cooperative and noncooperative r d in duopoly with spillovers contrary to the usual assumption made in most oligopoly models relations among firms are seldom of a wholly cooperative or noncooperative type in many situations they compete in some fields while they cooperate in others an important example is the case of cooperative research efforts bringing fierce competitors together two types of agreement are observed first r d cooperation can take place at the so called precompetitive stage companies share basic information and efforts in the r d stage but remain rivals in the market place 1 a second type of agreement involves an extended collusion between partners creating common policies at the product level the usual justifications of this extension are the difficulties of protecting intellectual property the idea is then to allow partners who have achieved inventions together to also control together the processes and products which embody the results of their collaboration in order to recuperate jointly their r d investments 2 what could be expected from these types of agreement is a reduction in r d expenditures because of less wasteful duplication and a reduction of total production because of more reprinted from the american economic review 78 5 1133 1137 1988 center for operations research econometrics 1348 louvain la neuve belgium we are grateful to jean

the effects of immigration in a distorted two sector economy this paper examines the income employment and distributional impact of immigration on a recipient economy facing an administered wage distortion it is found that immigration increases the unemployment rate of the native population and shifts income distribution against labor and in favor of the nonlabor input its effect on the total income of the non immigrants is however ambiguous and depends on the relative importance of the increase in unemployment versus the net increase in the rent received by the owners of the non labor input

what is the cost of negative bidding by wind a unit commitment analysis of cost and emissions we use a unit commitment uc model to quantify the operational impacts of subsidizing wind generation when energy prices are negative such prices occur increasingly often in u s and european union eu markets subsidies such as production tax credits feed in tariffs and renewable energy credits motivate renewable generators to submit negative price offers this lessened flexibility increases system operation and management costs and in some cases hbox co 2 emissions when energy prices are negative our simulations of large negative bids can also be interpreted as representing eu policies of granting wind absolute dispatch priority applications to four hypothetical systems with high wind penetration and distinct generation mixes quantify the uc and dispatch effects of negative bids larger negative bids lead to less wind spillage reducing the 2 8 average curtailment under 0 bids to 1 0 more conventional plant startups higher system costs and in many cases higher total rm co 2 emissions by up to 2 in some systems wind power s effective incremental emissions are as high as coal s this impact depends strongly on generation mix carbon price and the size of the negative bids in general there can be significant economic and often environmental benefits to reforming renewable support policies to encourage flexibility in operations

renewable energy policies in promoting financing and investment among the east asia summit countries quantitative assessment and policy implications many countries have implemented various policies for renewable energy development ranging from setting power purchase agreements and the legislation of renewable energy requirements to providing incentives and imposing carbon taxes the evaluation of the effectiveness of such policies however is fragmented which raises a need for a comprehensive analysis this paper aims to assess whether and how policies promoting renewable energy investment have achieved the intended goals it employs five broadly defined criteria market uncertainty profitability technology and financial resources to build an index to assess respectively if such policies have helped create a market for renewable energy maximize potential profits reduce risks relating to the investment develop and adopt new technologies and improve the access to financial resources each criterion is reflected by three indicators values of each indicator are converted into ordinal values for analysis the index not only scans comprehensively all relevant renewable energy investment policies in the east asia summit countries but also provides systematic and quantitative measures to compare the effectiveness of policies in these countries with respect to the creation of market the degree of uncertainty the potential of profitability the development and adoption of technology and the accessibility of financial resources

access price regulation investment and entry in telecommunications abstract we consider a model with a vertically integrated monopolist network provider who faces rival operators in the retail market we examine the network operator s incentives for infrastructure investment we find that investments are below the social optimum even when there is no regulation and access price regulation further reduces investment incentives we show that the underinvestment problem may have negative effects on the viability of competition access price regulation does not necessarily reduce the likelihood of foreclosure and in the presence of regulation rivals are most likely to be foreclosed when they would bring highest benefits to consumers

eu renewable energy support policy faith or facts the recent eu commission proposal for promoting the supply of power from renewable energy sources was originally based on a pan european harmonised tradable green certificate tgc scheme we suggest on the basis of a multi disciplinary analysis that a pan eu tgc system is not the way forward for europe it is vital that the commission and the majority of member states avoids implementation of such policy designs put forward by a coalition of vested interests they should instead look at and act upon the available evidence from those countries that have experimented with tgcs e g flanders uk and sweden and design policies that stand a better chance of meeting the criteria of effectiveness efficiency and equity in particular the policies must enable eu to meet the immense innovation industrialisation challenge by inducing the development of a capital goods industry that can eventually diffuse a broad range of technologies that use renewable energy sources only then we can acquire an ability to implement an industrial revolution in the energy system in a way that broadly meets the criteria of effectiveness and dynamic efficiency

renewable energy certificate mechanism in india a preliminary assessment abstract the indian national action plan for climate change napcc envisages several measures to address global climate change one of the important measures identified involves increasing the share of renewable energy in total electricity consumption in the country this would mean napcc envisages renewable energy to constitute approximately 15 of the energy mix of india by 2020 to achieve the target set by the napcc indian ministry of power launched renewable energy certificate rec mechanism in november 2010 however participation in the rec markets is low and recs have failed to attract significant investment so far in this study a preliminary attempt has been made to assess the performance of existing rec mechanism in india after highlighting the salient features of the indian renewable energy policy framework a brief description of renewable purchase obligation rpo and source specific rpos for different states is discussed along with an overview of rec market in india to date the performance of indian rec mechanism is evaluated by cost competiveness decentralized distributed generation and renewable energy portfolio diversity and their effectiveness has also been measured on the basis of the available data although it is difficult to make any conclusive remark on the success or failure of rec mechanism due to its short experience this study examines the process to date to come out with some recommendations which can be used to fine tune the functioning of existing rec market in india for instance rec price bounds should be revised because it has been not explicitly supporting cost competiveness by offering 60 33 higher average price than the existing average feed in tariff fit it is also observed that state wise contribution in registered capacity is skewed towards few states like tamil nadu 27 maharashtra 23 and uttar pradesh 22 which puts pressure on policy makers to restructure the existing rec mechanism

decarbonising the power sector via technological change differing contributions from heterogeneous firms abstract in the power sector technological change is a key lever to address the decarbonisation needed to avoid dangerous climate change policy makers aim to accelerate and redirect technological change by targeting relevant firms via climate policy e g the european union emissions trading system eu ets and climate relevant technology policies e g feed in tariffs changes in firm s behaviour i e their research and development r d as well as diffusion activities are at the heart of technological change however firms are heterogeneous actors with varying attributes which perceive policy differently hence they can be expected to react very heterogeneously to these new policies based on an original dataset of 201 firms we perform a cluster analysis grouping firms along their r d and diffusion activity changes we then compare these clusters with regards to the characteristics of the contained firms our analysis results in seven clusters showing very diverse contributions to low carbon technological change suggesting potential for policy to become more effective a comparison of the firms characteristics allows us to derive indicative recommendations on how to adjust the policy mix in order to induce contributions from most firms in the power sector

status and perspectives of renewable energy policy and deployment in the european union what is needed to reach the 2020 targets abstract this article evaluates the status of current res deployment policies and barriers in the eu 27 member states and compares it to the required to meet the 2020 targets the evaluation relies strongly on the quantitative deployment status and policy effectiveness indicators european res deployment and policy has progressed strongly in recent years but the growth here has been mainly driven by effective policies in a small or medium number of top runner countries across europe the highest average policy effectiveness over six years was reached for onshore wind 4 2 biofuels 3 6 and biomass electricity 2 7 while in the heat sector all technologies score below 2 comparing the recent progress to the required growth for meeting the 2020 target it appears that some countries largely exceed the interim targets of the res directive 2009 28 ec despite this europe will need additional policy effort to reach the 2020 target critical success factors include implementing effective and efficient policies that attract sufficient investments reducing administrative and grid related barriers especially in currently less advanced countries upgrading the power grid infrastructure dismantling financial barriers in the heat sector realising sustainability standards for biomass and lowering energy demand through increased energy efficiency efforts

public policies to support the development of renewable energy in romania a review abstract the aim of this study is to review the public policies used to support the development of renewable energy in romania over the past ten years romania assumed a target of 24 share of renewable energy in consumption in 2020 higher than the average target of the european union and this target has already been reached in the beginning of 2014 as a result of the public policies implemented therefore this study examines firstly the support schemes for the development of renewable energy in the european union underlining the arguments to support the renewable energy as well as the main barriers for its development secondly this study analyses the renewable energy sector in romania in terms of theoretical and economic potential production and consumption of renewable energy and legislation related to the renewable energy thirdly this study discloses the main issues of the public renewable energy policy in romania starting with an overview of the tradable green certificates system and revealing the changes of the romanian support scheme and the possible effects of the policy changes the results of the present study may be useful for further research regarding public policies for the development of renewable energy projects

what is challenging renewable energy entrepreneurs in developing countries this paper cumulates the findings from a review of the challenges faced by renewable energy entrepreneurs in developing countries to date research that could facilitate the success of renewable energy entrepreneurs in the world s developing regions has been fragmented across two main bodies of literature management specifically entrepreneurship and renewable energy by conducting a qualitative review of the extant literature i propose that the findings from both bodies of research may be distilled to six 6 key challenges inadequate access to institutional finance the price of renewable energy technologies rets the lack of skilled labour underdeveloped physical infrastructure and logistics power dominance of incumbents inadequate government or policy support through this research i not only advance a unified conceptualisation of the challenges faced by renewable energy entrepreneurs in developing countries but also highlight a number of the revealed opportunities for future research

will policies to promote renewable electricity generation be effective evidence from panel stationarity and unit root tests for 115 countries abstract this study examines whether policies to promote renewable electricity generation are likely to be effective by applying panel unit root and stationarity tests to time series data on renewable electricity generation for 115 countries over the period 1980 2008 we find that for the panel as a whole and almost three quarters of the individual countries renewable electricity generation is characterized by a unit root this result implies that policies to promote renewable electricity generation such as renewable portfolio standards which result in annual increases in renewable energy and as such which represent permanent positive shocks to the long run growth path of renewable electricity generation will be more effective in increasing renewable electricity generation than policies with a pre specified time horizon

wind electricity subsidies a windfall for landowners evidence from a feed in tariff in germany abstract subsidies for renewable energy sources are increasing around the globe and amounted to more than 100 billion euro in 2013 this study aims to answer whether the subsidies only ensure that green electricity plants are profitable or whether other market participant as for example landowners benefit from the subsidy in the form of windfall gains as well to identify the causal effect of the subsidies we investigate the impact of the introduction of a price guarantee in the form of a feed in tariff for wind electricity in germany on land prices we employ two different approaches both approaches exploit quasi experimental variation in wind strength across 260 non urban counties in combination with the introduction of the subsidies based on a difference in differences design we find that land prices increased by roughly 1100 euro in high wind areas after the introduction of the subsidy further using an instrumental variable estimator we document that around 18 of expected wind turbine profits are capitalized into land prices finally we show that wind turbine subsidies account for 4 of overall agricultural income in 2007

pros and cons of exposing renewables to electricity market risks a comparison of the market integration approaches in germany spain and the uk abstract the article examines how renewable electricity res e producers are integrated into the electricity market under the support legislations and regulatory frameworks of germany spain and the uk focus is on wind power which faces the highest market integration challenge of all res e the analysis shows that the three countries follow contrasting approaches of exposing res e producers to the market risks of forward electricity markets balancing markets and system planning requirements risk exposure is highest in the uk and lowest in germany from a policy maker s perspective there is a trade off between a high risk and a low risk approach when res e face high market risks a higher level of financial support is required to stimulate res e development than in a low risk environment but the exposure to market risks may also give an incentive to make efficient use of the respective market thus limiting the indirect costs to society the special characteristics of wind energy however put natural limits to the response of wind power plants to market prices and locational price signals and will increasingly influence electricity markets and grid infrastructure these interdependencies should be recognised in the design of res e policies and market regulations

renewable energy policies in europe converging or diverging abstract nations today are urgently challenged with achieving a significant increase in the deployment of renewable energies in europe that need has given rise to a debate about the most effective and efficient support strategy whilst the different interests debate whether full european harmonisation or strengthening of national support policies for electricity from renewable energy sources res e is the best way forward individual national support schemes are rapidly evolving this study investigates how the eu member states have applied support policy types over the last decade by identifying predominant developments in the application of feed in tariffs premiums tradeable green certificates tax incentives investment grants and financing support for specific technologies wind biomass pv this study shows that europe is currently experiencing certain tendencies towards a bottom up convergence of how national policy makers design res e policy supports while some outliers remain the policy supports of most countries become more similar in the policy types applied dominance of feed in tariffs and in their scope of implementation differentiation for installation sizes and stacking of multiple instruments these trends in national decision making which show tendencies of convergence could make an eu driven top down harmonisation of support either dispensable or at least depending on the agreement less controversial

towards a common renewable future the system gmm approach to assess the convergence in renewable energy consumption of eu countries abstract this paper investigates whether the contribution of renewable energy sources to primary energy consumption is characterized by a convergence process across core european union eu countries over the period from 1990 to 2014 the system generalized method of moments gmm methodology is employed for 5 year span panel data of 14 eu members the findings indicate strong evidence for both the absolute unconditional and conditional convergence of renewables share in primary energy consumption across eu 14 countries moreover the control variables namely co2 emissions per gdp fdi inward stock and electricity prices contribute to the speed of convergence hence the implicit rate of conditional convergence is higher than that of absolute convergence the empirical evidence suggests that the energy mixes of core eu members have a tendency to become similar in the long run as the shares of res in primary energy consumption converge to the average level nonetheless it does not necessarily imply that this average would be 20 target which is to be achieved by 2020 according to eu directive 2009 28 ec

development of biodiesel industry in china upon the terms of production and consumption abstract the prices of primary energy have been ineluctably raised up due to the enormous energy consumption in china and the economy suffers a lot from the severe energy shortage therefore the necessity of using renewable energy in china is particularly important biodiesel has become one of the major renewable fuels of biomass energy since china s biodiesel industry just starts at the primary stage improving the production capacity of biodiesel for meeting the soaring on energy demands is more necessary for the sustainable development in china the materials for biodiesel production are various and sufficient in china that indicates china could have a brilliant potentiality in the production capacity of biodiesel however whether such prediction could be true is still needed to be discussion in depth and further for well answering the query the development of biodiesel industry in china has been systematically reviewed upon the terms of production and consumption and three essential aspects how to sufficiently take advantage of such plentiful feedstock for obtaining a satisfied production capacity how to reasonably use such biodiesel in each region and how to scientifically encourage the development of chinese biodiesel industry have been discussed from the review and discussions it can be concluded that the rising china s biodiesel industry is still behind the actual demand asked by 12th five years plan and continuous introduction of capitals is the effective method to a further development meanwhile the development of china s biodiesel industry is highly depended on the raw materials whose sources and production capability are remarkably different in different regions and hence make standards on the quality of biodiesel is essential and crucial to the further development furthermore adjusting tax policies and forcing the application of biodiesel as addition to fossil diesel can effective establish and enlarge the market of biodiesel in china

renewable electricity generation in germany a meta analysis of mitigation scenarios german energy policy targets envision a share of electricity from renewable energy sources res e of at least 80 in 2050 how can the transformation of the german electricity sector be achieved and at what costs this paper addresses these questions by means of a meta analysis of 10 recent model based mitigation scenarios for germany it turns out that the scenarios exploit the three basic strategic options of increasing the share of res e domestic res e generation electricity demand reductions and res e imports to substantially different extents domestic res e generation increases in all scenarios particularly from onshore and offshore wind scenarios that rely heavily on reducing electricity demand require a relatively low expansion of domestic res e generation despite detailed technical analyses insights on the costs of the transformation remain limited a discussion of underlying scenario assumptions reveals that it is unclear whether i res e and system integration technology development will be as cost competitive as postulated ii implicitly assumed institutional requirements will be realized and iii relevant actors in the transformation process will be incentivized accordingly therefore future research should pursue a thorough assessment of strategic options for transforming the german electricity system that consistently integrates technologies institutions and actors

assessment of the required share for a stable eu electricity supply until 2050 power system balancing will become increasingly important to secure a reliable european energy supply as the share of intermittent supply increases e g variable generation from wind and solar pv this paper shows in a quantitative way the limitations of relying exclusively on flexibility in generation as the future shares of intermittent supply increase literature and data on intermittent supply and existing scenarios are reviewed costs related to increasing shares of intermittent supply are assessed quantifiable indicators relevant for electricity systems with a high share of intermittent supply are developed namely a flexible supply generation units that can quickly change output b balancing need which measures the needed flexibility of the power system as the difference between peak and off peak residual demand net of intermittent supply there is an externality of increasing the share of intermittent supply by increasing the power system balancing costs if the cost of integrating intermittent generation was to be limited to about 25 billion eur per year which is an addition of 24 per unit intermittent generation cost the intermittent supply share cannot reach more than 40 in the european power market the final choice of an acceptable cost increase will be a political choice

the service sector monopolistic competition and the impact of emigration abstract a framework is developed in which the service sector is characterized by the production of slightly differentiated commodities under conditions of monopolistic competition the impact of labor emigration is then examined and found to be welfare worsening for the non migrants

the policy implications of the different interpretations of the cost effectiveness of renewable electricity support abstract the cost effectiveness of support for renewable electricity is a main criterion to assess the success of policy instruments together with effectiveness the costs of support are also a source of significant concern for governments all over the world however significant confusion exists in the literature on the cost effectiveness of public support for renewable electricity while some authors define the concept of cost effectiveness as that which complies with the equimarginality principle many others including documents from relevant organisations european commission international energy agency intergovernmental panel on climate change define it as the lowest costs of support generally equating it with the minimisation of consumer costs the aim of this paper is to clarify the differences between both approaches and their policy implications regarding the choice of instruments and design elements it is shown that they partly overlap and that their policy implications clearly differ leading to very different policy prescriptions while the former favours technology neutral instruments and design elements the minimisation of consumer costs approach favours instruments and design elements which adjust support levels to the costs of the technologies