from global economic modelling to household level analyses of food security and sustainability how big is the gap and can we bridge it policy and decision makers have to make difficult choices to improve the food security of local people against the background of drastic global and local changes ex ante impact assessment using integrated models can help them with these decisions this review analyses the state of affairs of the multi scale modelling of policy interventions with an emphasis on applications in developing countries and livestock systems existing models do not sufficiently capture the complexity of human environment interactions across different scales and especially the link between landscape and local market levels and national and sub national level policies and markets is missing the paper suggests a step wise approach with increasing data needs to bridge this gap improvements need to be made at the description of effects of the distribution of local markets on price formation and the representation of farm diversity within a landscape analyses in contrasting agro ecological systems are needed to derive generic summary functions that can be used as input for macro level model analyses this is especially pertinent for macro level descriptions of crop and livestock production in relation to price developments and of the mosaic of different agricultural land use responses in regions with contrasting socio economic conditions and developments

the 2009 recovery act stimulus at the extensive and intensive labor margins abstract this paper studies the effect of government stimulus spending on a novel aspect of the labor market the differential impact of spending on the total wage bill versus employment we analyze the 2009 recovery act via instrumental variables using a new instrument the spending done by federal agencies that were not instructed to target funds towards harder hit regions we find a moderate positive effect on jobs created saved i e the extensive margin and also a significant increase in wage payments to workers whose job status was safe without recovery act funds i e the intensive margin our point estimates imply that roughly one half of the wage payments resulting from the act were paid at the intensive margin to provide a theoretical underpinning for the estimates we build a micro founded dynamic model in which a firm meets new government demand with a combination of new hiring and increasing existing workers average hours faced with hiring costs and an overtime premium the firm responds by increasing hours along both margins our model analysis also provides insight into how government spending policy should be structured to lower the cost of generating new jobs finally we catalogue survey evidence from recovery act fund recipients that reinforces the importance of the intensive labor margin

an analysis of policy scenario effects on the adoption of energy production on the farm a case study in emilia romagna italy abstract the agriculture sector s contribution to energy production is a central issue in ongoing policy debates and one of the central elements of the development of bioeconomy sector the common agricultural policy cap is one of the main determinants of the different farm strategies of european farmers the cap is now undergoing a thorough revision process which necessarily includes a debate of the role of the policy in rural areas and the effectiveness of the various cap policy mechanisms the objective of this paper is to assess the impact of alternative cap scenarios in the light of the possible changes in 2013 and the willingness to adopt energy plants for energy crops in the province of bologna italy this is pursued using both survey information and farm household mathematical programming models hence using stated intentions and simulated profitability to analyse the adopt of new technologies for energy production the results underscore the relevance of the cap scenarios in altering intentions with regard to the adoption of energy production and the relevant effect of uncertainty in delaying the diffusion of energy production systems

green goals and full employment are they compatible abstract two empirical correlations are studied one between economic growth and environmental impacts and the other between the lack of economic growth and unemployment it is demonstrated that at a global level economic growth is strongly correlated with environmental impacts and barriers to fast decoupling are large and numerous on the other hand low or negative growth is highly correlated with increasing unemployment in most market economies and strategies to change this lead to difficult questions and tradeoffs the coexistence of these two correlations which have rarely been studied together in the literature on green growth degrowth and a growth justifies ambivalence about growth to make key environmental goals compatible with full employment the decoupling of environmental impacts from economic output has to be accompanied by a reduction of dependence on growth in particular strategies to tackle unemployment without the need for growth several of which are studied in this article need much more attention in research and policy

evaluating the impact of rising fertilizer prices on crop yields because of tensions on fossil energy and phosphorus markets the rise in fertilizer prices observed during the last decades may continue in the future putting into question production pathways relying heavily on crop intensification to evaluate how in this context economic choices may alter crop yields we first construct different fertilizer price scenarios to 2050 based on an econometric relation with oil and gas prices other possible scenarios such as the continuation of historical trends are also considered the resulting changes in fertilizer price range between 0 8 and 3 6 per year over the 2005 2050 period these scenarios are tested in a global land use model incorporating an endogenous representation of the land fertilizer substitution we find that the supply side response to rising fertilizer prices could lower crop yields in 2050 from 6 to 13 with a corresponding increase in global cropland area ranging between 100 and 240 mha if the demand for food and nonfood products has to be met the sensitivity of these results is tested with regard to assumptions on food consumption change in potential yield and nutrient use efficiency resume d auteur

investments and public finance in a green low carbon economy abstract the paper evaluates the impacts on investments and public finance of a transition to a green low carbon economy induced by carbon taxation four global tax scenarios are examined using the integrated assessment model witch taxes are levied on all greenhouse gases ghgs and lead to global ghg concentrations equal to 680 560 500 and 460 ppm co 2 eq in 2100 investments in the power sector increase with respect to the reference scenario only with the two highest taxes investments in energy related r d increase in all tax scenarios but they are a small fraction of gdp investments in oil upstream decline in all scenarios as a result total investments decline with respect to the reference scenario carbon tax revenues are high in absolute terms and as share of gdp with high carbon taxes tax revenues follow a carbon laffer curve the model assumes that tax revenues are flawlessly recycled lump sum into the economy in all scenarios the power sector becomes a net recipient of subsidies to support the absorption of ghgs in some regions with high carbon taxes subsidies to ghg removal are higher than tax revenues at the end of the century

closely competing firms and price adjustment some findings from an online marketplace we investigate retailers price setting behavior using a unique dataset containing by the second records of prices offered by closely competing retailers on a major japanese price comparison website first we find that when the average price of a product across retailers falls rapidly the frequency of price adjustments increases and the size of price adjustments becomes larger second we find positive autocorrelation in the frequency of price adjustments implying that there tends to be clustering where price adjustments occur in succession in contrast there is no such autocorrelation in the size of price adjustments these two findings indicate that the behavior of competing retailers is characterized by state dependent pricing rather than time dependent pricing

intention of agricultural professionals toward biofuels in iran implications for energy security society and policy abstract this research applies the health beliefs model hbm as a framework for understanding the intentions of agricultural professionals with respect to biofuels we argue that it is essential to understand these intensions as agricultural professionals play critical role as educators gatekeepers and stakeholders in the agricultural domain a face to face survey was undertaken in south western iran using a multi stage stratified random sample of agriculture professionals n 288 the reliability and validity of the instruments were examined and approved structural equation modeling showed that general beliefs regarding fuels and biofuels perceived benefits perceived severity self efficacy and cue to action are significant predictors of professionals willingness to support biofuels these variables can predict nearly 43 variance in professionals willingness the findings yield public policy implications for biofuel use and development support among professionals and provide preliminary support for the hbm as an effective framework for examining intention toward biofuels among agriculture professionals in iran

are developing countries really defying the embedded liberalism compact this study evaluates the embedded liberalism hypothesis in a broad swath of less developed countries ldc s the authors find that ldc governments pursue a distinct welfare state policy that protects citizens from economic insecurities associated with global market expansion specifically governments use public employment and particularly employment in civil services and administration to foster domestic stability alongside market expansion however such jobs are targeted to politically salient groups not poorer groups that might also face increased economic uncertainty postopenness in turn public employment shores up public support for openness the authors findings suggest that free traders have reasons both to celebrate and to bemoan this ldc embedded liberalism compact on the positive side ldc governments are working hard to maintain political support for free trade on the other hand the compromise of protecting privileged groups at the expense of others in society raises questions about the long term sustainability of their strategy

openness external risk and volatility implications for the compensation hypothesis a central assumption in the globalization literature is that economic openness generates economic insecurity and volatility based on this assumption schol ars of international political economy have proposed the compensation hypothesis which claims that globalization bolsters rather than undermines the welfare state by increasing public demand for social protection against externally generated eco nomic instability the openness volatility link is dubious however on both theoret ical and empirical grounds in this study i revisit the volatility assumption focusing on a crucial difference between openness and external risk in their effect on volatil ity my statistical analysis of a panel data set from 175 countries 1950 2002 finds a consistent effect of external risk on volatility of the major economic aggregates but a largely insignificant effect of openness these findings suggest that economic volatility may be a mistaken link in explaining the openness spending nexus calling for further research on the causal mechanisms linking the two the general growth of government in the post world war ii era is one of the most important empirical regularities in political science measured by general govern ment consumption or sectoral expenditures government size grew dramatically during most of the postwar period intrigued by this phenomenal government growth political scientists offered numerous accounts some viewing this growth as a corollary of economic phenomena such as modernization industrialization income distribution or fiscal illusion and others attributing government growth to political causes such as bureaucratization interest group politics and electoral competition 1

global land use implications of first and second generation biofuel targets recently an active debate has emerged around greenhouse gas emissions due to indirect land use change iluc of expanding agricultural areas dedicated to biofuel production in this paper we provide a detailed analysis of the iluc effect and further address the issues of deforestation irrigation water use and crop price increases due to expanding biofuel acreage we use globiom an economic partial equilibrium model of the global forest agriculture and biomass sectors with a bottom up representation of agricultural and forestry management practices the results indicate that second generation biofuel production fed by wood from sustainably managed existing forests would lead to a negative iluc factor meaning that overall emissions are 27 lower compared to the no biofuel scenario by 2030 the iluc factor of first generation biofuels global expansion is generally positive requiring some 25 years to be paid back by the ghg savings from the substitution of biofuels for conventional fuels second generation biofuels perform better also with respect to the other investigated criteria on the condition that they are not sourced from dedicated plantations directly competing for agricultural land if so then efficient first generation systems are preferable since no clear technology champion for all situations exists we would recommend targeting policy instruments directly at the positive and negative effects of biofuel production rather than at the production itself

land use dynamics and the environment we build a benchmark framework to study optimal land use encompassing land use activities and environmental degradation we focus on the spatial externalities of land use as drivers of spatial patterns even if land is immobile by nature location s actions affect the whole space through pollution which flows across locations resulting in both local and global damages in contrast to the previous literature on spatial dynamics we prove that the social optimum problem is well posed i e the solution exists and is unique taking advantage of this result we illustrate the richness of our model by means of a numerical analysis considering a global dynamic algorithm we find that our model reproduces a great variety of spatial patterns related to the interaction between land use activities and the environment in particular we identify the central role of abatement technology as pollution stabilizer allowing the economy to achieve stable steady states that are spatially heterogeneous

young citizens knowledge and perceptions of bioenergy and future policy implications abstract in the past few years extensive discussions on bioenergy has been both positive and negative in europe the image of bioenergy appears to be low with lack of broad public support previous studies show that younger people are unsure about many issues surrounding renewable energy the aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge and perceptions of bioenergy among pupils in north karelia finland data drawn from 495 ninth grade students indicate that the majority of them lack in depth knowledge about different renewable energy sources including bioenergy only a small percentage has a high level of knowledge about bioenergy and the majority indicates critical perceptions of it statistically significant gender differences are not apparent girls appear to be more knowledgeable than boys results also show a clear urban and rural difference in perceptions of bioenergy perceptions of urban respondents being more positive than that of their rural counterparts developing collaboration between future bioenergy policies and bioenergy education for younger citizens is necessary for their engagement in critical debates on bioenergy

market structure and the timing of technology adoption with network externalities abstract the paper shows that in the presence of network externalities consumers adopt conventional technologies too early the waiting option for a newly emerging technology is not exercised enough this problem is aggravated when the new technology is provided by a single producer with market power because any positive value created via waiting by current consumers will be ex post appropriated by the monopolist therefore the monopolist s power to extract surplus operates against his own interests in this dynamic setting the paper also shows how the producer of a new technology can partially overcome the problem of too little waiting by using licensing as a commitment device

a developing asia emission trading scheme asia ets abstract this paper provides a model assessment of the role of developing asia in the context of climate change policies we diagnose the potential response of asian economies to the imposition of various climate policies showing that if we were to equally price carbon across the world roughly half of the abatement would occur in developing asia we show that such autarkic measures would be consistent with the policy targets put forward by the major economies forum but would not necessarily be equitable we thus propose a fragmented cap and trade scheme with a specific regional market for developing asia the asian emission trading scheme asia ets we assess the role of the asia ets on the macro economy and international transfers vis a vis the standard case of global trading our results indicate that creating two large trading markets would result in small global efficiency losses while at the same time generating more reasonable regional incentives and transfers

labeling renewable energies how the language surrounding biofuels can influence its public acceptance abstract despite growing interest and investments in biological fuels little is known of how the public form opinions toward this alternative fuel technology this study examines public opinion of biofuels by focusing on several factors that can be expected to influence citizens opinions about the issue first we tested the results of a framing experiment that was embedded within a public opinion survey this experiment explored how the public responded to the term biofuels as compared to the term ethanol our results suggest that overall respondents tended to react more favorably to the former as opposed to the latter term second we examined the impacts of sociodemographics on public attitudes toward biofuels we found that while sociodemographics did little to consistently explain attitudes toward biofuels there was clear evidence of ideological influences on attitudes with self identifying democrats showing more positive attitudes overall finally we explored the interaction between political partisanship and our experimental manipulation we found evidence that our wording manipulation differed based on the political party identification of our respondents with democrats fluctuating greatly in their assessments depending upon whether they were asked to evaluate biofuels or ethanol

institutional dynamics and technology legitimacy a framework and a case study on biogas technology legitimacy is central for both novel and established technologies to mobilize the resources necessary for growth and survival a loss of legitimacy in turn can have detrimental effects for an industry in this paper we study the rise and fall of technology legitimacy of agricultural biogas in germany over a period of more than 20 years 1990 2012 the field witnessed impressive growth and professionalization for many years and has become one of the key technologies in germany s energy transition in recent years however it has been confronted with major criticism which finally resulted in a substantial cut back of public and political support the aim of our study is twofold in empirical terms we will explain the technology s loss of legitimacy despite its compliance with original policy objectives growth and maturation in theoretical terms we work toward a more general framework to understand technology legitimacy and to explain the institutional dynamics of technological innovation systems

complex biofuels related scenarios generated by qualitative reasoning under severe information shortages a review abstract there is a broad spectrum of br biofuel related models however the models are highly specific such models cannot flexibly support complex decision making activities to identify feasible trade offs among many objective functions they represent just one point of view e g engineering company economics therefore cbrms complex biofuel related model are studied in this paper cbrms must cover additional aspects e g macroeconomic ecology sociology and politics such models are inevitably unique partially subjective inconsistent vague and multidimensional ai artificial intelligence has developed a number of tools to solve such problems qualitative reasoning is one of them it is based on the least information intensive quantifiers i e trends there are just three trend qualitative values plus increasing zero constant negative decreasing there are many cbrm items related to soft aspects e g politics taxation etc which cannot be quantified by numbers they are too vague for example if the political sociological sensitivity of land ownership is increasing then the cost of biofuels is increasing such verbal knowledge item cannot be incorporated into a traditional numerical model the paper describes developments of cbrms based on expert knowledge and common sense a consensus among experts is often not reached because of substantial subjectivity of experts knowledge a qualitative intersection of cbrms developed by several experts is simple the case study presents a model based on integration of 10 heuristics using 9 variables e g refinery capacity cost of biofuel production and biofuel demand the result is represented by 13 scenarios the paper is self contained no a prior knowledge of qualitative models is required

partial adjustment without apology econometric partial adjustment models perform relatively well at the aggregate level however many kinds of microeconomic behavior involve discrete and occasional choices analyzing the classic employment adjustment problem we show how a generalized partial adjustment model tractably accommodates both observations by aggregating the actions of heterogeneous producers facing fixed adjustment costs aggregate disturbances cause changes in establishment level target employment and in the measure of establishments actively adjusting to their target whereas aggregate responses exhibit partial adjustment our framework also can be applied in general equilibrium settings with persistent idiosyncratic shocks without forfeiting the convenient use of linear solution methods

a review of the ecological and socioeconomic effects of biofuel and energy policy recommendations abstract many countries have attached great emphasis on biofuel because it is universally acknowledged renewable and sustainable however there remain doubts regarding biofuel s renewability cleanliness and ecological friendliness in addition its impacts on income employment and food security have been widely discussed therefore the effect of developing biofuel as an important method of resolving the energy crisis and climate change is questioned based on the rocketing concern on the multiple effects of biofuel this paper provides a comprehensive and updated review of the literature on biofuel s ecological effects and socioeconomic effects the literature included in this paper is selected english language papers being published since 2004 we find that existing studies have not arrived at a consensus regarding the ecological or the socioeconomic effects of biofuel there remain uncertainty and doubts toward biofuel s renewability and cleanliness biofuel s impacts on water and biodiversity are also questioned although biofuel is widely regarded to have positive impacts on income and employment many studies prove that biofuel influences food security negatively besides biofuel s economic cost is likely to be the barrier to its promotion because of the uncertainty of biofuel s impacts this study recommends cautious attitude toward biofuel development especially for those countries where biofuel development would be inappropriate and suggests that policy makers engage in demand side management instead of unsustainable supply side management

the impact of different energy policy options on feedstock price and land demand for maize silage the case of biogas in lombardy abstract the growing demand of maize silage for biogas production in northern italy has triggered an intense debate concerning land rents maize prices and their possible negative consequences on important agri food chains the aim of this work is to quantify the extent to which the rapid spread of biogas raised the maize price at regional level increasing the demand of land for energy crops for this purpose we applied a partial equilibrium framework simulating the agricultural sector and the biogas industry in lombardy under two alternative schemes of subsidization policy results show that policy measures implemented in 2013 reducing the average subsidy per kwh may contribute to enforce the complementarity of the sector with agri food chains decreasing the competition between energy and non energy uses compared to the old scheme maize demand for biogas would decrease lessening the market clearing price as well as feed opportunity cost for livestock sector and reducing land demand for energy purposes

optimal combination of energy crops under different policy scenarios the case of northern greece energy crops production is considered as environmentally benign and socially acceptable offering ecological benefits over fossil fuels through their contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases and acidifying emissions energy crops are subjected to persistent policy support by the eu despite their limited or even marginally negative impact on the greenhouse effect the present study endeavors to optimize the agricultural income generated by energy crops in a remote and disadvantageous region with the assistance of linear programming the optimization concerns the income created from soybean sunflower proxy for energy crop and corn different policy scenarios imposed restrictions on the value of the subsidies as a proxy for eu policy tools the value of inputs costs of capital and labor and different irrigation conditions the results indicate that the area and the imports per energy crop remain unchanged independently of the policy scenario enacted furthermore corn cultivation contributes the most to ifncome maximization whereas the implemented cap policy plays an incremental role in uptaking an energy crop a key implication is that alternative forms of motivation should be provided to the farmers beyond the financial ones in order the extensive use of energy crops to be achieved

carbon climate and economic breakeven times for biofuel from woody biomass from managed forests woody biomass harvested from old growth forests results in a significant carbon debt when used as a feedstock for transportation fuel this is because previously stored forest carbon is released to the atmosphere as co2 the debt is eventually repaid provided that the life cycle co2 emissions of the biofuel are lower than the conventional fuel that is displaced managed forests are an alternative to old growth forests with the potential to reduce the carbon debt associated with woody biomass derived fuels this work is the first to quantify the carbon debt incurred by transportation biofuels derived from woody biomass from managed forests the breakeven time of this carbon debt is computed along with breakeven times for radiative forcing temperature change and economic damages in the case of biofuel production for 30 years we find that breakeven times for carbon radiative forcing and temperature change are 59 42 and 48 years respectively if cumulative economic damages are computed for discount rates of 1 2 the breakeven time is greater than 100 years while damages never break even at discount rates above 2 breakeven times decrease if the prevailing harvest cycle is left unchanged but increase if biofuel production is sustained indefinitely

trade and insurance with imperfectly observed outcomes abstractthe following sections are included introductionthe modelunobserved outcomescostly observationconcluding remarksreferences this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

bioenergy and global land use change this is the first article that econometrically estimates the global land use change impact of bioenergy applying time series analytical mechanisms to fuel biofuel and agricultural commodity prices and production we estimate the long run relationship between energy prices bioenergy production and the global land use change our results suggest that rising energy prices and bioenergy production significantly contribute to the global land use change both through the direct and indirect land use change impact globally the total agricultural area yearly increases by 35 578 1 thousand ha due to increasing oil price and by 12 125 1 thousand ha due to increasing biofuel production which corresponds to 0 73 and 0 25 of the total worldwide agricultural area respectively soya land use change and wheat land use change have the highest elasticities with respect to both oil price and biofuel production in contrast nonbiomass crops grassland and rice have negative land use change elasticities region spe

do more open economies have bigger governments another look abstract we reconsider the evidence of a positive relationship between openness and the size of government recently established by rodrik rodrik d 1998 why do more open economies have bigger governments journal of political economy 106 997 1032 and others while the existing literature focuses on expenditure based measures of government we consider non budgetary measures such as government ownership of enterprises price controls asset expropriation each of these may have little impact on government expenditures yet can make the role of government sizable we demonstrate that the scope of government is much larger in less open economies when considering non budgetary measures additionally we show that higher levels of non budgetary government are positively correlated with trade barriers finally we provide further evidence on the hypothesis that larger governments provide social insurance in open economies subject to terms of trade shocks although we find that greater terms of trade risk is weakly associated with larger government in all forms these interventions include price controls and greater risk of asset expropriation which are hard to reconcile with a pure insurance motive

the impact of german biogas production on european and global agricultural markets land use and the environment abstract as part of its climate policy germany promotes the production of biogas via its so called renewable energy act eeg the resulting boost in biogas output went along with a significant increase in production of green maize the dominant feedstock existing studies of the eeg have analysed its impacts on german agriculture without considering market feedback we thus expand existing quantitative analysis by also considering impacts on european and global agricultural markets land use and the environment by combining a detailed location model for biogas plants the regionalised location information system maize resi m2012 with a global partial equilibrium model for agriculture the common agricultural policy regional impact capri model our results indicate that the german biogas production is large enough to have sizeable impacts on global agricultural markets in prices and quantities causing significant land use change outside of germany while profits in the agricultural sector increase food consumer face higher prices and subsidies for biogas production are passed on to electricity consumers the german biogas program as long as it is almost entirely based on non waste feedstocks is probably not a promising avenue towards a ghg saving renewable energy production but a rather expensive one

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

international trade foreign investment and the formation of the entrepreneurial class in this paper i examine the argument that free trade may be harmful to less developed countries because such international competition inhibits the formation of a local entrepreneurial class i view the entrepreneur as the manager of the industrial enterprise as well as the agent who bears the risks associated with industrial production a two sector model of a small open economy is developed in which the size of the entrepreneurial class is endogenous it is shown that the entrepreneurial class is smaller under free trade than would be first best optimal in the presence of efficient risk sharing institutions such as stock markets nonetheless there are potential gains from trade and any protectionist policy that increases the number of entrepreneurs will have deleterious welfare consequences this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

explaining investment dynamics in u s manufacturing a generalized s s approach we are grateful to olivier blanchard whitney newey james stock an editor three anonymousreferees and seminar participants at brown cepr champoussin chicago columbia econometric society meetings caracas and tokyo efcc harvard impa lse nber princeton rochester site toronto u de chile and yale for their comments financial support to caballero from the national science and sloan foundations and to engel from fondecyt grant 195 510 and the mellon foundation grant 9608 is gratefully acknowledged 2since plants entry is excluded from their sample these statistics are likely to represent lowerbounds on the degree of lumpiness in plants investment patterns 3we use the word project to emphasize the fact that the actual implementation of a projectmay cover more than a year observation realistic time to build aspects of investment are not incontradiction with the view that investment episodes are lumpy in nature 4 see chirinko 1994 for a survey of the empirical investment literature

considering the effect of biomass energy consumption on economic growth fresh evidence from brics region abstract this paper investigates the relationship between biomass energy consumption and economic growth by incorporating capital and trade openness in production function for the case of brics countries in doing so unit root and cointegration tests have been used in order to examine unit root properties and long run relationship between the series for the period of 1991q1 2015q4 the results confirm the presence of long run equilibrium relationship between the variables moreover biomass energy consumption stimulates economic growth capital increments economic growth and trade openness spurs economic growth the feedback effect exists between biomass energy consumption and economic growth trade openness granger causes economic growth capital and biomass energy consumption the policy to adopt biomass as the primary source of renewable energy helps brics countries to achieve sustainable development goal in both short run and long run however the key innovative point of this study is to establish the sign for granger causality test

economic insecurity and social policy expansion evidence from interwar europe what is the impact of economic insecurity on the development of institutions of social insurance existing studies have examined this question by exploring the impact of various measures of economic volatility on aggregate government expenditures or revenues these aggregate data are however an imperfect proxy of the character of institutions of social protection to overcome the limitations of earlier studies this article explores the conditions under which economic insecurity leads to the extension of the level of social insurance coverage i argue that economic insecurity sharpens a sectoral cleavage between coalitions in high risk and low risk sectors workers and some employers in high risk sectors will favor the introduction of social insurance institutions characterized by broad levels of coverage and a high redistribution of costs across occupations in contrast a cross class alliance in low risk sectors will oppose proposals aiming at the introduction of redistributive social policies fearing that these policies will turn them into subsidizers of high risk industries a redistributive social insurance policy will be introduced only if the high risk coalition is larger the article tests both the micro and macro level implications of this theory by examining the development of unemployment insurance policies in interwar europe i gratefully acknowledge comments from carles boix peter gourevitch and two anonymous referees many thanks to stefano bartolini john fitzgerald and michael tomz for sharing data with me

trade and insurance with moral hazard abstract previous literature on the use of trade policy for insurance has relied implicitly on moral hazard and adverse selection as the reasons for the failure of private markets for risk bearing this paper begins with the observation that such forces should be incorporated explicitly into the models to ensure a fair comparison between markets and governments for the case of moral hazard it is found that market equilibrium given exclusive insurance is an informationally constrained pareto optimum in one case of non exclusive insurance a systematic role for government insurance is found but the scope of trade policy is ambiguous

microdata evidence on the empirical importance of selection effects in menu cost models we use microdata on product prices linked to information on the producing firms that set them to study to what extent the timing of price changes reacts to changes in marginal cost this self selec

assessing global resource use and greenhouse emissions to 2050 with ambitious resource efficiency and climate mitigation policies achieving sustainable development requires the decoupling of natural resource use and environmental pressures from economic growth and improvements in living standards g7 leaders and others have called for improved resource efficiency along with inclusive economic growth and deep cuts in global greenhouse emissions however the outlooks for and interactions between global natural resource use resource efficiency economic growth and greenhouse emissions are not well understood we use a novel multi regional modeling framework to develop projections to 2050 under existing trends and three policy scenarios we find that resource efficiency could provide pro growth pro environment policies with global benefits of usd 2 4 trillion in 2050 and ease the politics of shifting towards sustainability under existing trends resource extraction is projected to increase 119 from 2015 to 2050 from 84 to 184 billion tonnes per annum while greenhouse gas emissions increase 41 both driven by the value of global economic activity more than doubling resource efficiency and greenhouse abatement slow the growth of global resource extraction so that in 2050 it is up to 28 lower than in existing trends resource efficiency reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 15 20 in 2050 with global emissions falling to 63 below 2015 levels when combined with a 2 c emissions pathway in contrast to greenhouse abatement resource efficiency boosts near term economic growth these economic gains more than offset the near term costs of shifting to a 2 c emissions pathway resulting in emissions in 2050 well below current levels slower growth in resource extractions and faster economic growth

marginal abatement costs of co2 emission reductions geographical flexibility and concrete ceilings an assessment using the poles model abstract the kyoto protocol envisage the setting up of flexibility mechanisms allowing annex b countries to fulfil their commitments to reducing greenhouse gases with respect for the principle of economic efficiency the current negotiations relate in particular to the possibility of setting up a system of tradable emissions permits for annex b countries and also of introducing ceilings to trade this paper analyses the stakes and economic potential of adopting this instrument both for those countries that made commitments in kyoto and for developing countries it is based on a formal approach that allows for a consistent framework of analysis the emission permit market is in fact simulated on the basis of a reference scenario and of marginal abatement cost curves and estimated by the poles model after analysing these marginal abatement cost curves and comparing them with those produced by other models we explore two different configurations for a competitive market a market limited to the annex b countries and a world market the results produced by the model show that widening the market to include developing countries is more effective than the annex b market solution it reduces the cost of implementing kyoto for oecd countries and at the same time allows the countries of the south to benefit from selling the permits this research also shows that introducing restrictions on exchanges for annex b countries could have a counter productive redistribution effect with the ethical argument that underlies that particular measure

estimating unemployment inflows outflows and long term unemployment in britain using the cointegration approach a model is estimated of flows into and out of unemployment using the johansen multivariate cointegration approach and uk data for the period 1974q4 to 1993q3 two long run equilibrium relationships are obtained covering the outflow rate and unemployment duration which include variables such as the replacement ratio structural change and output a unique feature of the model is that it allows the inflow rate to determine the outflow rate and vice versa this is argued to be important given the common european stylized fact that inflows and outflows are both countercyclical and strongly correlated thus if firms and workers are heterogeneous hiring and firing is contemporaneous necessitating the type of model estimated here some interesting results include the finding that output is not important in determining the outflow rate and that the speed of adjustment of the outflow rate to changes in its underlying equilibrium is slow in contrast the proportion of long term unemployed is positively re

economic theory and the world of practice a celebration of the s s model it was the question of how best to balance the costs of ordering and of running out of stock against the costs of holding excess inventory that inspired kenneth arrow theodore harris and jacob marschak to introduce the s s model in 1951 in this celebratory article we show how this model not only answered important practical questions but also opened the door to a quite startling range of important and challenging follow up questions many of great practical importance and analytic depth the s s model has become one of the touchstone models of economics opening new vistas of applied economic theory to all who internalize its structure today it is universally applied to solve questions faced in inventory control the core model elements uncertainty and fixed costs of adjustment are ubiquitous which has resulted in its becoming the general purpose economic model of discrete adjustment the s s model has also become a profound source of inspiration for macroeconomists seeking to understand the role that discrete microeconomic adjustments play in macroeconomic fluctuations looking forward we foresee rapid growth in the use of s s modeling to aid households making complex and costly financial decisions such as when and how to terminate a mortgage in the projected era of household operations research new modeling challenges will arise due to enriched feedback from the world of practice

why large scale bioenergy production on marginal land is unfeasible a conceptual partial equilibrium analysis a transparent and conceptual partial equilibrium model of global land use is used to explore long term effects of large scale introduction of bioenergy under different policy cases the transparency of the model and the consideration of clear cut policies provides a clear picture of how main mechanisms of land use competition work and how they influence the food and bioenergy systems the model is subjected to a detailed characterization in which parameters critical to the results and conclusions are detected and their impacts depicted a large scale introduction of bioenergy would raise food prices in all cases scenarios investigated and relative price increases of extensively produced crops would be at least twice as high as compared to intensively produced crops banning production of bioenergy from the most productive land limiting production to marginal land would reduce this price impact however we show that bioenergy is unlikely to ever be produced on any commercial scale only on land of low productivity the economic incentives would be strong for owners of more productive land to grow bioenergy anyway and out compete the more costly production on low yielding land large scale deforestation would become attractive in response to increased bioenergy demand especially for extensive production systems such as grazing

performance in a hostile world economic growth in capitalist democracies 1974 1982 many recent studies argue that labor organization and government partisanship were important determinants of the economic performance of the advanced industrial democracies during stagflation they do not however take into account the potential impact on performance of position in the international economy the relationships reported may therefore be largely spurious even when the strong effects of international position most notably the extent of dependence on imported sources of oil were controlled for domestic political structures remained powerful determinants of economic performance during stagflation corporatist political economies dominated by leftist governments in which labor movements were densely and centrally organized and market political economies in which labor was much weaker and rightist governments were predominant performed significantly better than the less coherent cases in which the power of labor was distributed asymmetrically between politics and the market

spatially uneven development and low carbon transitions insights from urban and regional planning the ageing of existing energy system infrastructure the threat of climate change and uncertainty in the movement of energy prices have resulted in a widespread agreement on the need for a transition to a low carbon energy system yet the nature of this transition i e what when how and where and its socio economic outcomes at different scales are not well understood the interdependence of the energy sector and economic growth has been mostly studied at the national level via some general equilibrium or econometric models whilst sub national studies at community or urban levels mostly focus on the governance of transitions hence we suggest that a regional perspective to energy policy and research promises to integrate these two approaches by providing a more robust and comprehensive understanding of the implications of low carbon transitions as well as contributing to the development of more effective policies by building on recent ideas on geographical aspects of energy transitions this article offers insights on the changing relationship between the spatial organisation of economic activities and energy systems and identifies tools and methods from urban and regional planning to help with the delivery of efficient and equitable policy outcomes

economic potential of biomass based fuels for greenhouse gas emission mitigation use of biofuels diminishes fossil fuelcombustion thereby also reducing net greenhousegas emissions however subsidies are neededto make agricultural biofuel productioneconomically feasible to explore the economicpotential of biofuels in a greenhouse gasmitigation market we incorporate data onproduction and biofuel processing for thedesignated energy crops switchgrass hybridpoplar and willow in an u s agriculturalsector model along with data on traditionalcrop livestock production and processing andafforestation of cropland net emissioncoefficients on all included agriculturalpractices are estimated through crop growthsimulation models or taken from the literature potential emission mitigation policies ormarkets are simulated via hypothetical carbonprices at each carbon price level theagricultural sector model computes the newmarket equilibrium revealing agriculturalcommodity prices regionally specificproduction input use and welfare levels environmental impacts and adoption ofalternative management practices such asbiofuel production results indicate no rolefor biofuels below carbon prices of 40 perton of carbon equivalent at these incentivelevels emission reductions via reduced soiltillage and afforestation are more costefficient for carbon prices above 70 biofuels dominate all other agriculturalmitigation strategies

price stickiness in ss models new interpretations of old results abstract what is the relation between infrequent price adjustment and the dynamic response of the aggregate price level to monetary shocks the answer to this question ranges from a one to one link calvo g 1983 prices in a utility maximizing framework journal of monetary economics 12 383 398 to no connection whatsoever caplin a spulber d 1987 menu costs and the neutrality of money quarterly journal of economics 102 703 726 the purpose of this paper is to provide a unified framework to understand the mechanisms behind this wide range of results in doing so we propose new interpretations of key results in this area which in turn suggest the kind of ss model that is likely to generate substantial price rigidity among these new interpretations we revisit caplin and spulber s monetary neutrality result we show that when price stickiness is measured in terms of the impulse response function this result is not a consequence of aggregation as is often assumed but is due instead to the absence of price stickiness at the microeconomic level we also show that the selection effect according to which units that adjust their prices are those that benefit the most is neither necessary nor sufficient to account for the higher aggregate flexibility of ss type models compared to calvo models instead the key concept is the contribution of the extensive margin of adjustment to the aggregate price response the aggregate price level is more flexible than suggested by the microeconomic frequency of adjustment if and only if this term is positive

consumption commitments and habit formation we analyze the implications of household level adjustment costs for the dynamics of aggregate consumption we show that an economy in which agents have consumption commitments is approximately equivalent to a habit formation model in which the habit stock is a weighted average of past consumption if idiosyncratic risk is large relative to aggregate risk consumption commitments can thus explain the empirical regularity that consumption is excessively sensitive and excessively smooth findings that are typically attributed to habit formation unlike habit formation and other theories but consistent with empirical evidence the consumption commitments model also predicts that excess sensitivity and smoothness vanish for large shocks these results suggest that behavior previously attributed to habit formation may be better explained by adjustment costs we develop additional testable predictions to further distinguish the commitment and habit models and show that the two models have different welfare implications

optimal fiscal policy and different degrees of access to international capital markets abstract empirically the cyclical pattern of fiscal policy differs between developed and developing countries with in particular much greater pro cyclicality and volatility of public investment in developing countries in this paper i provide a theoretical explanation for the observed differences by analyzing optimal fiscal policy under different degrees of access to world capital markets if the supply of foreign capital is elastic as in a developed country then it is optimal to adjust to an adverse external shock by borrowing from abroad to finance public expenditure and cutting taxes to smooth private consumption if the supply of foreign capital is inelastic however as in a developing country the optimal adjustment policy is to reduce public investment by much more than public consumption and to raise consumption taxes

a comment on the economics of labor adjustment mind the gap rejoinder numerous papers in this literature have used these questions as motivation understanding the structure of labor adjustment costs is relevant any time a policy or forecasting question requires input on the properties of labor dynamics of course for some policy questions we are interested in the aggregate effects of policies hence understanding whether nonconvexities have implications for aggregate labor demand is crucial as well in terms of the ongoing discussion over these questions there seems to be agreement that the simple quadratic adjustment cost model is not an adequate representation of the costs plants face in adjusting the number of workers from data displayed by daniel hamermesh 1989 and caballero et al 1997 hereafter ceh one is certainly struck by both the inactivity of labor adjustment and the bursts of job creation and destruction at the plant level that said while these observations serve as evidence against a model which contains only quadratic adjustment costs they do not directly identify a particular structure of adjustment costs at the plant level inspection of the adjustment patterns reported in ceh though cast in terms of gaps does provide some evidence of partial adjustment and thus suggests the presence of both convex and nonconvex adjustment costs further caballero and engel 1993 hereafter ce and ceh appear to have provided useful evidence on the second question the nonlinearities they uncover in aggregated data suggest that nonconvexities at the plant level have aggregate implications

machine replacement and the business cycle lumps and bumps this paper explores investment fluctuations due to discrete changes in a plant s capital stock the resulting aggregate investment dynamics are surprisingly rich reflecting the interaction between a replacement cycle the cross sectional distribution of the age of the capital stock and an aggregate shock using plant level data lumpy investment is procyclical and more likely for older capital further the predicted path of aggregate investment that neglects vintage effects tracks actual aggregate investment reasonably well however ignoring fluctuations in the cross sectional distribution of investment vintages can yield predictable nontrivial errors in forecasting changes in aggregate investment

lessons from first generation biofuels and implications for the sustainability appraisal of second generation biofuels the emergence of second generation 2g biofuels is widely seen as a sustainable response to the increasing controversy surrounding the first generation 1g yet sustainability credentials of 2g biofuels are also being questioned drawing on work in science and technology studies we argue that controversies help focus attention on key often value related questions that need to be posed to address broader societal concerns this paper examines lessons drawn from the 1g controversy to assess implications for the sustainability appraisal of 2g biofuels we present an overview of key 1g sustainability challenges assess their relevance for 2g and highlight the challenges for policy in managing the transition we address limitations of existing sustainability assessments by exploring where challenges might emerge across the whole system of bioenergy and the wider context of the social system in which bioenergy research and policy are done key lessons arising from 1g are potentially relevant to the sustainability appraisal of 2g biofuels depending on the particular circumstances or conditions under which 2g is introduced we conclude that sustainability challenges commonly categorised as either economic environmental or social are in reality more complexly interconnected so that an artificial separation of these categories is problematic

microeconomic adjustment hazards and aggregate dynamics the basic premise of this paper is that understanding aggregate dynamics requires considering that agents are heterogeneous and that they do not adjust continuously to the shocks they perceive we provide a general characterization of lumpy behavior at the microeconomic level in terms of an adjustment hazard function which relates the probability that a unit adjusts to the deviation of its state variable from its moving target we characterize rich cross sectionally dependent aggregate dynamics generated by nonconstant hazards we present an example based on u s manufacturing employment and job flows and find that increasinghazard models outperform constant hazard partial adjustment models in describing aggregate employment dynamics

rural versus urban preferences for renewable energy developments development of renewable energy resources such as wind farms and hydro electric schemes are being promoted as a new method of expanding and diversifying employment in rural areas however such energy projects are associated with a range of environmental impacts which might be detrimental to other economic activities such as those based on nature tourism the authors use a choice experiment to quantify peoples preferences over environmental and employment impacts that may result from the deployment of renewable energy projects in rural areas of scotland focussing in particular on any differences between the preferences of urban and rural dwellers and on heterogeneity within these groups rural and urban households are shown to have different welfare gains which are dependent on the type of renewable energy technology and on the scale of project under consideration

ethical and legal challenges in bioenergy governance coping with value disagreement and regulatory complexity the article focuses on the interplay between two factors giving rise to friction in bioenergy governance profound value disagreements e g the prioritizing of carbon concerns like worries over ghg emissions savings over non carbon related concerns and regulatory complexity in terms of regulatory measures and options we present ethical and legal analyses of the current stalemate on bioenergy governance in the eu using two illustrative cases liquid biofuels for transport and solid biomass based bioenergy the two cases disclose some similarities between these two factors but the remaining differences may partly explain or justify contrasting forms of governance while there seems to be no easy way in which the eu and national governments can deal with the multiple sustainability issues raised by bioenergy it is argued that failure to deal explicitly with the underlying value disagreements or to make apparent the regulatory complexity clouds the issue of how to move forward with governance of bioenergy we suggest that governance should be shaped with greater focus on the role of value disagreements and regulatory complexity there is a need for more openness and transparency about such factors and about the inherent trade offs in bioenergy governance

ecosystem services and economic development in austrian agricultural landscapes the impact of policy and climate change scenarios on trade offs and synergies we have developed an integrated modeling framework imf to quantify indicators for ecosystem services es and economic development ed in agricultural landscapes austria serves as a case study in which impacts trade offs and synergies of es and ed are assessed for different agricultural policy pathways and regional climate change scenarios agricultural intensification and incentivized use of provisioning es e g biomass production lead to higher macro economic output e g gdp but usually reduce es related to regulation and maintenance e g ecological integrity climate regulation as well as cultural services landscape diversity we revealed both synergies for certain es e g biomass production and soil organic carbon stocks as well as large spatial deviations from the national mean across the heterogeneous agricultural landscapes in austria climate change scenarios i lead to substantial variation in es and ed indicators and ii usually amplify trade offs by stimulating land use intensification our findings depict the complex relationship between different es and ed indicators as well as the importance of considering spatial heterogeneity and regional climate change this assessment can help to improve targeting of agri environmental schemes in order to provide a more balanced and efficient supply of es and to foster rural development

more than food or fuel stakeholder perceptions of anaerobic digestion and land use a case study from the united kingdom anaerobic digestion ad is of growing importance within the uk as it can make an important contribution to the countries energy and climate change targets with the growth of the sector discussions about competing land uses are likely to increase for a better understanding of the synergies between agricultural land its role and bioenergy the perception of the different stakeholders will play an important role the perception of stakeholders related to ad feedstock and energy crop production was investigated through interviews and a stakeholder workshop the results indicated that from an ad operator and feedstock producer perspective on farm ad is more an additional activity integrated into existing agricultural systems than a renewable energy technology the risk of a shift in agricultural practices and large areas to grow energy crops for ad is seen as low for the uk nonetheless land use and related challenges need to be considered as the demand for ad feedstocks increases with the fast growth of the sector considering the synergies between bioenergy and agriculture as well as the motivations and benefits perceived by stakeholders will play an important role in a successful policy design to provide the required emission reduction in both sectors without subverting sustainability

comparing supply side specifications in models of global agriculture and the food system this article compares the theoretical and functional specification of production in partial equilibrium pe and computable general equilibrium cge models of the global agricultural and food system included in the agmip model comparison study the two model families differ in their scope partial versus economy wide and in how they represent technology and the behavior of supply and demand in markets the cge models are deep structural models in that they explicitly solve the maximization problem of consumers and producers assuming utility maximization and profit maximization with production cost functions that include all factor inputs the pe models divide into two groups on the supply side 1 shallow structural models which essentially specify area yield supply functions with no explicit maximization behavior and 2 deep structural models that provide a detailed activity analysis specification of technology and explicit optimizing behavior by producers while the models vary in their specifications of technology both within and between the pe and cge families we consider two stylized theoretical models to compare the behavior of crop yields and supply functions in cge models with their behavior in shallow structural pe models we find that the theoretical responsiveness of supply to changes in prices can be similar depending on parameter choices that define the behavior of implicit supply functions over the domain of applicability defined by the common scenarios used in the agmip comparisons in practice however the applied models are more complex and differ in their empirical sensitivity to variations in specification comparability of results given parameter choices is an empirical question to illustrate the issues sensitivity analysis is done with one global cge model magnet to indicate how the results vary with different specification of technical change and how they compare with the results from pe models

risk and trade regimes another exploration an analysis of a small sample of countries shows that the higher the level of termsof trade risk that a nation faces in international markets the more likely it is to increase barriers the analysis also shows that the greater the availability of social insurance programs mounted by a nation s government the less likely it is to block free trade in comparison with the small open economies of western europe therefore developing countries may remain protectionist because they lack the resources to mount internal programs of transfer payments as a means of coping with risk from international markets

the benefit from reduced energy import bills and the importance of energy prices in ghg reduction scenarios abstract the poles energy model has been used to assess asia s role in combating climate change and the benefits it stands to gain this paper focuses on the role of major asian economies in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the benefits to their economies from reduced energy import bills the costs of reaching ambitious emission reduction targets are offset by significant ancillary benefits such as reduced energy import bills lower energy prices account for a share of the import bill reductions

integrating bioenergy into computable general equilibrium models a survey in the past years biofuels have received increased attention since they were believed to contribute to rural development energy security and to fight global warming it became clear though that bioenergy cannot be evaluated independently of the rest of the economy and that national and international feedback effects are important computable general equilibrium cge models have been widely employed in order to study the effects of international climate policies the main characteristic of these models is their encompassing scope global models cover the whole world economy disaggregated into regions and countries as well as diverse sectors of economic activity such a modelling framework unveils direct and indirect feedback effects of certain policies or shocks across sectors and countries cge models are thus well suited for the study of bioenergy biofuel policies one can currently find various approaches in the literature of incorporating bioenergy into a cge framework this paper gives an overview of existing approaches critically assesses their respective power and discusses the advantages of cge models compared to partial equilibrium models grouping different approaches into categories and highlighting their advantages and disadvantages is important for giving a structure to this rather recent and rapidly growing research area and to provide a guidepost for future work

confronting the food energy environment trilemma global land use in the long run economic agronomic and biophysical drivers affect global land use so all three influences need to be considered in evaluating economically optimal allocations of the world s land resources a dynamic forward looking optimization framework applied over the course of the coming century shows that although some deforestation is optimal in the near term in the absence of climate change regulation the desirability of further deforestation is eliminated by mid century although adverse productivity shocks from climate change have a modest effect on global land use such shocks combined with rapid growth in energy prices lead to significant deforestation and higher greenhouse gas emissions than in the baseline imposition of a global greenhouse gas emissions constraint further heightens the competition for land as fertilizer use declines and land based mitigation strategies expand however anticipation of the constraint largely dilutes its environmental effectiveness as deforestation accelerates prior to imposition of the target

price trends and volatility scenarios for designing forest sector transformation abstract potential scenarios for the forest bioeconomy are heavily reliant on price assumptions in particular any abrupt changes in prices have a profound impact on the relevancy of any sector analysis the objective of this paper was to demonstrate a new forest sector approach for incorporating price uncertainties in order to improve our assessment of investment decision making alternatives methodologically we linked a multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model mgarch 1 1 with three global land use scenarios that are of strategic importance to the forest bioeconomy the three scenarios were formulated as i a business as usual scenario ii a high biomass usage scenario and iii a no growth scenario our results indicate an upward trend in prices over time for all three scenarios and for most woody biomass commodities under all scenarios price volatility in the forest sector would be smaller than that for the fossil fuel energy i e oil and natural gas price volatilities from fossil fuel markets are positively influencing woody biomass price volatility and positively influencing pulp volatility these results are discussed in the context of a case study describing investment alternatives for a district heating facility with options for woody biomass natural gas or heating oil

cost effective policy instruments for greenhouse gas emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution through bioenergy production in austria abstract climate change mitigation and security of energy supply are important targets of austrian energy policy bioenergy production based on resources from agriculture and forestry is an important option for attaining these targets to increase the share of bioenergy in the energy supply supporting policy instruments are necessary the cost effectiveness of these instruments in attaining policy targets depends on the availability of bioenergy technologies advanced technologies such as second generation biofuels biomass gasification for power production and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage beccs will likely change the performance of policy instruments this article assesses the cost effectiveness of energy policy instruments considering new bioenergy technologies for the year 2030 with respect to greenhouse gas emission ghg reduction and fossil fuel substitution instruments that directly subsidize bioenergy are compared with instruments that aim at reducing ghg emissions a spatially explicit modeling approach is used to account for biomass supply and energy distribution costs in austria results indicate that a carbon tax performs cost effectively with respect to both policy targets if beccs is not available however the availability of beccs creates a trade off between ghg emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution biofuel blending obligations are costly in terms of attaining the policy targets

aggregation and representative firm in the theory of investment abstract a simple investment function that is a second degree polynomial of a deviation from desired capital stock is capable of explaining a large part of aggregate investment i demonstrate this by calibration of firm investment based on this model

modelling approaches for consequential life cycle assessment c lca of bioenergy critical review and proposed framework for biogas production abstract conventional life cycle inventories lcis are static models not considering any mechanism of revenue maximisation and price equilibrium under external constraints an additional demand of a given commodity irrespective of the amount can always be supplied by the average supplier under fully elastic market assumption this constitutes a recognised limitation for the application of lca to the assessment of the environmental consequences of changes applied to complex systems like agro systems in the so called consequential lci c lci the relationships between the activities and processes of a life cycle are no longer seen as essentially technical connections based on average data instead the determining socio economic mechanisms are considered via market information and eventually economic models partial or computable general equilibrium the practical implementation of c lci is however still obscure to many practitioners and the complementarities and overlaps between the different c lci modelling approaches have not been completely clarified so far this paper aims at filling this gap the first part of the paper provides a survey of a number of applications using different equilibrium models afterwards we critically review the main variables and parameters supporting the definition and implementation of the c lci modelling approaches in the last part of the paper we propose a methodology to integrate economic modelling and lca in order to perform a c lca of biogas production specifically addressing the indirect land use change iluc issue finally we describe the application of this methodology to a case study dealing with the production of biogas in luxembourg

future perspectives of international bioenergy trade abstract according to the iea world energy outlook 2012 primary demand for bioenergy will strongly increase up to the year 2035 the demand for biofuels and biomass for electricity is expected to triple these changes will have an impact on the regional balance of demand and supply of bioenergy leading to both increasing trade flows and changes in trade patterns the gfpm timer and poles models have been selected for a detailed comparison of scenarios and their impact on global bioenergy trade in ambitious scenarios 14 26 of global bioenergy demand is traded between regions in 2030 the model scenarios show a huge range of potential bioenergy trade for solid biomass in ambitious scenarios bioenergy trade ranges from 700 mt to more than 2 500 mt in 2030 for liquid biomass the ambitious scenarios show a bioenergy trade in the range of 65 360 mt in 2030 considering the currently very small share of internationally traded bioenergy this would result in huge challenges and require tremendous changes in terms of production pretreatment of biomass and development of logistic chains

social protection around the world external insecurity state capacity and domestic political cleavages this article develops and tests a political model specifying the conditions under which external risk leads to the introduction of redistributive social policies and argues that external risk sharpens a domestic political cleavage over the design of institutions of social insurance workers in sectors facing high volatility of income will support the introduction of social policies characterized by broad levels of insurance coverage and high redistribution of costs across occupations whereas workers in low risk sectors will oppose redistributive social policies the strength of preexisting state institutions also affects policy preferences of various sectors in the presence of weak ineffective states that are unable to collect social insurance contributions from sectors that are net contributors to the system high risk sectors will find redistributive social policies unattractive the article tests predictions of the model using new measures of the level of social insurance coverage in more than 100 c

tariffs as insurance optimal commercial policy when domestic markets are incomplete free trade is not optimal for a small country that faces uncertain terms of trade if some factors are immobile ex post and markets for contingent claims are incomplete the government can improve social welfare by using commercial policy that serves as a partial substitute for missing insurance markets using a combination of analytical and simulation techniques we demonstrate that optimal policy for this purpose will often have an anti trade bias we also show that the usual preference by economists for factor or product taxes and subsidies over tariffs and export subsidies may not be justified in this context this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

an assessment of international trade related to bioenergy use in austria methodological aspects recent developments and the relevance of indirect trade abstract increasing international biomass trade for energy and concerns about sustainability of globally traded biomass have raised interest in assessments of cross border trade related to bioenergy within this paper approaches to overcome methodological difficulties related to biomass trade are proposed and applied for the case of austria biomass currently has a share of 15 5 in austria s primary energy consumption of 1354 pj 2009 according to energy statistics the rate of self sufficiency with biomass for energy defined as the ratio of domestic production to inland consumption with both imports and exports taken into account is 91 however feedstock imports for transport fuel production and indirect imports of wood based fuels wood processing residues and waste liquor of the paper industry originating from imported wood are not taken into account in energy statistics but prove to be of some significance imports of agricultural commodities to the amount of 9 7 pj can be attributed to domestic biofuel production and indirect imports of wood based fuels account for 31 pj with these import streams taken into account the share of domestic fuels in bioenergy use is only 67 rather than 84 as official energy statistics suggest on the other hand austria is exporting more than 50 of its production of sawnwood panelboard and paper products

a comment on the economics of labor adjustment mind the gap evidence from a monte carlo experiment reply this comment addresses a point raised in russell cooper and jonathan willis 2003 2004 which discusses whether the gap approach is appropriate to describe the adjustment of production factors they show that this approach to labor adjustment as applied in ricardo j caballero eduardo engel and john c haltiwanger 1997 and caballero and engel 1993 can falsely generate evidence in favor of nonconvex adjustment costs even if costs are quadratic simulating a dynamic model of firm level employment decisions with quadratic adjustment costs and estimating a gap model from the simulated data they identify two factors producing this spurious evidence approximating dynamic adjustment targets by static ones and estimating the static targets themselves this comment reassesses whether the first factor indeed leads to spurious evidence in favor of fixed adjustment costs we show that the numerical approximation of the productivity process is pivotal for cooper and willis s finding with more precise approximations of the productivity process it becomes rare to falsely reject the quadratic adjustment cost model due to the approximation of dynamic targets by static ones jel e24 j3

on market mediated emissions and regulations on life cycle emissions abstract we analyze the use of life cycle assessment lca as a regulatory tool using biofuel regulations as an illustrative example a regulatory context calls for a consequential lca clca of a policy as opposed to an attributional lca alca of a product in performing clca issues of scale price effects technology and policy in the counterfactual state of the world strategic behavior policy horizon etc need consideration this appears to increase both uncertainty in estimates and the cost of performing lca we suggest heuristics for determining vulnerability to harmful indirect effects at an early stage in the policy process and discuss alternative policies to limit harmful indirect effects without engaging in the full effort of computation and selection of a central estimate for uncertain outcomes

woody biomass energy potential in 2050 abstract from a biophysical perspective woody biomass resources are large enough to cover a substantial share of the world s primary energy consumption in 2050 however these resources have alternative uses and their accessibility is limited which tends to decrease their competitiveness with respect to other forms of energy hence the key question of woody biomass use for energy is not the amount of resources but rather their price in this study we consider the question from the perspective of energy wood supply curves which display the available amount of woody biomass for large scale energy production at various hypothetical energy wood prices these curves are estimated by the global biosphere management model globiom which is a global partial equilibrium model of forest and agricultural sectors the global energy wood supply is estimated to be 0 23 gm 3 year 0 165 ej year when energy wood prices vary in a range of 0 30 gj 0 216 m 3 if we add household fuelwood to energy wood then woody biomass could satisfy 2 18 of world primary energy consumption in 2050 if primary forests are excluded from wood supply then the potential decreases up to 25

fighting global food price rises in the developing world the response of china and its effect on domestic and world markets this article addresses how china is being affected by and is responding to the world food crisis so far chinese officials have responded to higher world prices by drawing down stocks and limiting exports of major grains these policy instruments were not available for soybeans so domestic prices of soy and other oilseeds have risen with international prices using a global cge model we show that the initial world price rise was largely due to higher world oil prices and demand for biofuels as opposed to other factors especially in maize and soybeans china s response to this shock has kept domestic grain prices low relative to world grain markets and to domestic soybean prices as grain stocks are depleted however demand growth will push domestic prices back into alignment anticipating this pressure on consumers and accelerating supply response through public investment will facilitate adjustment

impacts of increased bioenergy demand on global food markets an agmip economic model intercomparison integrated assessment studies have shown that meeting ambitious greenhouse gas mitigation targets will require substantial amounts of bioenergy as part of the future energy mix in the course of the agricultural model intercomparison and improvement project agmip five global agro economic models were used to analyze a future scenario with global demand for ligno cellulosic bioenergy rising to about 100 exajoule in 2050 from this exercise a tentative conclusion can be drawn that ambitious climate change mitigation need not drive up global food prices much if the extra land required for bioenergy production is accessible or if the feedstock for example from forests does not directly compete for agricultural land agricultural price effects across models by the year 2050 from high bioenergy demand in an ambitious mitigation scenario appear to be much smaller 5 average across models than from direct climate impacts on crop yields in a high emission scenario 25 average across models however potential future scarcities of water and nutrients policy induced restrictions on agricultural land expansion as well as potential welfare losses have not been specifically looked at in this exercise

individual acceptance of the biogas innovation a structural equation model abstract the rapid spread of biogas production in germany has resulted in an increased public debate over this new business branch today the production of biogas is much more controversially debated than several years ago at the same time it could be proven that even among farmers themselves the acceptance of biogas production in some regions is somewhat dampened due to accompanying collateral damages therefore the goal of this paper is to identify relevant influencing factors that determine the acceptance of the innovation biogas among farmers by applying a causal analysis initial results among the five investigated determinants show that not only an individual attitude toward biogas but also the farmers personal innovativeness strongly and significantly influences an individual s acceptance of the innovation biogas

can biomass energy be an efficient policy tool for sustainable development abstract this paper first reviews the potential causality from biomass energy to co2 emissions and economic development within relevant literature later the paper examines statistically the impacts of biomass energy consumption on co2 emissions and gdp in the us to this end paper observes environmental and economic implications of biomass fuel usage throughout energy literature and launches asymmetric causality test to confirm disconfirm the literature output the findings of the tests indicate that biomass energy consumption per capita mitigates co2 emissions per capita and increases gdp per capita eventually upon its output this research asserts that biomass energy consumption can be an efficient policy tool for environmentally sustainable development in the us and that hence biomass production technologies and biomass consumption need to be promoted in other countries as well as in the us on the other hand analyses underline the fact that policy makers should consider as well some potential constraints of biomass energy usage such as land use constraints and carbon leakage from biomass production therefore although this paper explores the remedial impact of biomass on environment and growth one may suggest also that further possible works consider the effects of biomass sources in detail to minimize the some worsening influence of biomass usage on climate change