constraints either attract or do not attract fdi the findings show that institutional factors have diverse influences similar institutions may even be associated with different outcomes if different regional categories of countries are examined countries may neither be attractive nor unattractive owing to the presence or absence of a single institutional factor instead the outcome usually results from a combination of institutional conditions moreover there typically are several possible paths to a specific outcome the study confirms some of the propositions of previous theory but most importantly it explains why earlier research has provided conflicting conclusions related to institutional factors the study also offers an approach for future international business research to apply fuzzy set methods and develop mid range theories

linking fdi motivation and host economy productivity effects conceptual and empirical analysis we develop a taxonomy that relates foreign direct investment fdi motivation technology and cost based to its anticipated effects on host countries domestic productivity we then empirically examine the effects of fdi into the united kingdom on domestic productivity and find that different types of fdi have markedly different productivity spillover effects which are consistent with the conceptual analysis the uk gains substantially only from inward fdi motivated by a strong technology based ownership advantage as theory predicts inward fdi motivated by technology sourcing considerations leads to no productivity spillovers

the cultural relativity of organizational practices and theories this paper summarizes the author s recently published findings about differences in people s work related values among 50 countries in view of these differences ethnocen tric management theories those based on the value system of one particular country have become untenable this concept is illustrated for the fields of leadership organization and motivation a key issue for organization science is the influence of national cultures on introduction management twenty or even 10 years ago the existence of a relationship be management and tween management and national cultures was far from obvious to many and it national cultures may not be obvious to everyone even now in the 1950s and 60s the dominant be lief at least in europe and the u s was that management was something univer sal there were principles of sound management which existed regardless of na tional environments if national or local practice deviated from these principles it was time to change local practice in the future the universality of sound manage ment practices would lead to societies becoming more and more alike this ap plied even to the poor countries of the third world which would become rich as well and would be managed just like the rich countries also the differences be tween management in the first and second world capitalist and socialist would disappear in fact under the surface they were thought to be a lot smaller than was officially recognized this way of thinking which dominated the 1950s and 60s is known as the convergence hypothesis during the 1970s the belief in the unavoidable convergence of management prac tices waned it was too obviously in conflict with the reality we saw around us at the same time supranational organizations like the european common market which were founded very much on the convergence belief had to recognize the stubbornness of national differences even within existing nations regional dif ferences became more rather than less accentuated the welsh the flemish the basques the bangladeshi the quebecois defended their own identity and this was difficult to reconcile with a management philosophy of convergence it slowly became clear that national and even regional cultures do matter for management the national and regional differences are not disappearing they are here to stay in fact these differences may become one of the most crucial problems for man agement in particular for the management of multinational multicultural orga nizations whether public or private

the impact of iso 9000 diffusion on trade and fdi a new institutional analysis the effects of iso 9000 diffusion on trade and foreign direct investment fdi have gone understudied we employ panel data reported by oecd nations over the 1995 2002 period to estimate the impact of iso adoptions on country pair economic relations we find iso diffusion to have no effect in developed nations but to positively pull fdi i e enhancing inward fdi and positively push trade i e enhancing exports in developing nations

dyadic military conflict security alliances and bilateral fdi flows although multinationals operate under cross border jurisdictions the relevance of interstate security relations to international business has received little attention despite the impressive accumulation of knowledge in international business and international relations the two intellectual communities have largely ignored the insights from each other in this article we seek to bridge this gap we argue that interstate military conflict and security alliances as two central features of interstate security relations often change both government policies toward international business and investor expectations of political risk from the perspectives of both states and investors military conflict should reduce bilateral investment whereas security alliances increase it our empirical analysis applies the system gmm estimator to a gravity model of bilateral investment flows for 1117 directed dyads among 58 countries from 1980 to 2000 among 18 countries whose per capita real incomes remain consistently above 12 000 constant dollars the security factors do not affect bilateral investment in the high income low income dyads interstate military conflict and security alliances significantly influence bilateral investment as expected the findings depict two separate realms in which international politics does and does not interfere with international business helping us improve political risk assessments and understand the interactions between states and firms

the management of political risk we explore a long standing prediction in the international business literature that managers subjective perceptions of political risk not just the level of risk are important for how firms manage political risk the importance attributed to political risk by corporate executives has increased over the last 15 years and our results show that political risk is now considered more important than commodity input risk our analysis suggests that nearly 50 of firms avoid not simply reduce foreign direct investment because of political risk using a unique survey based psychometric evaluation of manager risk aversion we show that firms with risk averse executives are more likely to avoid investment in politically risky countries a key implication of behavioral models this relation is economically stronger when agency problems are more likely to be severe for example when executives are less aligned with shareholder value maximization and when executives are younger and therefore might put their personal career concerns in front of shareholders interests while numerous studies have shown that political risk affects foreign direct investment using objective measures of such risk electoral uncertainty conflicts etc our study documents that executives subjective perceptions of political risk are also important for political risk management

a cultural explanation of the foreign bias in international asset allocation abstract this paper examines the foreign bias in international asset allocation following extant literature in behavioral finance we argue that a society s culture and the cultural distance between two markets play an important role in explaining the foreign bias in particular we hypothesize that the degree of a nation s uncertainty avoidance affects the foreign bias more uncertainty avoiding countries allocate less to foreign markets as does the degree of a country s individualism in individualistic countries performance is more directly attributed to a person and less to teams causing these individuals to be more aggressive in their foreign asset allocations we further expect that the degree of cultural distance between two countries affects the amount of money allocated to that market based on extensive robustness analyses we find support for our hypotheses on the role of culture in international asset allocation

next power generation mix for bangladesh outlook and policy priorities abstract bangladesh s strategy for economic development relies heavily on its energy and power policy searching for an efficient implementation of planned power generation mix of gas oil coal and hydro at present the contribution of gas is around 83 of total power generation which is much higher than other traditional fuel sources to reduce this single source dependency on gas bangladesh needs to initiate alternative option to sustain its mid term power generation mix in addition to achieve its long term energy security government of bangladesh has already initiated a new master plan for the development of power generation under fuel diversification scenario in this view local coal production and imported coal would assist the power planners to reduce the sole dependency on gas driven power plants in addition cross border hydropower import from bhutan myanmar and nepal would also be a vital policy imperative to maintain the country s long term energy security nonetheless adding extra power to production side is certainly essential demand side management through efficient energy use and energy conservation could also be of assistance to the release the existing crisis to a greater extent

demand pull instruments and the development of wind power in europe a counterfactual analysis renewable energy technologies are called to play a crucial role in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions since most of these technologies did not yet reach grid parity public policies have been implemented in order to foster their deployment the approach that has been privileged in europe is the demand pull approach that aims at creating a demand for these new technologies and at stimulating their diffusion this paper examines the effect of demand pull policies on the diffusion of onshore wind power technology in six european countries denmark france germany italy portugal and spain in a first step a micro founded model of diffusion is calibrated in order to replicate the observed diffusion of wind power in these six countries in a second step a counterfactual analysis is conducted by investigating several scenarios by taking into account the complex self sustained dynamics of diffusion and the learning spillovers that operate in the wind power sector we can derive several insights about demand pull policies first the impact of a demand pull policy on the diffusion of wind power is determined by the stage at which it comes to support it the effect seems to be stronger at the beginning of the diffusion second international spillovers do operate in the wind power sector these international spillovers however are not strong enough to foster the diffusion of wind power in a country having no demand pull support we can derive from these two statements that a strategy consisting in not implementing any demand pull policy with the expectation that international spillovers will reduce the cost of wind power and foster the diffusion of the technology that then shall become competitive is not a good option for a country targeting a high share of wind power in its energy mix

globalization and location choice an analysis of us multinational firms in 1980 and 2000 in this paper we examine foreign location choices of the top 100 us multinational corporations mncs in 1980 and 2000 we first ask whether there has been a change in mnc foreign location choice in this two decade period second we explore the underlying reasons of location change by focusing on country level factors accounting for firm industry and regional level explanations our findings suggest first that the extent of mncs activities around the globe is more extensive than assumed by regionalists arguments and well beyond ohmae s triad but still less widespread than claimed by the globalists the two main traditions within the globalization regionalization debate second we uncover an interesting de location pattern in this period third we develop an integrative framework where both economic and institutional cultural arguments are shown to influence mncs foreign location choice in different ways we conclude with a discussion of our findings and provide suggestions for future research

the relationship between energy consumption energy prices and economic growth time series evidence from asian developing countries this paper estimates the causal relationships between energy consumption and income for india indonesia the philippines and thailand using cointegration and error correction modelling techniques the results indicate that in the short run unidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for india and indonesia while bidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for thailand and the philippines in the case of thailand and the philippines energy income and prices are mutually causal the study results do not support the view that energy and income are neutral with respect to each other with the exception of indonesia and india where neutrality is observed in the short run c 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classifications c22 q43 q48

renewable electricity production costs a framework to assist policy makers decisions on price support abstract despite recent progress the production costs for renewable electricity remain above those for conventional power expectations of continuous reductions in production costs typically underpin governments policies for financial support they often draw on the technology focused versions of the experience curve model this paper discusses how national contextual factors also have a strong influence on production costs such as geographic infrastructural institutional and resource factors as technologies mature and as they reach significant levels of diffusion nationally sustained increases in production costs might be recorded due to these nationally contextual factors poorly accounted for in policy making decisions for price support the paper suggests an analytical framework for a more comprehensive understanding of production costs based on this it recommends that the evolution of specific cost levels and factors be monitored to locate sources of changes the paper also suggests policy instruments that governments may use to facilitate cost decreases whenever possible the application of the framework is illustrated for the diffusion of wind power in spain during the past three decades

determinants of foreign direct investment empirical evidence from eu accession candidates this study examines bilateral foreign direct investments fdi between the members of the european union and eight central and east european candidate ceec economies in transition awaiting accession into the european union eu crosssection data were obtained for bulgaria czech republic estonia hungary poland romania slovak republic and slovenia for 1997 once the main characteristics of fdi recipient and donor nations are identified in a bilateral framework it will be feasible to predict future fdi inflows this study reveals that the key determinants of fdi inflows in ceecs are size of the host economy host country risk labour costs in host country and openness to trade countries that are receiving fewer foreign investments could make themselves more attractive to potential donor nations by focusing on some of the key determinants identified by this study

the spillovers of foreign direct investment and the convergence of energy intensity abstract the imbalance and insufficiency of china s regional economic development has led to huge differences in regional energy efficiency reducing the differences in regional energy efficiency has become an urgent energy issue in china the constant absorption of foreign direct investment fdi has brought advanced technologies to china which has an important impact on china s energy efficiency to explore whether fdi can reduce regional energy efficiency differences this paper investigates the existence of energy intensity convergence while incorporating foreign direct investment fdi since existing research on regional energy intensity convergence lacks of consideration of the data spatial dependence we focus on spatial econometric model to test energy intensity convergence we use panel data of 30 provinces in china over the period of 2005 2014 to test energy intensity convergence by convergence model the empirical results show that considering the spatial dependence of the data fdi can promote the formation of conditional energy intensity convergence further analysis found that the spillover effect of fdi plays an important role in this formation in addition the convergence speed accelerates after considering the spatial dependence finally the spillover effect of fdi which is global inhibits the declining speed of energy intensity during the research period the scale effect of fdi and energy rebound effect plays an important role in the effect of fdi on energy intensity these results show that guiding foreign investment more reasonably in each province in china can make contributions to the reduction of energy efficiency differences

policy and non policy determinants of u s equity foreign direct investment this study examined the effects of policy and non policy variables on the location of new u s direct investment abroad as distinct from reinvested earnings of existing affiliates using 1977 and 1982 benchmark data the data revealed statistically significant effects for investment incentives positive performance requirements negative and host country effective tax rates negative with interesting differences between the two time periods and between developed versus developing countries significance was also found for non policy variables such as political stability cultural distance gdp per capita and infrastructure

real business cycles in this paper we demonstrate how certain very ordinary economic principles lead maximizing individuals to choose consumption production plans that display many of the characteristics commonly associated with business cycles our explanation is entirely consistent with i rational expectations ii complete current information iii stable preferences iv no technological change v no long lived commodities vi no frictions or adjustment costs vii no government viii no money and ix no serial dependence in the stochastic elements of the environment we also provide a completely worked out example of the type of artificial economy we have in mind the time series properties of the example exhibit some major features of observed business cycles although this type of model may not be capable of explaining all of the regularities in actual business cycles we believe that it provides a useful well defined benchmark for assessing the relative importance of factors e g monetary disturbances

electricity market opening impact on investments in electricity sector abstract the paper focuses on the impact of the electricity market regulation on generating technologies including renewable in lithuanian and poland the paper aims to identify how the regulatory and non regulatory factors have influenced investors choices a country case studies approach were applied to analyse and address define the main factors that have influenced investors choice of technology mix in electricity market in transition the major findings of the analysis entail the main driving forces behind the rationale for reform electricity reform characteristics the impact of electricity market reform on electricity prices and electricity market reform and non reform related factors that have influenced investor s choice for a specific generation technology or a technology mix

unraveling the photovoltaic technology learning curve by incorporation of input price changes and scale effects in a large number of energy models the use of learning curves for estimating technological improvements has become popular this is based on the assumption that technological development can be monitored by following cost development as a function of market size however recent data show that in some stages of photovoltaic technology pv production the market price of pv modules stabilizes even though the cumulative capacity increases this implies that no technological improvement takes place in these periods the cost predicted by the learning curve in the pv study is lower than the market one we propose that this bias results from ignoring the effects of input prices and scale effects and that incorporating the input prices and scale effects into the learning curve theory is an important issue in making cost predictions more reliable in this paper a methodology is described to incorporate the scale and input prices effect as the additional variables into the one factor learning curve which leads to the definition of the multi factor learning curve this multi factor learning curve is not only derived from economic theories but also supported by an empirical study the results clearly show that input prices and scale effects are to be included and that although market prices are stabilizing learning is still taking place

the electricity consumption and gdp nexus for the fiji islands fiji is a small open island economy dependent on energy for its growth and development hence the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is crucial for fiji s development in this paper we investigate the nexus between electricity consumption and economic growth for fiji within a multivariate framework through including the labour force variable we use the bounds testing approach to cointegration and find that electricity consumption gdp and labour force are only cointegrated when gdp is the endogenous variable we use the granger causality f test and find that in the long run causality runs from electricity consumption and labour force to gdp implying that fiji is an energy dependent country and thus energy conservation policies will have an adverse effect on fiji s economic growth

on integrating theories of international economics in the strategic planning of global supply chains and facility location abstract this paper relates three theories of international economics comparative advantage competitive advantage and competitiveness and formulates the thesis that incorporating them in the form of readily available individual competitiveness indicators in or ms models offers promise to enhance decision support for the strategic planning of global supply chains in general and for locating facilities in particular the purpose of this paper is to relate these theories from the field of international economics to give a roadmap of related measures that are provided by annual competitiveness reports and to pose several research questions as challenges to the or ms community as it seeks to improve models to support the strategic planning process accordingly specific objectives of this paper are to relate each of these theories and to describe their interrelationships to describe measures provided by two well known annual competitiveness reports and to illustrate application of the theories as a means of supporting the thesis of the paper and justifying the research questions we pose for future research while this paper discusses topics relative to the broader background of global supply chain design it illustrates applications associated with facility location a component of the global supply chain design since it has a rich history within the or ms community and since it is central to strategic planning in the global economy

a discussion on recent developments in turkey s emerging solar power market abstract market reform energy security and environmental protection are three primary energy policy goals of turkish government although turkey s abundant solar energy resources can directly address the government s energy policy goals turkey has not utilized solar power yet utilization of country s huge solar energy potential would decrease dependence on imported fossil fuels and contribute to fulfill environmental commitments however lack of regulatory and financial support for the development of solar power has considerably delayed the utilization of country s huge solar potential the government has taken only modest steps to promote investment in solar power until the end of 2010 when a new feed in tariff policy was adapted turkey s solar energy potential pv technology status and prospect for concentrating solar power in turkey have been explored in a number of studies yet literature dealing with recent policy developments associated investment environment and opportunities for solar power investors are limited the aim of this paper is to set out the latest legal framework for investment in turkey s emerging solar power market and to provide some guidelines to potential investors who appreciated country s huge solar energy potential

the globalization of service multinationals in the triad regions japan western europe and north america in this study we empirically investigate the determinants of foreign direct investment of service multinationals based in the triad regions japan western europe and north america foreign investment decisions of 168 of the largest service firms in nine service industries over the period 1976 1986 are analyzed and hypotheses that are developed based on findings of manufacturing fdi and studies of single service industries are tested using a logistic regression model the applicability of the mne fdi theories to service mnes is tested empirically over a broad range of mne home countries and service industries differences in the international behavior of service mnes based in different countries are uncovered and analyzed

limits to substitution and irreversibility in production and consumption a neoclassical interpretation of ecological economics abstract there are many methodological approaches within ecological economics one of the principal modes of analysis is a modified version of the standard neoclassical model this paper examines the parallels which emerge between the ideas of some ecological economists concerning production and the ideas of others concerning consumption when these ideas are interpreted in the neoclassical paradigm it is well known that ecological economics is characterized by arguments concerning limits to substitution between inputs energy natural capital etc vs manufactured capital labor etc in production and the implications these have for sustainability however various authors have also expressed concerns regarding limits to substitution in consumption either between environmental assets and other goods or between basic needs commodities and other goods though the specific reasons for non substitution are different in the production and consumption cases the underlying theme is that individual commodities and other inputs have unique physical or other properties which make them poor substitutes ideas about irreversibility in production and economic development are also prominent in ecological economics likewise many authors have argued for similar irreversibilities in consumption behavior in analogy to the term technological change i coin the term preferential change to describe these phenomena the linking themes in this case are that the economy environment system is evolutionary in character and that external effects intended and unintended consequences of actions or processes imposed on other parties or resources are all pervasive

comparative dynamics of an equilibrium intertemporal asset pricing model this paper uses recursive competitive theory to develop a general equilibrium asset pricing model in this framework all prices and rates of return are endogenously determined thus enabling us to analyze the effects of changes in preferences technological uncertainty and expectations on the structure of security prices in particular we focus on how the market risk premium varies with changes in the underlying economic environment an issue which other asset pricing models have chosen not to address

the saving and investment nexus for china evidence from cointegration tests the saving and investment nexus as postulated by feldstein and horioka fh 1980 is revisited the saving investment correlation for china is estimated over the periods 1952 1998 and 1952 1994 the latter culminating in a period of fixed exchange rate regime amongst the key results it is found that saving and investment are correlated for china for both the period of the fixed exchange rate and the entire sample period with high saving investment correlation the results suggest that the chinese economy is in conformity with the fh hypothesis this is a valid outcome for in china capital mobility was fairly restricted over the 1952 1994 period as indicated by the relatively low foreign direct investment