evaluating decision strategies for equity of public risks many important decisions include the loss of life among their possible consequences alternative actions have different implications for the number of possible fatalities the equity of those eventual fatalities and the equity of the process resulting in those fatalities this paper defines a concept of ex ante risk equity to address the equity of the process and distinguishes this concept from the ex post risk equity of the fatalities the paper indicates that an analysis of decision strategies addresses ex ante equity in this context both types of equity as well as loss of life are included in a von neumann morgenstern utility model developed to evaluate public risks this approach provides a method to investigate the implications of different value judgments in examining alternatives and illustrates an appropriate use of von neumann morgenstern utility for problems involving social consequences such as public risks

european union commitment towards res market penetration from the first legislative acts to the publication of the recent guidelines on state aid 2014 2020 during the last three decades the european union eu commitment towards the renewable energy sources res market penetration has been very complex involving several aspects pertaining to the economic and political action of member states this paper seeks to overview the historical development of the legislative eu framework including a description of the main financial programmes established and managed by the eu directorates general moreover the work will proceed with the picture of some investment funds ad hoc created for res undertakings and managed by the european investment bank eib in collaboration with the eu or other foreign bank institutes the delicate matter of state aid is discussed paying particular attention to the transition from 1999 to the recent eu guidelines 2014 2020 as these wider scopes could lead to an effective and well functioning european energy single market focusing the attention on three case studies we have produced final remarks on the correct functioning of the eu political framework giving attention to important improvements needed at infrastructural level the eu awareness of the power grid limits that are currently recorded in europe has lead to further reforms of the legislation as shown by the new eu guidelines that will probably support member states in dealing with the infrastructure challenge

party systems and electoral volatility in latin america a test of economic institutional and structural explanations three different theoretical explanations are tested for the exceptionally high level of electoral volatility found in contemporary latin america economic voting institutional characteristics of political regimes and party systems and the structure and organization of class cleavages a pooled cross sectional time series regression analysis is conducted on 58 congressional elections and 43 presidential elections in 16 latin american countries during the 1980s and 1990s institutional variables have the most consistent effect on volatility while the influence of economic performance is heavily contingent upon the type of election and whether the dependent variable is operationalized as incumbent vote change or aggregate electoral volatility the results demonstrate that electoral volatility is a function of short term economic perturbations the institutional fragilities of both democratic regimes and party systems and relatively fluid cleavage structures

state business relations and economic growth in sub saharan africa abstract this paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of economic growth in sub saharan africa by examining the effect of effective state business relations on economic growth for a panel of 19 sub saharan african countries for the period 1970 2004 we propose a measure that we argue captures the various dimensions of effective state business relations in sub saharan africa we then estimate standard growth regressions using dynamic panel data methods with this measure along with the more conventionally used measures of institutional quality such as degree of executive constraints the rule of law the degree of corruption and the quality of the bureaucracy our results show that effective state business relations contribute significantly to economic growth countries which have shown improvements in state business relations have witnessed higher economic growth controlling for other determinants of economic growth and independent of other measures of institutional quality

ex ante equity in public risk in evaluating decision alternatives that involve risk of death among members of the public there are two types of equity that must be considered namely ex ante and ex post equity among the two ex ante equity is more controversial this paper suggests refinements to recent definitions of ex ante equity based on distribution of individuals risks across equally desirable outcomes and historical inequity

thinking about developmental states in africa during much of the 1980s and 90s a literature emerged suggesting that developmental states were impossible in africa the arguments given ranged from cultural ones about the pervasive nature of clientalism to structural ones on the dependence of african economies or the atypical levels of rent seeking in african economies this paper argues that africa has had states that were developmental in both their aspirations and economic performance it further argues that these experiences need to be examined critically for useful lessons an exercise that has been hindered by an excessive levelling of the african political and economic landscapes

physical market determinants of the price of crude oil and the market premium abstract we analyze the determinants of the real price of crude oil by means of an equilibrium correction model over the last two decades where we focus on the aspects of the physical market that impact on the clearing price we find that two cointegrating relations affect the changes in prices one refers to opec s behavior attempting to control prices using its market power and quotas the other to the coverage rate of oecd expected future demand using inventory behaviors we derive a forecasting equation for the change in oil prices which we use to assess the speculative elements of the price increases of the period 2000 05 we show that worries alien to the physical markets were the causes of the increase in oil prices and we quantify their overall impact

counting the number of parties an alternative index i propose an alternative index to operationalize the variable number and size of parties in a party system to support it i present a critical overview of the two most common indices laakso and taagepera s effective number of parties and kesselman and wildgen s hyperfractionalization showing the causes of their weakness then i explain the computational logic of my alternative number of parties and compare it with the other two using hypothetical cases after that i contrast the laakso taagepera index with mine using data from actual elections between 1945 and 1981 i conclude that my index outperforms the other two as an operationalization of the variable number and size of parties

neopatrimonialism and the political economy of economic performance in africa critical reflections during the past two decades neopatrimonialism has become the convenient all purpose and ubiquitous moniker for african governance the school of thought behind this research program which the author refers to as the neopatrimonialism school has produced an impressive literature on africa its analysis informs policymakers and its language permeates media reportage on african states while neopatrimonialism has long been a focus of development studies in recent times it has assumed politically and economically exigent status the school identifies causal links between neopatrimonialism and economic performance and makes predictions drawing from what is referred to as the logic of neopatrimonialism neopatrimonialism is said to account for trade policies hyperinflation economic stagnation low investment in infrastructure urban bias andultimately the lack of economic development in africa this article examines the empirical basis of predictions and policy prescriptions it argues that while descriptive of the social practices of the states and individuals that occupy different positions within african societies the concept of neopatrimonialism has little analytical content and no predictive value with respect to economic policy and performance

when will fossil fuel reserves be diminished crude oil coal and gas are the main resources for world energy supply the size of fossil fuel reserves and the dilemma that when non renewable energy will be diminished is a fundamental and doubtful question that needs to be answered this paper presents a new formula for calculating when fossil fuel reserves are likely to be depleted and develops an econometrics model to demonstrate the relationship between fossil fuel reserves and some main variables the new formula is modified from the klass model and thus assumes a continuous compound rate and computes fossil fuel reserve depletion times for oil coal and gas of approximately 35 107 and 37 years respectively this means that coal reserves are available up to 2112 and will be the only fossil fuel remaining after 2042 in the econometrics model the main exogenous variables affecting oil coal and gas reserve trends are their consumption and respective prices between 1980 and 2006 the models for oil and gas reserves unexpectedly show a positive and significant relationship with consumption while presenting a negative and significant relationship with price the econometrics model for coal reserves however expectedly illustrates a negative and significant relationship with consumption and a positive and significant relationship with price consequently huge reserves of coal and low level coal prices in comparison to oil and gas make coal one of the main energy substitutions for oil and gas in the future under the assumption of coal as a clean energy source

equity axioms for public risks from the perspective of a two person society we explain and analyze six axioms for equity among individuals who are exposed to the possibility of death from a public hazard the axioms are concerned with how a given total risk expected fatalities is distributed over the four possible life death consequences for the two people maximal subsets of mutually compatible equity axioms are identified first for a monotonic ordinal utility function and then for a more restrictive von neumann morgenstern utility function

solar pv where the sun doesn t shine estimating the economic impacts of support schemes for residential pv with detailed net demand profiling abstract countries with low irradiation and solar pv adoption rates are increasingly considering policy support for solar pv although consumer electricity demand and solar generation profiles are often mismatched this paper presents a methodology for policymakers in such conditions to examine more precisely the financial performance of residential solar pv from the consumer perspective as part of an ex ante policy assessment we model a range of prospective policy scenarios and compare policy mechanisms that compensate homeowners for generation those that reduce their upfront costs and those that assist with financing using ireland as a case study the results confirm the intuitive notion that more generous financial remuneration schemes provide quicker payback however we observe that in low irradiance regions there is little difference between upfront grants and feed in tariffs to accelerate payback timeframes we also show the importance of retail tariff structure in consumer payback for solar pv systems with one part tariffs generating shorter paybacks than two part tariff structures although the latter is more likely to secure revenue for electricity infrastructure investment drawing from this analysis the paper proposes some options for the design of policy supports and tariff structures to deliver a sustainable residential renewable electricity system in low irradiance regions

when efficient is insufficient fairness in decisions affecting a group many key decisions have significant consequences for a group of people rather than a single individual in some cases traditional group decision making techniques such as negotiation voting or compromise can be employed by the group members themselves to determine a satisfactory course of action in other instances however the intervention of a central decision maker may be necessary intervening on behalf of a group raises additional concerns for the decision maker one of which is fairness this paper builds upon envy based fairness concepts from the fair allocation literature and theories of ex ante and ex post equitable distributions from the social risk literature to develop a model for choice among limited options under uncertainty when preferences are heterogeneous the model is therefore appropriate when other existing models are not an example demonstrates an application of the model for choice under uncertainty and contrasts the approach and decision recommendation with that of existing models by quantifying the degree of envy rather than treating it dichotomously the approach captures the balance between fairness and efficiency some envy may be tolerated if it brings greater overall utility and or if some envy already exists in the status quo option lastly implementation issues and the impact of differing preferences and attitudes toward risk on fairness and efficiency considerations are explored

market reform programmatic de alignment and party system stability in latin america although democratic regimes in latin america since the early 1980s have been surprisingly durable party systems in much of the region continue to experience very high levels of electoral instability a critical juncture approach to institutional change suggests that variation in party system stability is related to the impact of market liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s on the programmatic alignment or dealignment of partisan competition market reforms that were adopted by conservative leaders and opposed by a major leftist rival aligned party systems programmatically allowing societal opposition to be channeled into institutionalized forms of competition that were highly stable in the postadjustment era by contrast bait and switch reforms adopted by populist or leftist leaders were programmatically dealigning for party systems leaving them vulnerable to highly destabilizing reactive sequences in the aftermath to the reform process including mass social protests the demise of historic conservati

state failure and success in uganda and zimbabwe the logic of political decay and reconstruction in africa abstract this article uses the post colonial experiences of uganda and zimbabwe to demonstrate both the strengths and weaknesses of competing theoretical explanations for problems of state and economic failure in africa it shows that they all explain some but not all of these processes it demonstrates the crucial role of contextual circumstances and ongoing structural changes in each country in determining the success or failure of policy regimes and of current prospects for a long term transformation to liberal democratic capitalism

can africa s saving collapse be reversed private saving in sub saharan africa declined from more than 11 percent of disposable income in the 1970s to less than 8 percent in the 1980s and only partially recovered to less than 9 percent in the 1990s this article analyzes the determinants of private saving in sub saharan africa seeking to explain the region s dismal performance and identify policies that could help to reverse the region s decline in saving the analysis shows that in sub saharan africa causality runs from growth to investment and perhaps to private saving whereas a rise m the saving rate granger causes an increase in investment the empirical analysis of private saving in sub saharan africa and other regions over 1970 95 suggests that private saving in africa can be explained by standard behavioral models according to these models private saving in africa lags behind that in other regions most notably the high performing asian economies because of the region s lower per capita income high young age dependency ratio and high dependence on aid the combined effects of these factors substantially outweigh africa s advantage from its lower public saving and higher government consumption finally analysis of the experiences of kenya zimbabwe and botswana provides further insight into the saving process in sub saharan africa

shifting fortunes the political economy of financial liberalization in nigeria abstract on the recommendation of the world bank nigeria began to liberalize its financial sector in 1986 contrary to the prediction of financial repression theory savings and investment decline in the wake of banking deregulation by 1995 the nigerian financial system was in a state of collapse the paper locates the main failure of nigeria s financial deregulation in the political and institutional setting of reform the institutional mechanisms needed to supervise and regulate banking under the new system were absent while private sector banking capacities were weak moreover financial liberalization was quickly captured by a clientalist state as a means of reallocating rents to strategic constituents an additional precipitating factor was macroeconomic instability the paper points to the importance of incorporating political and institutional variables into any model of financial reform or transformation

analysis of renewable energies in european union abstract the paper s main research objective is to analyse the renewable energy sector in the european union member states the first step of the research was to generate clusters of countries based on the share of renewables in total energy produced and the countries energy dependence in order to generate the clusters we applied the k means clustering method based on the data obtained from eurostat by using the statistical package for the social sciences three clusters of countries have been generated in the next step the eu states were ranked based on the following criteria share of renewable energy sources share of renewable electricity share of renewable heating and cooling and share of renewable energy in transport then the main characteristics of the renewable energy policy in each member state have been highlighted

trade taxes and tribute market liberalizations and the new importers in west africa this paper examines dynamics of state business relations in the era of trade liberalization in senegal and cote d ivoire it challenges the orthodox view that replacing nontariff barriers such as licenses and quotas with tariffs depoliticizes trade reduces commercial rent seeking activities and creates a level playing field which will encourage underground activities to surface allowing the state to capture more revenue the paper illustrates that liberalization failed to suppress commercial rent seeking helped to encourage the ascendancy of new politically connected merchant groups the mourides in senegal and the lebanese in cote d ivoire and to some degree increased tax evasion leading to the further erosion of state revenue flows the cases show that trade centered rentierism is rooted in structural features of these west african economies

fairness and social risk i unaggregated analyses this paper is the second of a two paper study of fairness issues for decisions that affect the benefits received and the risks encountered by a population the study examines fairness for individuals and for homogeneous groups within the population it considers fairness both for population benefit risk profiles and for probability distributions over profiles our study bases fairness on notions of envy among individuals and groups the first paper focused on fairness in profiles and profile distributions when benefits and risks are not aggregated the present paper uses individual preferences to assess fairness when benefits and risks are aggregated within groups or over the population it concentrates on intergroup envy measures and fairness indices that account for ways that aggregated benefits and risks might be allocated to members of groups or to groups within the population

the future of the feed in tariff fit scheme in europe the case of photovoltaics abstract the key objective of this study is the examination of the regulatory and policy framework of the feed in tariff fit scheme specifically its effect on both the electricity pricing as well as the local and european renewable energy sources res market and accordingly the definition of its feasibility as a scheme for the further development and promotion of renewable energy technologies rets this work discusses the fit scheme implementation for photovoltaics pvs in four case study countries denmark germany cyprus and spain a model describing the conditions under which a fit scheme is led to collapse is also introduced and a parametric analysis towards revealing the sensitivity of the different parameters affecting it is delivered the study concludes with significant policy implications that should be considered for future implementation of the scheme for the prevention of the collapse of the scheme the tariff s value ought to be determined by each country s government based on a set of influencing factors including the operational capital and investment costs of each ret the standard cost of renewable energy re generation and the avoidance cost which would be regularly reviewed depending on the excess of the annual capacity

technical note measuring equity in public risk an equitable distribution of risk is often an important criterion in the evaluation of technological and environmental risks in this paper we define the concept of equity precisely and develop measures for ex post and ex ante equity we then show how these measures combined with information on the number of possible fatalities can be used to rank alternatives that involve risks to human life

dispersive equity and social risk dispersive equity is concerned with the impact of life threatening risks from alternative policy decisions on homogeneous groups in a population it is not addressed to the disutility of various numbers of fatalities that might occur but rather to how fatalities are distributed over the groups although dispersive equity has long been recognized as an important component of some policy decisions it has received little formal treatment within the matrix of salient factors for such decisions our purpose is to advance its formal development this is done within a formulation based on probability distributions over potential fatality sets the formulation gives rise to four distinct but not independent equity concepts individual risk equity group risk equity dispersive equity and social outcome equity each of these is analyzed but special attention is given to dispersive equity the paper also comments on relationships between total equity and its four components and between total equity and the dis

equity considerations in utility based measures of health outcomes in economic appraisals an adjustment algorithm in this paper we consider whether methods currently used to measure utility of health outcomes are consistent with the equity criteria adopted by researchers we show that unless the chosen equity criterion is incorporated in the design of the measurement instrument the derived health state utilities are inconsistent with the equity criterion except under special circumstances adjustment algorithms are derived based on the axioms of von neumann morgenstern utility theory which take account of difference equity criteria currently adopted in the literature the proposed approach is based on simple lottery questions of the type already used widely in empirical studies

equity considerations in public risks evaluation recent contributions by r k sarin and r l keeney and r l winkler approach the problem of public risks evaluation from a multiattribute perspective in which fatalities ex ante equity and ex post equity play leading roles the present paper considers the same problem from the perspective of holistic comparisons between potential fatality distributions we consider a number of axioms for such comparisons identify maximally compatible sets of axioms and relate our approach to the multiattribute approach we also identify a form of dispersive equity that is not discussed in recent work but deserves further consideration

pv sector in the european union countries clusters and efficiency abstract european union eu due to several challenges that exist nowadays has changed its energy policy in order to fulfill international commitments concerning greenhouse gas emission and to assure safety in supply and stable prices eu has been a leader in renewable energy in many eu countries solar energy is a possible and very viable option together with wind energy photovoltaic energy is the new support core of a low carbon eu economy in what concerns electricity production in this work clusters of countries were generated based on the energy produced by pv systems and the share of energy from pv systems in the total electricity produced by renewable sources this work also analyzed the production of energy from the photovoltaic sector in eu and compared it with the existing potential for this type of energy roughly half of the eu countries are producing energy within the limits of what is expected considering the irradiation on optimally inclined plane however some of them could improve the ratio between energy production and installed power considering the leader countries in energy production from photovoltaic czech republic and spain are the countries that exceed what it is expected

false promise or false premise the experience of food and input market reform in eastern and southern africa abstract the literature on the effects of agricultural market reform in africa is sharply divided and inconsistent this article attempts to reconcile opposing viewpoints on the effects of food and input market policy reform in eastern and southern africa drawing from studies of ethiopia kenya malawi zambia and zimbabwe we argue that a major source of the controversy stems from assumptions that countries have actually moved to a liberalized market environment we find that many of the most fundamental elements of the reform programs either remain unimplemented were reversed within several years or were implemented in such a way as to negate private sector investment incentives a framework is developed for explaining why some countries have been able to liberalize their food and fertilizer markets while others have not these findings have implications for how donor assistance and policy oriented research can more constructively contribute to an improved policy environment

decision analysis models for social attitudes toward inequity social preferences for equity in the distribution of net benefits are not represented in a cost benefit study by the sum of the individuals net present values this paper presents two different decision analysts models for representing such an equity issue for each model conditions on the tradeoffs between different individuals are shown to imply that preferences can be represented by a special type of group value function procedures are presented by which such a group value function can be determined and used as part of a public policy evaluation

party system competition and private sector development in africa abstractdemocratic transitions by many african countries have generated much analysis of the organisational features of political parties or their role in voter mobilisation during elections yet scholars have largely overlooked how parties negotiate economic policymaking or interact with the private sector in countries that are incipient democracies and emerging markets this article argues that the stability or fragmentation of the party system affects patterns of private sector development and shapes linkages between the state business and labour it compares mozambique and zambia to demonstrate how variations in party system characteristics influence the relationship between economic and political interests

from formlessness to structure the institutionalization of competitive party systems in africa giovanni sartori once described african party systems as formless our contribution challenges this view in an era of resurgent multipartism that swept through the subcontinent in the early 1990s and continues until today the article brings together contemporary research on african party systems with the wider disciplinary literature on party system institutionalization using a data set including all continuous election sequences in africa from 1950 to 2008 we find that africa has some of the most volatile party systems ever recorded and yet tremendous diversity across regimes we test the relative impact of political institutions economic performance the history of party system development and social cleavage structure on party system institutionalization in africa we find that its party systems have been shaped by a set of factors unique to the subcontinent but some of the general global patterns of party system development hold true in africa as well

political parties and uncertainty in developing democracies this article lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the effects of political uncertainty on party development and strategies of mobilization and competition defining uncertainty as the imprecision with which political actors are able to predict future interactions the authors identify three types of political uncertainty regime uncertainty economic uncertainty and institutional uncertainty they argue that political uncertainty is particularly high among developing democracies contributing to puzzling empirical patterns of party development and competition in these contexts taking into account the role of uncertainty in the strategic decision making of party elites will help scholars better understand the differences between parties in advanced and developing democracies but it can also help scholars understand the less dramatic differences between parties even within advanced democracies the authors theoretical framework can be applied broadly since uncertainty informs the strategic

economic conditions and incumbent support in africa s new democracies evidence from zambia in this article the authors investigate the effects of economic conditions on support for an incumbent regime in a new african democracy drawing on two unique data sources from zambia the results of a 1 200 respondent postelection survey and a pair of 10 000 household poverty surveys conducted in the same years as that country s first two posttransition general elections the authors find evidence that declining economic conditions coincide with the withdrawal of support for the incumbent president although the effects of changing economic conditions are relatively small compared to noneconomic determinants of the vote such as ethnic affiliation and urban rural location the authors also find that to the extent that voters respond to declining economic conditions they do so via withdrawal from the electoral process rather than via support for the opposition the findings suggest that african electorates are at least modestly responsive to economic trends but that noneconomic motivations still predomin

economic analysis of the contribution of photovoltaics to the decarbonization of the power sector abstract an analytical method has been developed for the calculation of the future 2013 2050 reduction of co2 emissions by the deployment of photovoltaic pv systems according to three scenarios from the international energy agency 2ds roadmap and new policies next we have also evaluated the financial extra costs incurred in the implementation of the pv systems which would replace the current traditional power generation systems taking as reference four geographical areas european union united states china and the world s average the established method also allows the comparison of the influence on the extra costs of the actual electricity mix as well as the current electricity prices corresponding to the above regional areas in these calculations we have taken into account several frequently ignored factors like solar cell degradation emissions attributed to the pv systems life cycle and the repowering due to the substitution of the systems after their life time is reached finally the results of this work can be of interest in energy planning policies related to the contribution of pv technologies for the decarbonization of the power generation system

the main support mechanisms to finance renewable energy development considering that the major part of greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide there is a global concern aimed at reducing carbon emissions additionally major consumer countries are looking for alternati

advanced solar r d combining economic analysis with expert elicitations to inform climate policy the relationship between r d investments and technical change is inherently uncertain in this paper we combine economics and decision analysis to incorporate the uncertainty of technical change into climate change policy analysis we present the results of an expert elicitation on the prospects for technical change in advanced solar photovoltaics we then use the results of the expert elicitations as inputs to the minicam integrated assessment model to derive probabilistic information about the impacts of r d investments on the costs of emissions abatement

catastrophe aversion and risk equity in an interdependent world catastrophe aversion and risk equity are important concepts both in risk management theory and practice keeney keeney rl 1980 equity and public risk oper res 28 3 527 534 was the first to formally define these concepts he demonstrated that the two concepts are always in conflict yet his result is based on the assumption that individual risks are independent it has therefore limited relevance for real world catastrophic events we extend keeney s result to dependent risks and derive the conditions under which more equity and more correlation between two risks imply a more catastrophic situation we then generalize some of the results for multiple correlated risks this paper was accepted by manell baucells decision analysis

africa s overgrown state reconsidered bureaucracy and economic growth how close is the link between outsized states and economic stagnation in africa this article shows that african public bureaucracies are not as large as often portrayed that they have been getting smaller and that reducing their size alone has not bee n a prescription for economic revival to the contrary the countries with higher levels of public employment such as botswana and mauritius are apt to have the better economic records these findings suggest that a superabundance of public personnel is not in itself a major impediment to growth in africa too much attention has been paid to quantitative or first generation bureaucratic problems and too little attention has been given the second generation issues of bureaucratic quality