leapfrog to the future energy scenarios and strategies for suriname to 2050 abstract this paper formulates energy strategies for suriname a conceptual model identifying relationships in the energy sector is conceived one of the striking characteristics is that various relationships inhibit significant uncertainty our contemporary age is characterized by more complex becoming relations decreasing predictability and increasing chaos simple extrapolation of past events is therefore futile since deviations from anticipated outcomes have significant impacts the scenario planning methodology has been used to deal with this uncertainty the most uncertain high impact driving forces that shape the future of the energy sector in suriname have been identified and are used to create energy scenarios to 2050 next robust strategies have been formulated which primarily focus on institutionalization renewable resources cost reflecting tariffs decentralization of energy supply and energy efficiency and savings leading indicators have been identified that identify towards which scenario the present develops and hence which set of strategies need to be applied

a review of the recent empirical literature on displaced workers this article reviews the empirical literature on job displacement job displacement is widespread and strongly countercyclical tending to peak during economic downturns but concentrated in indus

electric power sector reform liberalization models and electric power prices in developing countries an empirical analysis using international panel data this study aims to clarify whether the effects of electric power sector reforms should be different either across regions or between developing and developed countries an empirical model was analyzed to observe the impact of electric power prices on the selection of a liberalization model in the power sector this was achieved by the use of an ordered response fixed effect and a random effect model an instrument variable technique was also used to estimate the impact of the liberalization model on the electric power price this technique addressed the problems of simultaneity bias between the electric power price and the liberalization models selected these econometric models were designed using panel data from 78 countries in four regions developed countries asian developing countries the former soviet union and eastern europe and latin america for the period from 1985 to 2003 the research findings suggest that higher electricity prices are one of the driving forces for governments to adopt liberalization models however the development of liberalization models in the power sector does not necessarily reduce electricity prices in fact contrary to expectations there was a tendency for the price to rise in every market modeled

advance notice and job search the value of an early start recent studies of the effect of advance notice on jobless duration following displacement misspecify the relationship between these two variables by treating advance notice as a dummy regressor in conventional survival time models job search theory however suggests that the major impact of advance notice is not to alter the efficiency of search after job loss but rather to allow workers to begin search before job loss the authors develop a sequential regimes job search model which allows search prior to displacement for workers with advance knowledge of layoff with different search intensities before and after layoff maximum likelihood estimates of the model are then computed using a pooled data set from the 1984 and 1986 displaced worker surveys advance knowledge is found to significantly shorten jobless duration for most labor force groups using these estimates the authors simulate the effect of various levels of advance knowledge on jobless duration their results indicate that relatively modest advance notice substantially benefits many displaced workers

an approach to poverty alleviation for large international development agencies abstract this essay explores the nature of the poverty alleviation problem from the perspective of international development funding agencies these agencies have been poorly structured to promote the interests of the poor agencies such as the world bank and the us agency for international development usaid can achieve better results by creating independent units devoted exclusively to poverty alleviation these units should immerse their staff more completely in local societies with lower pay scales and longer tours of duty a revised form of cost benefit analysis around which these units should orient their work is presented previous analyses of poverty alleviation opportunities and failures have neglected funding agency influences

mandatory notice and the jobless durations of displaced workers using canadian displaced workers survey data for 1981 86 the author studies the effect of canadian advance notice laws on displaced workers jobless durations by considering statutory notice requirements rather than actual notice provision the author is able to avoid the problems associated with the endogeneity of notice that have characterized previous studies of this question so called group notice laws which apply to large scale layoffs reduced the jobless durations of plant closure victims but individual notice laws which apply to all layoffs in some jurisdictions but only small scale layoffs in others had little effect one possible explanation for this difference is that workers who lose their jobs while their plant remains open may have stronger expectations of being rehired than do other displaced workers and may therefore delay job search with or without notice

jobless spells and re employment wages many studies of job loss attribute the earnings losses associated with layoffs to the loss of job occupation and industry specific human capital this paper estimates the effect of jobless spells on post layoff wages using data from the 1984 panel of survey on income participation for a sample of adult white male workers who were permanently laid off between 1974 and 1984 the estimated impact of jobless spells on starting wages and survey date wages several years after re employment are controlled for separations layoffs and quits and for individual and job characteristics the estimates show that jobless spell durations reduce starting wages wage growth in the new job is lower for workers who experience long spell durations a result that suggests acceptance of jobs which are poor matches compared to other workers who spend less time out of work following a layoff the findings support labour force policies which minimize the amount of time a person is out of work

advance notice and postdisplacement joblessness this article investigates whether prenotification decreases postdis placement joblessness reduced form estimates indicate that lengthy written notice is associated with small increases in the probability of avoiding nonemployment but with no decline in average durations significant reductions are found however for household heads women nonwhites and in local labor markets with high unemploy ment rates a new method is developed to control for the endogeneity of voluntarily provided advance notice this procedure suggests that previous research substantially overstates the degree to which preno tification reduces nonemployment and indicates that the actual de crease is between 2 and 5 working days

on the job search the case of nevada test site contractor employees the us nuclear testing moratorium has reduced employment levels at the nevada test site nts this study analyses the incidence duration and determinants of on the job search activity of nts employees who expect permanent job losses empirical results support theoretical predictions originating from search theory and suggest that high skilled white collar workers are the most likely to search while employed and therefore are the least likely to face severe dislocation problems

a puzzling aspect of the effect of advance notice on unemployment displaced workers with generous periods of advance notice are more likely than their non notified counterparts to avoid post displacement unemployment altogether but once unemployed they tend to escape from unemployment much more slowly the authors using data from the five year retrospective 1988 and 1990 displaced worker surveys examine three potential explanations for this puzzle delaying behavior induced by the receipt of unemployment insurance nonrandom distribution of notice to workers and previous studies failure to appropriately incorporate the pre displacement search time of notified workers this analysis supports the third explanation after allowing for less intense search prior to displacement than following displacement the authors find that the pattern of escape rates for otherwise observationally equivalent workers does not differ by notification status

preunemployment job search and advance job loss notice preunemployment search is the fundamental labor market process generating beneficial effects of advance notice yet theory indicates that workers receiving notice may not search whereas others may search even without advance notice our weighted results indicate that over one third of all nonnotified workers still search and over 40 of workers receiving notice do not respond by searching further preunemployment search determinants differ for notified nonnotified workers and men women for notified men search is strongly increased by longer notice and strongly decreased by higher unemployment insurance benefits but neither factor affects the employed search decisions of notified women

how do unemployment insurance and recall expectations affect on the job search among workers who receive advance notice of layoff this paper explores how advance notice of layoffs recall rehiring expectations and unemployment insurance ui benefits affected on the job search among a random sample of arizona ui recipients in 1975 76 the analysis which includes extensive controls for the characteristics of workers and their jobs indicates that pre unemployment search increased with length of notice and decreased with expected recall also among workers not expecting recall pre unemployment search decreased with the level of ui benefits available after layoff the authors argue that improved experience rating would encourage firms to give employees advance notice when layoffs are imminent and re employment bonuses for workers with zero or short unemployment spells would encourage early search

the returns to mobility and job search by gender using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth the authors estimate the returns to job search mobility and the interaction of search and mobility for young men and women they find st

an empirical test of the theory of on the job search preunemployment search is the fundamental labor market process generating beneficial effects of advance notice yet theory indicates that workers receiving notice may not search whereas others may search even without advance notice our weighted results

the role of policy in energy transitions lessons from the energy liberalisation era the aim of this paper is to discuss the period of energy privatisation and liberalisation which began in the 1980s within its wider historical context the key issues are what has been learned from this recent period and how significant is it in the light of an energy transition to low carbon energy system by 2050 energy liberalisation has led to positive and globally widespread but modest efficiency gains but a lack of clearly visible direct benefits to households in many countries it has significantly improved the governance of monopoly utilities via independent regulators the prospects for competition and innovation and the quality of policy instruments for environmental emissions control through the emergence of trading mechanisms we conclude that it is not liberalisation per se that will determine the movement towards a low carbon energy transition but the willingness of societies to bear the cost which will be significant no matter what the extent of liberalisation

optimal blackouts empirical results on reducing the social cost of electricity outages through efficient regional rationing abstract the demand and supply of electricity must always balance if supply falls short of demand then price increases or voluntary demand reductions might help to maintain the balance in the system should these prove insufficient then rationing is necessary rationing means interrupting the electricity delivery to certain areas or specific electricity users in order to preserve system stability since the cost of an interruption differs among electricity users the social cost of different rationing mechanisms varies this paper explores the cost difference between efficient regional rationing minimizing social costs by rationing regions with low costs first and random rationing not taking into account social costs for this the value of lost load calculations of de nooij et al de nooij m bijvoet c c koopmans c c 2007 the value of supply security the costs of power interruptions economic input for damage reduction and investment in networks energy economics 29 2 277 295 are refined for the netherlands it is shown that efficient rationing can reduce social costs by 42 to 93

the relative effects of employed and unemployed job search a lthough many early models of job search assumed that job seekers were unemployed economists have come to recognize the importance of on the job search mattila 1974 for example found that roughly 60 of quitters experienced no unemployment between jobs implying that the majority of voluntary job changers engaged in on the job search the choice of search mode i e employed vs unemployed search has been modelled in the theoretical search literature barron and mccafferty 1977 burdett 1978 however there have been no attempts to estimate empirically the determinants of this choice 2 some researchers have however examined the resulting wages associated with these two types of search and found a greater wage return to employed than to unemployed search mattila 1969 black 1980 however because voluntarily unemployed search involves forgoing income burdett 1978 while employed search does not abstracting from voluntary reductions in hours incomemaximizing job seekers would never quit to search unless the expected net return to unemployed search exceeded that for employed search thus the previously mentioned empirical findings at first glance might appear to contradict the assumption of income maximization by job seekers because some workers do quit into unemployment 3 in this paper it is argued that previous attempts to compare the returns of employed and unemployed job search suffer from a selectivity problem specifically searchers who accept offers without experiencing any unemployment are likely to have unobservable variables such as informal job contacts and ability which will raise the relative return to employed search compared to that of voluntarily unemployed job seekers 4 providing an explanation for higher wages for on the job searchers than for unemployed searchers this paper estimates the relative wage effects of employed and unemployed search and the determinants of the choice of search mode i e employed vs unemployed search unlike earlier work mattila 1969 black 1980 the previously mentioned selectivity problems are accounted for this is the first attempt to estimate the determinants of choice of search mode 5 without adjusting for selectivity bias as regards employed vs unemployed search it is found that employed search is associated with greater expected wage offers than unemployed search controlling for measurable personal characteristics however accounting for selectivity the expected wage offer given unemployed search is greater than that given employed search finally the greater is the difference between the expected offer given unemployed and that given employed search the more likely one is to choose unemployed search these findings suggest that quitting to search unemployed may be a wealth maximizing decision received for publication november 5 1980 revision accepted for publication august 17 1981 university of illinois at urbana champaign and arizona state university respectively professor low is partially supported by a faculty grant from the graduate college at arizona state university the authors thank francine blau wallace hendricks and two anonymous referees for comments and suggestions i for a summary of this literature see lippman and mccall 1976 2 barron and mccafferty 1977 do estimate an aggregate time series model of the log of the proportion of quits entering unemployment as a function of the vacancy rate proxied by the help wanted advertising index however such a model ignores search that does not lead to quits and does not include variables beyond the vacancy rate that influence an individual s choice of search mode i it is also possible that the forgone earnings due to unemployed search could in principle be less than the possible savings in direct search costs due to unemployed search relative to employed search see burdett 1978 in this case a lower wage return to unemployed search could imply that quitting was based on income considerations further individuals may have quit for nonwage reasons 4 black 1980 found that other things equal those who planned to seek new employment but did not quit had significantly lower wage growth than those who did not plan to search and did not quit this finding strongly suggests the likelihood of a selectivity bias black 1980 p 227 black s 1976 1980 data the michigan panel study of income dynamics psid for his work on employed search did not allow him to distinguish employed and unemployed search

problems of sample construction in studies of the effects of unemployment insurance on unemployment duration conventional analyses of the effect of unemployment insurance ui on unemployment duration have neglected the issue of sample construction the authors show that such studies by failing to account for job finding among those eligible for ui within intervals corresponding to the waiting time and filing delays associated with drawing benefits overstate the expected unemployment duration of ui recipients while understating that of nonrecipients ignore a dominant line of causation running from duration to ui benefit status produce misspecified hazard functions and may overstate by as much as 50 the effect of the ui replacement rate on jobless duration

a poverty oriented cost benefit approach to the analysis of development projects abstract this essay presents a form of cost benefit analysis where benefits are defined in terms of contributions to basic human capabilities this capabilities approach to project analysis is contrasted with the us agency for international development s logical framework approach the world bank s economic cost benefit approach and distributionally sensitive economic cost benefit analysis i argue that international development agencies concessional resource transfers could contribute more to the well being of the world s poor if guided by this cost benefit approach than they do under current arrangements the notion of capabilities as fundamental requirements for well being has been developed by amartya sen

advance notice job search and postdisplacement earnings three to 5 years after job displacements workers receiving the advance notice mandated by current law earn approximately 10 more than their nonnotified counterparts this differential is not the result of firms systematically notifying persons with favorable reemployment prospects early warnings are disproportionately obtained by individuals expected to earn relatively low wages in subsequent employment it is not clear however whether prenotification has a causal effect the notification differential may occur because the advance notice is frequently provided by employers offering other kinds of adjustment assistance such as job counseling skill retraining supple mental unemployment benefits or outplacement assistance

the declining credit quality of u s corporate debt myth or reality in recent years the number of downgrades in corporate bond ratings has exceeded the number of upgrades leading some to conclude that the credit quality of u s corporate debt has declined however an alternative explanation of this apparent decline in credit quality is that the rating agencies are now using more stringent standards in assigning ratings an ordered probit analysis of a panel of firms from 1978 through 1995 suggests that rating standards have indeed become more stringent implying that at least part of the downward trend in ratings is the result of changing standards bond ratings play a key role in corporate financing and investment decisions a corporation that can issue higher rated bonds usually receives better terms than one that can issue only lower rated bonds by law or policy some investors can purchase only bonds with an investment grade rating a restriction which in some asset pricing models would affect the relative prices of financial assets numerous articles in the popular press have presumed that the credit quality of the debt of u s corporations has been declining over the last couple of decades the comprehensive study by lucas and lonski 1992 of moody s rating changes of corporate debt is consistent with this presumption to cite their statistics in 1970 moody s downgraded 21 issues and upgraded 23 issues but over the following years the number of bonds downgraded began to exceed by substantial margins the number of bonds upgraded and by 1990 moody s downgraded 301 issues and upgraded only 61 their study includes both investment and noninvestment grade bonds but internal data from donaldson lufkin jenrette confirm that this trend also applies to investment grade bonds alone in a somewhat different context grundy 1997 documents similar trends in the ratings of preferred shares over the 1965 to 1990 period as the credit quality of a firm s corporate debt decreases that firm will face a greater probability of financial distress which at the extreme translates into bankruptcy there is some debate as to the effect of financial dis

foreign aid and conditions precedent political and bureaucratic dimensions abstract international donor agencies increasingly use their influence to press for major reforms in development policies and administrative practices in third world countries reform recommendations are often conceptualized with little regard for the political and bureaucratic contexts in which they are to be adopted and pursued without greater concern for issues of political and bureaucratic feasibility however reform recommendations are likely to have only minimal impact policy space research and administrative systems research are promising approaches for acquiring and analyzing information about the political and bureaucratic aspects of government decision making such analyses can improve the potential for reform recommendations to be adopted and pursued

the robustness and efficiency of monetary policy rules as guidelines for interest rate setting by the european central bank abstract this paper examines the implications of recent research on monetary policy rules for practical monetary policy making with special emphasis on strategies for setting interest rates by the european central bank ecb the paper draws on recent research and new simulations of a large open economy model to assess the efficiency of a simple benchmark rule in comparison with other proposed rules further it stresses new results on the robustness of monetary policy rules in which each rule that is optimal or good according to one model or researcher is tested for robustness by other researchers using different models because of the large increase in the number of economists focussing on econometric evaluation of monetary policy rules for the interest rate instrument and because of the parallel increase in the variety of models being developed for this purpose much more evidence is becoming available on the robustness of simple monetary policy rules for the interest rate than ever before

comparative advantage and bilateral foreign aid policy this paper formulates the problem of bilateral aid allocation in terms of the comparative advantage framework it is argued that the adaptability of this framework to foreign aid critically depends on the assumption that each donor s aid budget is spent to a large extent on its home market this assumption is not contradicted by empirical evidence an analysis of swiss foreign aid data then suggests that there is scope for considerable gains from specialization we conclude that donors should coordinate their behavior according to their comparative advantage to achieve an optimal allocation of global aid resources

indicators for energy security the concept of energy security is widely used yet there is no consensus on its precise interpretation in this research we have provided an overview of available indicators for long term security of supply sos we distinguished four dimensions of energy security that relate to the availability accessibility affordability and acceptability of energy and classified indicators for energy security according to this taxonomy there is no one ideal indicator as the notion of energy security is highly context dependent rather applying multiple indicators leads to a broader understanding incorporating these indicators in model based scenario analysis showed accelerated depletion of currently known fossil resources due to increasing global demand coupled with increasing spatial discrepancy between consumption and production international trade in energy carriers is projected to have increased by 142 in 2050 compared to 2008 oil production is projected to become increasingly concentrated in a few countries up to 2030 after which production from other regions diversifies the market under stringent climate policies this diversification may not occur due to reduced demand for oil possible benefits of climate policy include increased fuel diversity and slower depletion of fossil resources

reported vs actual job search by unemployment insurance claimants this study compares self reported job search contacts of unemployment insurance recipients with independently verified job search contacts for the total sample reported contacts averaged 2 61 per week compared with actual contacts of only 1 78 per week nearly one fifth of the sample made no job contacts for the single weeks analyzed the separate equations estimated for reported and actual job contacts suggest that systematic misreporting may distort the conclusions particularly for the impact of unemployment insurance benefits on search intensity that would result from analyzing reported rather than actual contacts some implications of the findings for reported unemployment rates also are explored

an integrated framework for rural electrification adopting a user centric approach to business model development rural electrification re has gained prominence over the past two decades as an effective means for improving living conditions this growth has largely been driven by socio economic and political imperatives to improve rural livelihood and by technological innovation based on a content analysis of 232 scholarly articles the literature is categorized into four focal lenses technology institutional viability and user centric we find that the first two dominate the re debate the viability lens has been used less frequently whilst the user centric lens began to engage scholars as late as 2007 we provide an overview of the technological institutional and viability lenses and elaborate upon the user centric lens in greater detail for energy policy and practice we combine the four lenses to develop a business model framework that policy makers practitioners and investors could use to assess re projects or to design future rural electrification strategies

effects of regulatory reforms in the electricity supply industry on electricity prices in developing countries electric power sector reforms in the electricity supply industry have had an impact on industrial and household prices in developing countries in latin america the former soviet union and eastern europe using original panel data for 83 countries during the period from 1985 to 2002 we examine how each policy instrument of the reform measures influenced electricity prices for countries in the above regions we found that variables such as entry of independent power producers ipp unbundling of generation and transmission establishment of a regulatory agency and the introduction of a wholesale spot market have had a variety of impacts on electricity prices some of which were not always consistent with expected results the research findings suggest that neither unbundling nor introduction of a wholesale pool market on their own necessarily reduces the electric power price in fact contrary to expectations there was a tendency for the price to rise however coexistent with an independent regulator unbundling may work to reduce electricity prices privatization and the introduction of foreign ipp and retail competition lower electricity prices in some regions but not all

emerging regulatory challenges facing the indian rural electrification programme abstract the purpose of this paper is to present and analyse the regulatory issues emerging from the newly launched programme of rural electricity access in india we focus on two broad areas namely regulatory issues related to the organisation structuring of the activities and issues related to subsidy and tariffs the paper looks into the alternative organisational arrangements being used by the programme and identifies problem areas through a responsibility mapping the tariff principle being followed by the programme is then analysed considering the alternative organisational forms and issues related to such pricing policies are identified possible alternative pricing options are then suggested the paper finds that while the franchisee model is an innovative idea it raises issues that the regulators should be concerned with the programme has so far relied on the simplest franchisee model because of its ease of implementation but a transition to more complex alternatives would require careful considerations

what ever happened to poverty alleviation abstract the failure of many programs directed toward alleviating poverty is better understood than the successes this paper identifies the traits that characterize several better performing programs funded by the ford foundation traits that are not commonly found in such programs all focused narrowly on a particular trade or activity in the beginning used credit as an entry point started by brokering loans rather than lending directly and had leadership linked to powerful institutions participants were already engaged in the economic activities supported by the programs marketing channels existed and powerful consumer groups were often in favor of production by beneficiary groups though these findings seem obvious few programs funded by donors display these characteristics suggesting that donors choose programs and organizations more carefully and not limit their funding to the nongovernmental sector

energy consumption and economic growth in central america evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for six central american countries over the period 1980 2004 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship based on the heterogeneous panel cointegration test by pedroni pedroni p 1999 critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 61 653 670 pedroni p 2004 panel cointegration asymptotic and finite sample properties of pooled time series tests with an application to the ppp hypothesis new results econometric theory 20 597 627 cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption the labor force and real gross fixed capital formation with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate the presence of both short run and long run causality from energy consumption to economic growth which supports the growth hypothesis